This poem is copyleft.
You're free to distribute it and diffuse it,
re-write it and abuse it,
and use it.
For your own ends,
and with your own ending.
This is an open source poem
entering the public domain.
Here's the source code,
add a little salt and pepper if you like,
share it out amongst your friends.
Because I didn't write this poem
I moulded it,
picked the lines out of a skip as I was walking on over here
took used up fragments of leftover ideas,
and put them to use.
Think about it -
I can't tell you anything new.
In all these millennia of human existence
there certainly can only be a few ideas to be thought through.
So we treat them like rare commodities?
Plunder artistic reserves for new ideas buried deep beneath the permafrost,
suffocate them with patent protection
and junk the rest?
Or do we re-use them and recycle them?
Pile our public spaces high with shared ideas beyond anyone's imagining.
So I steal a verse here and a line there
a riff there and a rhyme there
pass it on around the circle,
roll it up
add a joke
here have a toke
does it get you high?
This poem is indebted to Gil Scott Heron. Abbie Hoffman, Jim Thomas
and Sarah Jones
This poem is indebted to all the words I've read and the voices I've known
This poem is a community of intellect, your and mine
This poem is ripped off line after line after line
Because intellectual property is theft
and piracy is our only defence against the thought police.
The revolution
will be plagiarised!
The revolution will not happen if ideas are corporatised
So steal this poem
and use it
For your own ends
and with your own ending.
This poem is copyleft
all rights are reserved
Claire Faucet is a performance poet, activist and researcher for Corporate Watch.
Her poetry can be found online at http://www.re-clairethestreets.blogspot.com
and her political writing at http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk
The above poem reprinted from:-
This poem is sponsored by : Poems in the face of corporate power
2007
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