As you know, over the last couple of days, I've posted some about plagiarism and stolen poetry.
Plagiarism is a disgusting practice. It undermines the whole art of writing, be it novelic or poetic or any other kind of writing where the author has pieced together words that are their own. To copy and paste and present as your own is sinful and most colleges and universities (and the whole literary world) takes a dim view of it.
So, this is one simple tip, in the age of the Internet, to ensure your work is not claimed by some... wannabe!
Take a line from one of your poems, just one line (the more obscure the better) open google and go to the advanced search. Paste that line into where it says 'search for exact phrase' and review the matches. It will show exactly where on the Internet is has been posted or shared and you can check out whether you have been acknowledged or not. I've had poems shared on the WWW and have been happy to be acknowledged but have also found sone unauthorised (posted in the name of others) where I have made it known they breached copyright...
Take care of your writing my friends... it's the one true part of you :)

I suppose you are tired of it now.
Waiting for the rain to fall on the window
in that exact manner to bring about a tip-tap
sound of calm, against the backdrop
of suited racists and poets;
all claiming freedom
in their ten-minute slot.

The corn-fed chicken sleeps on the roadside.
It is covered in a kind of paste that seems real
in the moonlight, but even the strays
have learned not to touch.
Where are you now, imminent revolution?
Did you disappear in drink?
Perhaps you didn't exist at all.

Still, the pipes kick in through early morning,
heating the sheets you have just fallen within.
You allow flutes to bring you to slumber,
but awake to a pop song interference
of adverts and traffic news.
There is a lottery win and a winter cruise:
just enter your number,
and then apply within.

You cannot remember the last time you felt alive
thumbing through old anecdotes with friends,
all the stories have been told to completion,
or else have turned to myth nonetheless.
The pavement is real
but the passing faces are not.
The Clock Tower is heard
by all the people the town forgot.

I suppose you will still be drinking red wine
for each rough afternoon, family tradition,
or freak acquaintance to somebody
you thought that you knew.
I suppose my poems lost their meaning
once I spewed them out in parts.
I gave up a new direction,
to sit in the dirt of a dying art.

carved on walls
where fires burned
-indelibly etched-
the hunt and dance
our story

flint to moss
sparks ancient art-
tinder for desire

tendered flame
has seen us
***** unclothed-
an ivory venus
burned into my bones-

making fire

r ~ 9/3/14

Bone shards of our imaginary life
break loose from time to time.
Shredding their way
through my bloodstream,
they rip and tear at the fabric of my carefully pieced together reality.

I loved a quieter version of you.
A place where broken hearts held true.
And hands were firm, but nice, though strong.
A place where voices could belong.

I loved you in a fairy tale, a place where laughter was strong and hale.  I loved you in a tiny place, where no one knew your splintered face.

I loved you once, in a country song,
I loved you, loved you, till the dawn,
When truth erupted from each pore.
Your fists broke through the bathroom door.

How many moments locked in time,
Pictures of,
"I am yours," and,
"You are mine."
A fairytale written inside my head.
Our love affair was always dead.

And if I could only separate
The you I loved
From the you I hate,
Would it smooth those shards
Of broken bone
Of twenty years together,
But always alone?

*I loved the quieter version of you.

The soldier laid down with the children
in a city of mosques and mortar,
he kissed one on the head for the papers,
then another to atone for the slaughter.

A writer penned her last words in dirt
beneath the swinging of a cord,
beneath the swelling of a century
and that sweet, unvisited fjord.

I heard the bar-maids circulating rumours
of their dreams and lack of time,
how men-in-suits can deliver their freedom
at the sound of a wedding chime.

There was a journalist who found peace
in the breathing spaces of war,
who left the safety of the city
and all that he had known before.

He joined the scientist in the bushes
as the baboons re-invented the wheel.
They held hands at humanity's failure,
and to a God, they learned not to kneel.

The drunkard sang into the gutter
in broken rhyme and verse,
collecting cigarette ends
in case the economy grew worse.

He was a forward-thinker
who kept in touch with his students,
and for all the lessons he'd failed to learn;
he passed them down through common sense.

The baptist laid down with the hippie
on a straw-floor in Bethlehem's heart,
they both disagreed upon the ending,
yet felt unity from the start.