The Plagiarist

 

The small gods of mediocrity worship me

In glimmering shades of opaque vanity

And a quantity of quietly suspended sanity

For believing in me is me deceiving in thee

Cos’ nothing exists inside an empty mirror

Everything is but a shallow showy business

An’ vanity’s the perfect anaesthetic to criticism

It has a certain cachet of symmetrical insecurity

Which protects one from the whips and scorns

Of the too, too solid clever clogging creatures

And their insistence upon a useless authenticity

And several types of other irredemptive features

If thickness was a virtue they’d be geniuses

As things stand they’re an average ordinary

Overburdened by the extremes of modernity

And the necessity to dwell in the sin of originality

No such burden afflicts this untempered soul

A pickpocket in heaven is a smart career move

There are so many treasures in eternal garments

Looking better on me than any famous other

They may have originality but I possess the sin

Tailored to perfection of a finely cut deception

Wrapped in the vestments of deceitful beauty.

So befitting on this prince of thieving vanity       .

If you have been where I have always been

You could’ve written the Faerie Queen

And several iniquitous verses in between

The fame and fortune of writing anything

It’s a difficult business being someone else

At least on paper and preferably in private

An’ don’t you just love an innocent abroad

Loneliness is always my singular attraction

And sadness isn’t without capricious merit

They’re the essential requirements of being

A phantom haunting in the raiment of deceit

I could shake the scene but only for an hour.

Why does everybody know that second-rater

Or some warbling barbed wire singer-songer?

The blowing wind of his twice solid injustice

Denies me my princely literary inheritance.

I’ve got more Faust than a beggar’s banquet.

I could be them, but they could never be me.

So who is the real genius at the literary feast?

That’s the question that they refuse to answer.

I’m the prince of all the borrowed tomorrows

And the silver-buckled trampling of history

Who are they compared to me, the thief of faces

A genius at my very own seditious practices?

Skylarks, nightingales and bloody red roses

There’s no purchase there for a born deceiver

Pirouetting upon the landscape of deception

My ancient trade, a slave to modern ambition

And isn’t wealth so comfortably in fashion

Filthy lucre for filthy booker is my very passion

A flattering self obsession can be so expensive

Plundering souls to satisfy a scribbling ego costs

Much more than your average literary bargain

Writing’s cheap and writers are even cheaper

That’s why I became this born again deceiver

Transient fame and eternal blame’s my passion

Who cares about fifteen minutes of ignominy?

I’ll do it all tomorrow in another stolen name

Addiction thrives by being exposed to shame.

Any fool can pen their play or scribe a novel

The romantics always scribble in their hovel

Whilst the past is a very lonely day tomorrow

And written failures drown in present sorrow.

But my notoriety is a timeless endless furrow

Ploughed and planted in each passing season

Harvesting the festival of my sweetened treason

And I’m compelled to a very summer’s day

An’ winter springing another written disguise

Favouring my fortune by a winning surprise

Beggaring the belief of a charitable donation

To the swollen coffin of my self infatuation 

Ferreting in the trashcans of the famous

For those half forgotten reject slips

Nothings too worn or useless for my audience

Even less for my insatiable appetite

To be appreciated as a literary genius.

Even if it lasts for only fifteen minutes

In the company of an utterly innocent audience

I’m neither proud nor even vain glorious

It’s just part of my addictive insouciance

I just love that moment in my significance

When I can be seen as someone not average

Not much to ask and even less to deliver

It doesn’t take a genius to be just clever

That’s a joy that I can always joyfully deliver

Twice on Saturday provided one’s a matinee

 I will venture on this shadowy way forever

Harming no one except a ripped off author

They should be grateful for the plunder

After all it is a kind of literary flattery

I have standards in my taste for literature

I’d never rob your average written writer

If they’ve mugged themselves, why bother?

A long lost great or an undiscovered genius

Is more my taste and appreciated flavour

New wine is fine but truth is there to be told

I’ll drink anything especially if it can be sold

To any old innocently paying punter

Desperation travels in the company of deceit

And much of it is right up my street

Not quite the boulevards of the ancients

And there I go along the road of the living

Avoiding life’s cul-de-sac dead ending.

A place to spend a life seriously avoiding

Even if it means inhabiting other peoples clothing

The wearing and the tearing is a riot

An’ God won’t send me to Hades for borrowing

The silken garments of the truly wonderful

But he sure as hell gets mad if I copyright it.