Instead of, replacing, substitute
great lines of mere words in order.
Great men, musicians, playwrights, novelists
stealing my future from their graves
Stalling me in my tracks for style
Mocking my attempts at verse
Without batting an eye for a plagiarist
who ‘quotes’ them in inverted commas
borrowing from their fame and efforts
neither trialled or gaoled or censured.
Unapologetically me this time, I must be.
Lining the silks of my own coffin, with words
that will last a million years much longer
then a mere hundred or so and be catapulted
into space to represent the human race…
I don’t know how it will be yet and then I
will be gone. Next 2 me in Westminster
Abbey, you may have sat and wept for this
and for that placing your cup on my tomb
and leaving it there for the cleaners to remove.
Nevermind me, turn me into a literary tragedy
before I am born again. Let the fan who made the
pilgrimage to see me weep at your unthinking
actions. Fear not they will not strike you, but god might.
And remember ‘Don’t plagiarise me!’
A Watkins Nov. ’17
Material things get the better of us 