Originally posted by peebrain:
This is something I wrote a while back
[b]
A mountain, a molehill
Expectation
Dear sirs, are you not satisfied wtih your pound of flesh?
It is weighty, it glistens still with a slick of wet.
My confessions are collected, like mother-of-pearl
warming insides in layers of spit. There are many.
My typewriter sits on a cherry mantle, abandoned
and orphaned without its master, while silence
cuts the air, a well-honed razor tendered and oiled.
How would you describe empty? A hollow, a hole carved
from soap, imploding dreams that dissipate into water,
an escapade skiding across thin ice on rusty blades,
Every morning, I wake up to birdsong flooding the light,
and I reach for a cigarette to douse dying hopes.
Sometimes, I strip the ribbon like a fugitive wife
ripping imaginary intestines from the man she loved,
stuffing promises down stockinged skin strung up to dry.
To the faceless doctors that visit every weekend,
I say I am your ideal subject, for I have made
my vocation to shred my soul and grow in confidence
so you could write your theses and grow in fame.
A fair exchange, most assuredly. Yet they rape the mind
for shrapnel that splinter the spirit, for angles that augment
parallax universes, pierce unknown constellations of hurt.
-- March 2006, revised.
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This post could very well be construed as an anachronism -- a droll diatribe on plagiary that no longer bears relevance to contemporary times, oft characterised as an age drawn together in a deftly spun web void of annonymity, personal or otherwise.
But here is a mouthpiece sterling, and I must use it well, if only to trumpet a cornucopia of thoughts so nebulous, so strange, so excruciatingly impatient, that they must assent, or choke.
I don't know where to begin.
Perhaps, then, the definition of plagiary -- a practice of dishonesty claiming original authorship of material of which one has not actually created (Wikipedia). Its Latin roots denote it as "kidnapper". I suspect I need not delve into its ramifications -- it rings loud and clear.
I've been plagiarised before. As I recall, that incident -- just some months ago -- was quite a fiasco, and I'd documented it as objectively as I could. Even still, the sheen of anger and disappointment was a flavour that lingers long after the fact.
As a writer, words are frustrating, exhilarating, intriguing entities -- alone, they gleam with a myriad possibilities. Strung together, they bear your unique stamp. They crystallise your history, your character, your voice in a world where perspective too often does not matter in the court of popular opinion.
And as a writer, you take great pains to craft, whittle each superfluous filament away to create an entity that had the potential to endure. Each ensuing work therefore is a representation of the invisible thought process that makes us human, however fallible.
It doesn't matter if a piece of work is formally published, or merely bulletinised on the cyberhighway. Theft is theft.
So when someone misappropriates a piece of writing, and falsfully claims it as her own.... it's hard not to get personal. It's hard even to dismiss it as a case of citational amnesia -- pinches of salt notwithstanding. I could be making a mountain out of a molehill, but could you fault me, when this hurt is still.... so very visceral?
Worse yet is the implication of plagiary: that the pursuit of knowledge and meaning has ground to a halt, and relegated to a tool for show.
### END ###[/b]
i like this very much. brilliant!
