Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief

So I write these cliché lyrics
for a stolen melody
Every artist is a cannibal,
every poet is a thief

I think myself a backyard Shakespeare
I'm just one more bard next door
And I sit here and I'm thinking
about the ones who came before

I admit I stole from Cummings
but you know he stole from Emerson
who stole from Wordsworth, stole from Shakespeare
stole from Chaucer, from Milton

who stole from Homer, stole from Plato
All those guys from Ancient Greece
It's all been stolen, taken, borrowed
right on through antiquity

Until we reach the beginning
It's the caveman's reverie
And he had no one to steal from
so he crafted melody

Symbolic representation
That's all the scholars say
But it's so much more than that I know
Poetry's from our DNA

All the anger, all the sorrow
All the loss and all the love
It's been felt by man forever
The words are written in our blood

So I'll keep drinking from that river
The common crimson memory
And I will pull out tired phrases
Embrace my mediocrity

And I'll leave letters for the future
The youthful poets of the day
And I'll leave my mark on this world
In my plagiaristic way

Many, many thanks to siouxsie and the man himself.