Best Stealers Poems
“Stealers-Keepers” Questioned
By Elton Camp
If something has been stolen long enough
Then is it all right simply to keep the stuff?
The Guggenheim some art to Italy has sent
Illicit when bought, they had more than a hint
To the original owner, stolen stuff should go
At least United States law tells everyone so
Demands of owners have museums in a scare
Requests for return of what shouldn’t be there
Greece for return of the Elgin Marbles does speak
The way England got them of larceny does reek
Egypt, country of origin of the Rosetta Stone
Says it was an outrage how it came to be gone
If your fine automobile some crook should steal,
What if you should spot the thief behind the wheel?
“That property’s mine and I absolutely want it back.
And from you, you thief, I want to hear no slack.”
Will Mexico perhaps someday make a similar claim
“For stealing half our whole country you are to blame.”
We were told of “Manifest Destiny” back in school
It made American imperialism sound sort of cool
It glosses over an exercise in raw military powers
“People, what you have is now going to be ours.”
If, to endorse this idea, yourself you did first find
Did the idea about Mexico then change your mind?
It’s easy to be in favor of justice in the abstract
Not as much in the face of an inconvenient fact
On these controversies, I take no particular side
Demands are intensifying and are harder to hide
They've come at last, the stealers of stars,
From their travels afar,
With their muck-spewers, tree-hewers, earth-movers,
Beer, axes, guns, grenades, deer on skewers.
They burp and belch and blaspheme
While they drunkenly dig and demolish
The earth and urinate on it in rings.
They dip some Skoal and spit out their folly
After licking it up with their wagging tongues,
After beating their wives and slapping their young,
And jump into their Cats again, fat and jolly.
They've come back from Iraq,
After that country's plunder and sack,
After they'd crossed the Atlantic desert,
Evaporated by their steam and hurt,
Turned to dust by their never-ending tracks.
They strangled the whale in the Thames,
They killed the buffaloes on the Plains,
They made the Sahara and stopped the rains,
And they made the gate in the Ozone Layer,
All the while laughing at Lorien's prayer.
And now they're at the door-step; I see them outside
my window.
They dance around the dead trees and make the earth glow
In fire and flame. They shoot the birds from the sky
For sport. They bring the sun nearer with their chains,
Stopping the rains, making the flesh cry
For mercy, making the winds scream for change,
Causing the oceans to toss and tumble,
Madly trying to escape the heat,
And only then do they mumble
Of what they have done,
Of the planet they have beaten
To a pulp. Only then do they realize
That they have taken the stars from my eyes,
That they have turned the greens and blues
To browns and blacks and grayish hues.
Sugar stealers.
sugar stealers in the sky are floating forgotten dreams;
chasing girls with squiggly worms and giggling like sun beams.
catching frogs with muddy socks and eating tangerines;
climbing trees and jumping streams as easy as it seems.
getting 10pence off your mum and buying 5 penny black jacks with 5 strawberry strings;
playing wheelies on our bikes or shooting arrows with green garden sticks and flying them as high as the pyrenees.
well after that it was half past seven and our mums had made our teas.
Shadowy government agencies
Monitoring your data and reading your messages
Keeping and eye on all that you do
Companies who have no compunction too
Do what it's set up to do
Mess with the likes of me and you
You may say that I am paranoid
But that does not mean this is not true
They are keeping tabs in truth over everything
And over everyone who disagrees with
And that has a different point of view.
The Internet was a tool
Set up to provide unlimited resources for me and you
But it all went so wrong
Used and abused by criminals and governments
A tool for spying on me and you
A tool to steal our privacy and id's
As away to exploit and control me and you
And these claims you may think wild
Doesn't mean that they are not true
They're reducing the rights, liberty and freedom in truth
By doing all that they do
Then con you into believing
They are protecting you
And that everything they do is for the good of you
This is a bare faced untruth.
when there is a loss of energy
is it medication, sadness, or depression?
When we can barely move
Is it because we are surrounded by energy stealers?
They arrive in many forms
TV, computer games, I-phones
but the most effective ones of all
Are the dissatisfied, the angry, the revenge seekers
The ones who exude negative energy
Their “can’ts and won’ts” become ours
if we do not make our escape
If there is a steady diet of them,
we are doomed to lose our own energy
Beware of the energy stealers
If it feels wrong, it is.