Fictional Poem by RIC BASTASA

everything i write comes back to me
like they are real
in flesh and blood and friends write
how come
how is it that we are there in your poems
when they are supposedly
some works of a writer
imaginary and fictional

i have no answer

i write about love and broken hearts
and another friend
emails if i am alright
is there anything she can do to help?

but i say again

this is not me this has nothing to do with me
this is fiction

and she does not believe me
she says,
there you are trying to lie again
when blood runs surging like some pulse
of a dying man wanting to be alive
in your poetry,

i have no answer

the poems are works of fiction
it is not me it is about him and her and them

she shrugs off her shoulders
and reads again about the old church where
she once knelt and prayed

there was this girl who fell in love
and whose heart was
beautifully torn to pieces

she says she is her
the poem is true

and there was this boy
who was with her praying
who, when he became a man
broke her heart

she says it is you it is you
the poem is true,

the poems are true
who will ever believe me now?

i have always lied all along
count it from the first poem
when i said about

it and i said it was
it is

all about nothing and
it will always be about nothing

but fiction, nothing personal, but it can be also painful and lingering.....