Now, Steal This!

Hey Fellow Poets and Word People, I want you all to be aware that someone who goes by the name of Wilfred John, plagiarized one of my poems and posted it on poemhunter.com. I wrote to the website and they have since removed the poem, but it makes me wonder how many of mine and other people's poems have been stolen? It begs the question, how much of our work do we make public? In the meantime, the following poem is dedicated to the poetry and word thieves out there.

Dull
Dull
Dull
The ink is dry in your skull
You’re going through a lull
So what, if it’s bull
You’re going to steal a poem today

You stealthy slip through blogsphere
Snatch whatever poem you dare
For the poet you have no care
Because you’re going to steal a poem today.

You submit the poem in your own name
Lame, vain, you have no shame
You think it’s some kind of game
To steal a poem, to steal today

You post the poem on other sites
Pretending that you have the rights
Posing from false heights
“This is my poem!” You say,
“My poem.”

What kind of person steals a poem?
A fraud of mind all alone?
You have no words of your own
So today you went and stole a poem

Do you even understand what you steal?
Do you understand words meant to heal?
A poem is made for you to feel?
So how did you steal a poem today?

A poem
A poem
A poet’s own
Write your own poem
Leave us alone!

Copyright 2008 Chaya Silberstein

Fucking you.

Fucking you is

Plastic on the floor.

Armies in a lost battle

Death at my door.

 

A dog in my backyard

Pills for my pain

Beer in broken bottle

Wet paint and rain.

 

Aren’t I

Obsessive

Aren’t I

Submissive

Am I

Inobtrusive

In love

 

 

Fucking you is

Piss in pot

Mellow come

A hooker’s snot

 

Fucking you is

High on hash

Gold teeth hustler

Faking Slash

 

Aren’t I

obsessive

Aren’t I

Reclusive

Am I

Figurative

In love.

Fucking you is

Acne creams

When I scream

Baby dreams

 

Breaking my jaw

Dirt beneath nails

Slitting my nerves

Ugly as hell

 

I’m too

Obsessive

And also

Submissive

Not to mention

Pshychotic

In love.

p.s.: Pardon me, it's a song.

Random Footnote

Fiction is the spice of my life. 

It's unfit for consumption, but I'd love to sell it.

Watching TV

'What channel do you want?'
'I don't care. It's all shit.'
'Well, why don't you read a book?'
'Okay, what's on Channel 4? There's usually something good on there.'

For the next hour the screen changed colours, audio came out, and a clock ticked on the mantle piece.

cold and dark.

Cold and dark,
it rained by my side.
Cold and dark,
it stayed tonight.
The blind clarinet,
that he looks upon
and draws close to his lips,
holds me inside.
Deep,
in the depths of its soul,
the blues sing a song
i could never write.
I look to the sky
wishing it would bleed
and drown me in a raindrop.
let me rise up to the surface
let me bathe in the sun, i scream.
Cold and dark,
the raindrops don't fall on me anymore.
Cold and dark,
the sun, too, stayed in my heart
tonight.

winter cookie

Closely Observed Trains

Would you believe it

that "Closely Observed Trains"

was a film's name

in Nineteen Sixty-eight?

It was critically acclaimed,

an Academy Award winner,

even before I was conceived

one early winter.

But four decades later

I am changing slowly.

There are white streaks

in my sideburns,

a morbid fear creeps up

when I meet loved ones

as if one of us will pop off

before next such loved moment.

I recently discovered

that my body speaks too.

I am distinct from it,

I am not what it is.

And now I sleep nursing dreams

of six-pack abs, youthful hair,

of rising early, jogging anywhere...

But strangely when I drive on the stretch

saddled between Nizamuddin and Yamuna's stench

I closely observe trains that I do not intend to catch.

© February 18, 2008 Dan Husain

First Light

It’s been going on all night
Make no mistake
Don’t be beguiled by the innocent look
Of those trees hanging about,
Hands in pockets, in the fields
Still pooled with darkness
Don’t be misled by the silver light,
The anarchic flight of sparrows
Or the crows practising tai chi

Don’t be fooled by the rising safety curtain
On the moon-clean stage
After the first act’s carnage has been cleared
Or the warming up of the orchestra
Now missing its woodwind section

This is not a fresh start
This is no new dawn

Choke

The tones rang out
18 month old choking
a blur to get to the ambulance
Emergency medical tunnel vision
can't find the street in the map book
can't think about anything
but how to fix a choking child
a kid that I may never get to
I can't find the fucking address!
Someone else knows where to go

The pt is the Lt's grandaughter.

I am the lead medic.

I about shit my pants.

She was fine.

But I failed.

Spring haikus (2)

1.
a lost pleasure is
tucked in the folds of darkness
birds sing at sunrise


2.
the apricot tree
long bare suddenly flowers
at which spring smiles back

Cosmonauts

I've been spending my time hunting down and interviewing cosmonauts. They've all been into outer space and they all own guns on Earth. That's as far as I've got so far.

i see you,
going up in smoke.
i exhale you,
and you form patterns on my wall.

Paul Finds Employment

Artist Joshua Sofaer gives poet / artist Paul Conneally a 1910 map of Sheffield and sends him out on the streets to find employment.

eve

it is not today it is tomorrow
assertions of discomfort
accusations instead of requests
the lonely litany of proving others wrong
domestic pain on the half shell
the full fury of a bite
dissected in mid-air
the vampire as a victorian silhouette
the vasectomy of life

the herodotus of failure
in leather volumes
with blood running down their backs
the piles of lazy dishes
the lilting halo of cupidity
numerical as sin
but well grounded in
ever-shifting theology
and prismatic light
glancing off the scales
of unbalanced philosophy from discussions
held by the apple tree

when the end has come
I’ll take the dishrag
releasing all the brown halos
purging to the core
the earthly sins
that have trapped you here
and bid your soul
song along the skyline
and speed exceeding
God knowing what you have prayed for