“autobiography Of A Word” Poem by Munia Khan

I’m an ancient word
still crawling and surviving
to demoralize the creative world.

I have been in the dictionaries
for many, many years.
And I’ve never stayed neutral.

Now that I have become old,
I feel repentant for my silent ruinous activities.

I have lived a disguised life of a menace.
A word of threat I am
for every single credulous creative brain cell!
I have no face to tell you how I have been used
even by renowned authors and artists;
but now I no longer can step forward
with the burden of my ten letters
of septic limbs which are badly in need of amputation.

I no more want to purloin
another author's words, thoughts or ideas.
“Enough is enough”- I censure and stop!

The modern concept of mine
still remains as disgraceful as it was during the 18th century

I should have been buried alive!
(Yes, indeed, before the “Romantic Movement” when the artists and authors were encouraged to pamper me by avoiding superfluous inventions.)

I don’t want to go back to those brutal centuries again.
I am innocent – I tell you!
I know nothing about those legal terms or anything of that sort.
I know not about the laws of intellectual property
But I hate the bad practice that has been spread out surrounding me, even along with me!
Using my ten tiny alphabets as their inspirational slaves, they keep on writing,
daring the words and concepts of another brain!

Now I want my banishment - not from the dictionary;
but from the entire world of creativity.
From the world of literature and arts I want to retire.
Let the honest world bury me into the pages of old dictionaries
merely as a word!