meanderings of an unquiet mind after midnight

darkness + silence + solitutde = hamsterwheeling

[isabella-housefrou]

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@poetry_riot here’s a little 4 liner for you! you came upon me like a tidal wave /uponwaveuponwave / delight and ecstasy / forbidden fruit become manna surf’s up baby! © 2017 rochelle foles meanderings #poem #poet #poetry #poetsofig #poetrycommunitry #writer #writing #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #author #authorsofinstagram (at Cole Valley, San Francisco)

[hampsterwheeling]

Goodies from my ecclectic collection at haute melange. Everything here is available for purchase

[hampsterwheeling]

monster slime

[writingsforwinter]

Please share. Help me make this post go viral.

Almost 2 years ago, on July 31, 2015, I wrote a prose piece on suicide, titled “The Morning After I Killed Myself.” I posted it on my personal writing blog. The piece spoke from the perspective of a young woman looking back at her life after committing suicide, observing the effects it had on her peers. Within only a few weeks, my piece had been shared over 300,000 times directly on the blogging site, and as of today, it has been shared over 7 million documented times across the Internet.

Unfortunately, ever since I posted it, I have also come across at least 150 cases of it it being plagiarized. 150. And certainly countless more, considering these are only the cases I have been able to find myself. I have lost count of how many times I’ve had to contact websites to ask them to remove the plagiarized versions, how many times I’ve had to file DMCA notices, how many times I’ve had to enlist the support of my readers to bring awareness of the plagiarism to the attention of host sites. I have sent countless emails, filed countless notices, sent in countless reports, etc. On and on. 

I’ve had people steal my piece for English class projects, for art projects, get it published on well-known websites under their own names; I even had one girl steal the piece and submit it to the same national art and writing contest I won national medals for when I was in high school. I’ve had people steal my piece and copy its lines and twist its lines and meaning into a highly manipulative and distressing version that blames suicidal individuals for their thoughts and actions, leaving me in distress and sadness at my original message being distorted to such a degree, especially as someone who has personally struggled with suicide. It’s gotten to the point where on one single well-known website alone, The Odyssey, there have been at least 5 different plagiarized versions of my piece published at any given time, with new versions appearing each week.

I remember clearly when one girl used a plagiarized version of my piece for a final art project for her class. This girl was innocent; she had no idea she was using a plagiarized version of my work. I clearly remember her begging me to call her on the phone, a complete stranger, so she could explain, and listening to her break down in tears as she apologized profusely for using a stolen version of my piece when she was not at fault whatsoever.

It is unacceptable, damaging, and devastating to an author when their work is plagiarized, especially to the extent that my piece has been. It is unfair. It is hurtful, it is disappointing, it is inappropriate, and most of all, it belittles the time, effort, and dedication the author put into the work. We need to support and uplift the artists and writers we have left instead of destroying them.

Just yesterday I was contacted by several different individuals telling me that a plagiarized version of my piece is making the rounds on the Internet again. I cannot go a single week each month without being informed of more plagiarism of this one piece that I wrote almost 2 years ago.

Please. If you see plagiarized work floating around, whether it is mine or anyone else’s, report it. Comment on it. File a notice. Speak out about it. 

Artists and writers do not exist in a vacuum. They have human feelings; they are human beings. They feel hurt and pain and frustration when you take credit for their ideas and their words and art. Plagiarism takes an enormous toll. It is no exaggeration to say that over the past 2 years that my piece has been stolen, my mental health has taken a hit due to something I spent a great deal of time on being taken away from me over and over and over again.

Please share this, if you have the time. Not for me. But for all the artists and writers whose brilliant and emboldening work you have the privilege, not just the opportunity, but the privilege, to observe, learn from, and immerse yourself in every minute of every day.

[new-poets-society]

oh agony of writing give me something to spill my lines upon to free me of the words staggering in my soul give me a pen and I will throw my world on a blank sheet and let out my screams to rest there in innocent silence -i.h. @shethoughtabout

[isabella-housefrou]

I wrote this from a prompt of a picture of a homeless man curled up on a sidewalk. Something that happens all too frequently for those with mental health issues

[robertjw4688]

Battle-Scarred Pen

I got a

boiling cup of

energy and

Every Time I Die

blaring from my

speakers to help me

break down this

block where

my childhood selves

tie nooses and kick

a thousand chairs.

My pen writes

epitaphs on every

surface but they

all remained

unfinished until

this moment when

the walls started

to crack under

Keith Buckley’s

screams and

coffee.

All the children

take their ropes and

jump over them

while singing

“I can’t go back

to what I was:

Metallica

without the drugs.”

Everything

is finally

perfect

and done

as I look at

the now naked

sun, shining on

the tip of my

battle-scarred pen.

I click it

to sleep,

to fight

another morning.

[hampsterwheeling]

so incredibly moved by this!

[hampsterwheeling]

if i were robinson caruso...

