THIEF OF FIRE

So, looking back at the dates on this blog, it was about 7 years ago that I had my creepy plagiarist/stalker.  Younger guy, started writing me about poetry & music, proposed we do a small chapbook together.  He put it together and sent me a copy, and it was a little weird, cuz all of his poems looked like someone blatantly imitating me.  Same images, same choppy stanzas, he even wrote about his sons (he had no children). 

Soooooo.........

Didn't seem like it was worth freaking out about, so I just casually blocked him on whatever social media I was on at the time (myspace?) and stopped answering his emails.  And, of course, he kept emailing me to say that somehow he'd been unfriended on the social media sites, and could I re-friend him?  I think he eventually got the picture.  I blocked him on this blog, too, inasmuch as that's possible.....

And then, a few months later, I started getting emails from other writers who said "Hey, who's this whacked-out fucker ripping you off in [insert publication name here]?!"  This happened a few times with a few different zines, and I thought it was odd that only one editor ever got in touch with me.  Or maybe I flatter myself about how damn distinctive my writing is.  Anyway, she told the guy to knock his shit off and stop ripping me off.  She sent the poems of his that she'd rejected, and he had apparently evolved past pseudo-John Sweet poems into essentially cutting and pasting poems I'd written, chopping them up into new poems, giving them Sweetish titles (i.e. "the palace of..." or "the burning horse...." or whatever).

So, I'm here to tell you, imitation is NOT the sincerest form of flattery.  It fucking sucks.  Obviously, it's only poetry, so what's going to happen to the guy?  Is he stealing priceless art?  Fuck no, he's stealing poems by an obscure poet in a world filled with obscure poets.  Sure, I put my heart and soul into the stuff, but I always thought that was the point of writing, which brought up my other WHY? question (the first one being "Why the fuck are you ripping off the work of an obscure poet?  Fame and fortune?  Naked chicks?  What the fuck?").  And, okay, that's 3 questions, but they all tie in.

But the other WHY? question is "Why aren't you just using my work as a springboard to create your own style?"  Look at all the bands the Velvet Underground and the Pistols inspired.  Look at how each major art movement helped inspire the one that followed.  That's art, goddammit.  You use someone/something else as a launching pad.  You act and react.

Anyways.....  There's a big gap in this blog back around 2009 or so, I quit writing and painting for about a year, the world continued, I eventually found my groove again.  Read a shitload of books that year, tho....

And now I'm listening to the Warlocks, just finished a painting and, before that, a quick little oblique poem about plagiarists/sycophants/leeches.

Rock on.