poetry :: Copyleft

Homer, this pub philosopher's heard,
created to sing The Odyssey,
but 'only' edited all The Iliad
combining Hellene colleagues' poetry myth.

These, the songs that began written epic,
became his world's Kernighan & Ritchie*,
are older than Christianity's crutch
and every foolish looping nationalist 'us'.

Yet we, we only hear the single voice.
Works, once published, are inviolate.
This fat respect prevents relay creation.
We adore The Odyssey. We ignore The Iliad.

With 'copyleft', not for the empty, hated by empire,
programmers reuse and revise others' recipes
causing original and imitative solidity;
it could prime a time-long poetic chiro-blast.

Collaboration, writing united, is not the same;
each ego can veto the other's invention.
A copyleft author can declare and decamp;
others may sooth a clash-cultural chaos.

This gnu idea, it bypasses the island man's blindness;
he cannot stop a work deepening through
lives cultures genders generations histories worlds.
Consider the Mahabharata**.

* 'The C Programming Language' by Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie, is a computer programmer's "bible". It's not for wimps, essential for WIMPS, and has nothing to do with WIMPs (weedy men, Windows Icons Menus Programming System and Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, respectively).

** Like The Iliad, The Mahabharata is the source poem for a great religion. Unlike The Iliad, The Mahabharata's religion---Hinduism---lives. It's a pity Hindu bigots have ascendancy in India.