The Sad Life Of The Imitator Poem by RIC BASTASA

you mock me
i bite my lips
i keep my
mouth shut

i have met life
perhaps
but not love
i have not kissed it
to the full
not touched it that
much
genuinely like a
lover and a wife

do not mock me
i am just learning how to live
how to love
how to be just me

for i have never been me
i have imitated everybody

if i were myself
i must have been shattered
like having been bombed
or shelled out

i have lived this life
and shall live it for another
hundred years if you wish
the life of another
always in the shoes of another

always empathizing
as the heavens fall
as the gates of hell
opened.