You plagiarized your heart, love,
copied it uncredited from storybooks
the rest of us have abandoned.
Don’t you know that our hearts
are salted and stowed
in the echoing holds of the
storm-tossed hulks
to which we resigned our fates?
Like you, we pickled our dreams
in barrels of paper and ink.
You’ll sink with the rest of us, love,
you’ll drown amid the uncredited echoes
of our extinguished ambitions:
you will fail, you will fail, you will fail.
Swept beneath the keel
or faceless in the flood:
understand, love, that your words
are only new to yourself.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
