#312 - poem with a borrowed line and I won't tell you which

9.xi.20

312

poem with a borrowed line and I won’t tell you which

or

all my own work

 

‘to speak is to fall into tautology’

                                   – Borges

 

make fungible my effort, sleuth

you’ll have to work it out

 

we’re all in this together

kind of an alphabet soup

or scrabbling off the edge of the board

 

take the maze which is a last amendment

yet to protect

 

I don’t expect an understanding

but

here we are in the future of words

where words crop up again

call it presentiment!

 

I had thought they all were given to me

so much in my face all along

a clamouring

and once upon a time

a smile if I said mama

 

they’re gone now

 

and I gave back most of the punctuation

not needed on the voyage

 

what vistas!   … and roll the whole year and a day

 

I am copying nature again

am holding up the mirror too 

reframe redress redo

 

shall we be full and frank then?

I have hung the plagiarists from yardarms

just for an example… but I suppose in mainly prose

did it work?

 

please google my accomplices

the unknown, fallen, those yet to breathe

how

knowingly I wrote from world to this other

all borrow to be an edge of tomorrow

how else could we have come?

 

you mustn’t tell a soul

hush treetops

tickle under

 

but… and this is the tremendous part

(a trumpery today)

hunt for witches and you’ll find them

a lovely doughnut dunk

does it bring you satisfaction?

 

tell me

who wrote the Bible, smartypants?

a simplest song, take these three chords

follow the money – attack!

consider that kookaburra fair game

stairs up to

count your heavens

 

can you tell a plagiarist from a poet

a green field and so on

?

echoes for a Midas to bury

 

we live in a house of plagues

cook a koala

call it a Murdoch of them, the plagues

that one is threat to all life on the planet

and who’s joining in?

who takes the Murdoch gold?

 

had thought – democracy of words

a for from by –

is that Lincoln or someone he cited?

or he forgot the quotes?

 

and while we’re at regurgitation

is it history or farce – who says?

we’re going down again

or you are –

there’s no fire in the mire!

but gurgle gurgle gone

 

love’s in the echoes

how I ever yearn to hear them

they take me alive

yet to commit the crime

 

what if all writing were…

 

follow this line and you go on…

translate, that’s how you learn

 

what’s that Hungarian proverb dad told –

little man, big stick ?

 

forgot that we were here before

and yet the globe spins on

goes around as well

 

‘but justice is an art of theft’

Plato’s Socrates said Homer said

 

today we call that verballing

 

to own a word’s absurd

unless you jabberwock ‘em

as Charles Dodgson did

which brings us back to fungible

 

here we are straight from the past and form phrases

 

you’ll find me in the dictionary

accessory after before

but not a final court

 

as if a page were empty once

but we can still pretend

 

I live in a stolen country, don’t you?

is there progress?   have we come to a treaty?

 

tell me what’s up and what’s new

 

all of it’s from this raw

scribble and crossings out

 

I own that rhyme, I bought it fairsquare

sweat and fear, fond in illusion

 

words go and come around

here’s Qunicy Dints, prime suspect

never gets off

but I call Kismet to the box

 

from the mulberry, strange bird

won’t you please tell us new

 

I’m quick brown fox, you lazy dog

and  here’s what I’ve been up to

 

having invented the English language

(sundry others along the way)

 

go into the grey zone

take a little pill

I grind mine with monkey… there are millions

 

that Shakespeare thing was just to fill seats

 

and I invented clouds

the general weather

it’s a squeeze

so godly am, needn’t allude

and later on, roof over head

I conjured all that too  

 

sign along the dots

all mine

and was it in partial fulfilment?

 

Like Bugs and Daffy tunnelling

missed the turn at Albuquerque

all in the box

or with Marvin

astral tussle

all for Illudium Fozdex

make it up as we go

are you coming, puppy?

will you lift leg?

 

but best when you pinch it from yourself

(quite sure that no one’s watching then)

 

imagine a property in words

or truth be told

have trouble to fit mine all in

 

who’s hiding in my poem?

who’s all peekaboo?

 

without sin casts

and mutely

signifying nothing

even all thumbs

it’s hard to do

 

and have you found me out?

I love a live unveiling

better than wasted time

 

you just don’t get it, do you?

 

come on dickhead, dooks up

have you for breakfast

no, not even breakfast yet…

haven’t even got started

that was just a draft