...To Change The Name Of The Author Of The Poem Poem by RIC BASTASA

to change a name from time
to time
may not change the color and
texture of a poem

the one i have read and
noted
still opens its body to me

it will be the same sadness
but rereading it somehow creates
a certain superficiality

for it is a poem denied the dignity
of its writer
disowned, and given away
it becomes another stranger in my page
and i have decided not to talk to
it or

about it, for seemingly it is hard
to expose myself unnecessarily to another
insensitive soul

looking itself in another body
in another layer of time