Denny,

On two separate occasions recently you've referred to yourself as a 'hack'. In one instance you were especially self-deprecating, which surprised me because I don't believe you're capable of that kind of honesty or modesty, but then the more I reluctantly read of you the more I found statements like the following [addressed to Whiteflame], "Don't worry about writing bad poetry. HELL NO - it's easy - I do it all the time - I'm an EXPERT." Why would any self-respecting and aspiring poet refer to himself in this way, I asked myself. Even if he's only playing to a hostile audience, or going for irony, it still isn't seemly to be putting oneself down like that, especially when others are so willing to do it for you. After a little consideration, I finally concluded that this is your own prerogative: you're entitled to speak of yourself in any fashion you like, but that doesn't mean that I or anyone else must concur. It just so happens that I do concur with you in these instances – you are indeed a hack, you do indeed write bad poetry, and you are an EXPERT of bad writing. In fact, you're one of the lowest specimens of each I've ever encountered … anywhere. Plus, your pretense at coyness was belied by your most recent display of cruelty.

Your very poorly written 'Numbers' is not a poem, as both Ted and MaryAnn have gone to some lengths to explicate and explain to you. Since you offered it with the open solicitation, 'Critical Comments Welcome', I really felt you ought to have been more gracious towards those who actually condescended to review the meaningless rantings of a 'hack' and 'expert of bad poetry', as you like to call yourself. As I say, 'Numbers' is not a poem -- what it is is two silly and poorly-written questions, punctuated by a trite and spurious attempt at philosophical thinking, and book-ended by two irrelevant quotes. The whole ensemble is neatly italicized and formatted to assume a nice shape on the page. But none of these things either singly or together add up to or make it into a poem.

Instead of recognizing and accepting this from the critiques of your generous readers ['generous' because they gave of their time to read and critique the shite of a 'hack' and a bad poet] you petulantly argue with them and then insult their intelligence by insinuating that they don't get you or your plagiarized drivel. Furthermore, when your lifted phrase was identified and pointed out to you, you deftly switched the topic from theft to a discussion of cliché. Nice move that! Good on deflecting the actual point, anyway, since what you stole was serving Denny's purpose it can't really be construed as plagiarism, can it? And yet, the very logic you use to justify your thefts informs and underpins all your feeble attempts to defend your cobbled-together 'poems' qua poems. You claim here to want to write a poem about the “definition of numbers … mathematical terms like complex, perfect, imaginary, real, excessive, square, [and] prime.” That's a fairly tall order for a self-deprecating 'hack' and bad poet, who also has the temerity to challenge the word-choice of one of the greatest poets in the English language and perhaps the only poet capable of writing such a poem, Wallace Stevens. You wish your patient and indulgent readers to suspend disbelief just long enough to entertain the far-fetched notion that you could actually pen such a poem? In your dreams, Denny-boy.

What arrogance you possess! What hubris! And your store of conceit knows no bounds or limits. No wonder you're telling your shell-shocked readers to “lighten up”. They need a good sense of humor to take your airy-fairy, comical numerology shit seriously. And no wonder you supply the caveat that “not every poem written on [Poems Fray] needs to be a 'master work'”. Trust me, Denny, yours are not, they barely even qualify yet as master doggerel. They do however make the masterfully awful grade. Yet poetry must truly matter in some weird and aberrant way to you, because you go to demented extremes to be thought a poet, even to the point of stealing the creations of others. What kind of an arrested-development must you have endured, Poor Denny?

You recently put up a challenge to find the thefts in your last 14 offerings, but what you didn't do then was to clarify precisely what you think plagiarism consists of, a working definition, if you will, and why you feel your thefts don't fall under that rubric. You proffered some lame attempts in our last discussion but I discarded those as the exculpations of a degenerate. Just to recap, you claimed then that it's not about co-opting mere words and phrases, which great poets have done, because they're only incidental to the real issue of poetry-making, to think new thoughts: It's what one does with one's thefts that makes the difference – putting them to new use, making them serve a different theme and leading them off in new directions, boldly escorting them to where no thoughts have been before, and that is why your plagiarism can't be called plagiarism. Well, sorry, but that's pure horseshit, Denny.

Don't you know that everything you will ever post now will have this cloud of suspicion hanging over it? You have to know that, right? Sure, you'll have your nefarious apologists and your enablers, some of whom are drawn to conflict like flies are drawn to shit. These defenders of your antics aren't answering the call to exonerate you because they know or care anything about you or the sublime art of poetry, they're here because they lead such miserable, empty, drug-infested, self-abusive lives that these Frays are their last bastion against self-annihilation or self-slaughter. They are to be pitied, sad creatures that they are. So, if you draw any strength and faith from such as these, you're really hard-up. They despise and can't comprehend poetry to the same extent that you do and can't.

And so it doesn't matter what they write or what you post anymore, because your chance is gone. You blew it, Denny. There's only the one recourse left to you -- you must leave here forever. Go in peace and try to appreciate exactly where and how you went wrong, and then hopefully seek out another community where you can start anew and be accepted and embraced as the poet you so desperately long to be. Go forth. Stop reading altogether. Stop cluttering your mind with the words and thoughts of others. And try to write honest-to-goodness poetry, poetry that is born out of your own experience and not this pseudo-abstract shite about indivisible Prime Numbers that nobody gives a flying shit about. Be honest for once or forever perish a hack. You have my blessing on your deaparting head.

[But, of course, I know you won't heed a single word of this. I know you'll take offense and play the victim just like always. I know your fair-weather enablers will join in the umbrage-choir to bellow in the bitching-chorus. I know you'll continue to construct grotesque plagiarized poems. And I know this exact same topic will be under discussion two years from now, just like it was two years before now. Nothing ever changes, especially sickness like yours. If people really want to catch you plagiarizing, all they have to do is be patient and wait. You'll do it again. You must do it again. I know you can't stop. That's who you are.]