Echo and Narcissus

"Can I enter in your body?"
She is relentless, 
An Echo in his soul, an abysmal voice
incarnates love that he could fancy.
"A clear day" , Echo said.
Yearning for love, he conceded.
He traces the contours
of his face from the pool.
But she knew the water is not blue,
the cloud in the pond
is a lie.
When the truth sunk in,
she is not what he wanted,
"She is ugly! I would rather die than love her!"
His steady gaze into the pond
continued on until he died,
for that beauty that he never was.

Ric S. Bastasa

there are those who choose to stay
and just be home

if there is a home, if there is someone
that is a wise choice, safe,

in the walls of the comfort zone
within the parameters of stillness

and quite reading of a beautiful life
upon a bench, with a cat on the side and

a dog near the door, sometimes you look
outside the window, mistaking a car stopping

as someone who may soon live with you,
but again, it is your neighbor's guest,

at any rate, you go back to the comfort of
a book, chapter eight now, lovers reunited

refurnishing a house, painting the wooden fences
brick red, and pruning the bushes, and

plating seeds of tomatoes, and then
when the sun is at its hottest, you sit

under the shade of a tree, gazing at the world,
still so gentle, and beautiful in its freshness

a life you choose, a home, a house, a chair,
and the same coolness of the shade for all these years.

Ric S. Bastasa

the beginning is always mine
always always mine
and it gets too tiring at times
since the hard part,if you only know,
is the beginning

when i lift my hands and carry
my body to yours,
the fear that something's wrong
will always be there

you are there like the bed lazy
with its sheets
and indifferent with my longings
i am in a quandary as to what to say
about what i feel

i like that somehow beginnings must
be borne by you
but beginnings have always been mine
always mine

tonight it will be different
i will stay late in my longings and
be numb with my feelings
and then i will practice how is it to say

goodbye.

or if i cannot master this art of grace
and gentleness
i still have one option left, i will take

silence.

by Ric S. Bastasa

untitled

the man that you once
loved
had the sweetest winks
you can still giggle
when you were close together
cheek to cheek
at the palace of the sky

friend, you did not make it
at the end
split like two pieces of wood
cut like head and tail of a red dragonfly
snapped like thread stretched beyond
its limits

exploded like short-circuited bulb
you had mourning for
forty days and forty nights
like a widow

but then
all people recover
back to your feet
your hands stretch to the sky
reaching God
and feeling his
hands

then one day
as face book would have it
you see his picture
his back arched like a
bow
without an arrow
his eyes like caves
his skin wrinkling like lettuce
on salt water

and you say, omg! he has become too
old for his age
he looks sick and needing help
is he dying?

flashbacks, and flashbacks
you were at the peak, or the ridge
he wants to take the bus
and you want to go to crater of
Taal
taking a boat by the lake
and hiking
towards its peak
to see the
world

love ended.