[hampsterwheeling]

[hampsterwheeling]

[hampsterwheeling]

[smakkabagms]

dark the woods, even in day

where jagged pieces of the moon lap silver waves of murky brume , duplicit

Iphigenia is led here, through the anemone of  many moors moon-blushed and sea-bathed woman of blood, midwife of the dying, black nightshade O, you ask, where is beauty? old this earthen room, we suffer midnight meadow, darkwinterwater,

I am the bride of this night,

sunlight has failed us

a storm of black birds

across acres of mire come to me, says the world I am outside of time salt-estranging sea behind the trees, the iron-gates of otherworld their bloomery of white horehound, hemlock , hawthorn

murmuring into the faithful ear of night where furies swarm storms for your dark time I bring beloved vials of lily, lilac in full bloom, flaming lyre of wolf-song we hear Iphigenia of blood begging the moon her last dying alms the failure grows light, there is no light no place left for our dance this is faith, the pale extension of uncertain hour beneath the tender protest of stars no one sleeps and woe, that my heart shall never sail suddenly onto slack waters

return me to the grove of violets bring me dew-wet dahlia aflame

[hampsterwheeling]

I'm sooooooooooooooo in love w this writer!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's my 19th century blood, reborn

[smakkabagms]

Oh my darling one, how long you wander from me, how weary I grow waiting and looking, and calling for you; sometimes I shut my eyes , and shut my heart towards you, and try hard to forget you because you grieve me so, but you’ll never go away, Oh, you never will -

Emily Dickinson, letter to Susan 1850 (via smakka--bagms)

One of my greatest herions [and yes, I meant to spell it that way]. A woman with no fear of touching her emotions, eloquently & memorably expressing them. Oh! To be a hundredth of the writers and poets she was! Do dreams come true?

[smakkabagms]

beneath a gypsum moon, she is in the woodland’s arms to name, there are wounds of shadow wrapped round earth’s dark waist where she dreams of her rivers

and thinks, how terrible it is to waste my hands beneath her soft & mournful gray night becomes an intimate

an icicle of moon carries over the dark waters

still beneath the skull, where it is dusk, we hear the rush of hooves & a pale nightingale’s ancient verse saying praise the girls, their hands, their hooves and hearts praise the tongue’s memory of wheat and dark breads

she is flung far from body, her sturdy house of bones, all over we see the deep praise of dark eye filled with leaf and bird

o hear the wolf-song every day, let me face you weren’t you my sister once? a hare’s eye of wise tree, such a startle I am saying, I cannot turn away I cannot leave we are in the body of animal listen, somewhere in the night a mouth is singing

of moss veils, wet yarrow, birchbark, fawnhoof, river-mulch cypress-reach, all throat-expression

sweet winds over waters of rosemary luck obsidian shine, her arms are gathering

the thirst of violets ( where, where are you?) to call, to name, to cull, to love.

the garden is falling into itself, blossom of  a dying mother-speak spirit in our ears

[hampsterwheeling]

This blew me away, a terrific, engaging, soulfull and raw experience to share

[robertjw4688]

Things Beyond Things

And I know this one’s the light  And the worm inside of me  Is the oldest wound that

I’ve nursed along  So don’t try to get inside  These things inside are wrong,

things beyond things

I ripped my baby from the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and took it to the forest by my old home. I knelt down in the mascara soil and rocked it to dreams, humming static screams into its ears before placing it on a bed of used syringes and maggots. I placed my lips on its cotton forehead and left it there to live and, as I walked away, I thought I heard it coo at me but it was just a passing dodo. I put in my ear buds and played the same song I’ve been listening to since my senior year of high school. For the first time in my life, my mind and conscience were wiped clean as if I conceived the sun itself, shining from my stomach while the forest behind me burned like adolescent tears.

And I know this one’s the dark  And the woman inside of me

is the oldest fear that  I’ve nursed along So don’t try to get inside  These things inside are all just things

(italicized quotes taken from the Devin Townsend song “Things Beyond Things”. Listen to it. )

[waadtariq]

once, i loved blue salt on my tongue like a pill weighted heavy galaxies painted on my skin like trophies iron on my lips frozen over gaze down i loved blue like i couldn’t live without a strong hold on my words feet light as a feather complaisant, pliant, quiet quietquietquiet subdued once, i loved blue and love left a reflection on my skin i left blue changed broken, bruised (but nothing hurt more than my heart begging to return).

blue, colours of those i loved. (via waadtariq)

[poetryriot]

Poetry Riot Prompt (Week One Hundred Forty-Eight) 28 August - 3 September

The prompt for this week is:

rage - rage again - rage against

Please tag your work with #poetryriotprompt. If you do not see your work reblogged within 72 hours, please send us a message with a link to it. If the tag is used but the idea or theme of the prompt isn’t, your piece will not be reblogged.

You may write as many pieces as you like for the prompt, only the first one you post will be reblogged.

If you haven’t already, please read our post about the prompts and triggering topics. And please use the tag #poetryriot for pieces that are not prompt related and #riotprompts for past prompts. Thank you.