Optimism Is As Central As Hyperbole To This Genre

Never say, magpie, looking up at the sky,
Another life is shining in the sky. Thief.
Almost every word you ever said or penned

Or touch typed or thumbed onto a glass surface
Came whole cloth from outside your head and before
Your time. Nothing but the neologisms

Have anything to do with you and even
Those were cobbled together by tricks you learned
Elsewhere. The phrases as well you mostly nabbed,

Especially the ones you liked. Prosody
You cribbed. Techniques you stole. Whole stanzas you fibbed.
So far, so good. But here's what really eerie:

What you took you took from ghosts who took from ghosts
Who took from ghosts. You're all ghosts, all the way down
And back, magpie, you with the glint in your eye.