you can't write a poem with
my words, she said, i have a right
to privacy: you cannot righteously
write about me in the skin of poetry.
and what can you say to that except
quote it whole cloth because she's
right and leave it uncited also
because she's right; her right
stifles and silence rules.
it has a chilling effect this wedge
of i-me-my right insisting not our
between we, a chilling effect on our
voices between us and, if heeded our
voices everywhere else. you cannot
express freely about me, you see.
not even there anymore, doused
from my rapt prolixity,
now you mention it: i'll hoard
every word, so my privateering
paramour won't have the chance
to sell it out from under.
and recognizing now this rift
twixt thee and me, vis-a-vis
privacy and intellectual property,
well what more is there to say?
not we, and if not why expose any
precious phrases in the planning.
i wonder if wordsworth got a waiver
from the cloudy field of flowers, if crowley
contracted with the archetypes and powers
to print their invocations, if coleridge
licensed kublai kahn's identity to
promote tourism in the stately city.
i wonder whether shakespeare's lover
enjoined with her lawyer rather than
let the bard publish a sonnet with
her description printed on it, or
whether ethelbert miller had to pay the
inquisitive lady in his shower; if
in trade for her loyalty and chinese teas
abeyant leonard pays suzanne his royalties
(no doubt for his laud
abraham covenanted with god)
the point amongst these couplets
is of course ironic:
there is no seer without scene--her
resort to right wasn't what she meant,
was but a screen for her separate intent--
and we had us a scene, to be seen
barbs and cruel lies flying flaying
laying bare i-me-my right and you, over there.
but the other side is this: there
is always an other side to this
precious me of remembered historicity
and another to that precious you, and
part of that is your reflection here and
mine in you over there. so despite that
right: since you first met me, or more
precisely, since i first noticed you,
you have been my intellectual property, too.