Hey guys,

I wanted to share this little quote with all of you because it moved me and really made me think. It was part of a letter written by one of my advisers here at college.

"Poetry is what stirs your fundamental being. It is you at your most imaginative. It is the passion to prevail and excel. It is the motive force behind you. Poetry is the creation of a life and mind: a life lived purposefully and purposely created by you, though you don’t always understand the creation as it unfolds. It is the form you make for the content and that which impels you to imagine the form. So at times like this, I hope you will believe that you are the creator of your destiny, the molder of your own mind. We, your mentors, merely offer and help explain the content; internalizing it, making it your own, that's the hard work but identifies you as the poet of your own creation."

As a statement, it's kind of poetic. As a poet, it moved me a lot to take a different look at things and open my eyes a little bit. I hope it somehow moves you all too.

~*~Poison~*~

Today, is a good day.

Aside from things going well with school (turning in some final projects, getting ready for the summer), I recieved word today that my poem "Death's Lullaby" has been fully restored! DeviantArt and I were able to work together to resolve the mistake! The deviation has been fully restored with the original copyright, comments, and faves! Thank god for small miracles, right?

Thanks to all of you who offered your comforting words when this was all going down. They meant a lot to me.

On another note... been starting to write a little bit again! Nothing solid on paper or anything... but random poetic lines are running through my mind and that's always how it starts. So we'll see where it goes!

~*~Poison~*~

I'm truely in shock right now. Many of you here have read (and loved) my poem "Death's Lullaby". Recently I made a minor edit to the poem and re-sent it to my Dev-Watchers so that they could tell me what they thought of it. I never thought it would have the consequences that it has.

The deviation has been reported and removed for copyright violation. T_T

I don't understand how this could have happened. As far as I'm aware, the only copyright I could have POSSIBLY violated was my own, because I know down to the core of my soul that that poem was my work and it's been posted here for 4 years. Somehow, there's been a horrible mistake and I'm afraid that I may never get that poem back since I do know where the original hard copy is.

I've sent an inquiry to DevArt (god knows how long that could take) and I've sent a note and email to the person I believe reported me (who's name I will not disclose) asking them to please re-review the case and help right this wrong. I can only hope that somehow this HAS been a horrible mistake and that Deviant Art can help me right it.

Until then... I really just feel like a piece of my soul has been violated. I don't even know what to do...

~*~Poison~*~

Hey guys,

As you might finally realize, I'm only very sporatically active on DeviantArt, though I wish I had time to come on more often. That being said, over the past few months for a year or so now I've been recieving Deviant Notes from people asking to use my poetry for class assignments and what-not. I have to say, I'm flattered, I think it's wonderful that you'd like to use my work in something like that. However, I unfortunatly do not usually get these notes in time to grant my permission. So, if you need to contact me for something like this, please do not hesitate to use my email to contact me.

waters_edge695@yahoo.com

If you send anything to that address, I'll get it in a day or two and be much more prompt in replying. I hope this helps you guys out.

Thanks guys! Hope this helps out.

~*~Poison~*~

Well folks, after 2 months of waiting, here goes.

I emailed DeviantArt FIRST because I felt that they would help me. The only thing they gave me (after 3 weeks mind you) is this crappy reply - "In cases such as yours, your only recourse is to consult with a copyright attorney for actual legal counsel."

Thanks for the help DevArt. Remind me never to go to them for help again.

So I then started looking into the policies of the site she published through, Lulu.com. They're plagiarism policy is strict, if you're caught, they close your account and all this other fun shit. But I still would've needed to obtain legal counsel, which I was trying very hard not to do.

I finally directly emailed Lynn King. I told her that I was no longer agreeing to let this slide and be "co-authors" and that she either needed to take the book out of circulation or take my poem out of it. She then emailed me back with a sob story about how having it re-edited would be like $180 and she didn't have the money. She then told me about how she only ever made $240 off of selling the books anyway and they cost her $189 to have published. So she didn't have any money to share with me and she hadn't sold a book in over a year. She then emailed me a number of links to poems that either only shared my theme or were published after mine with the claim "I bet no one can really know who wrote this poem."

That set me off.

I promptly emailed her back and told her that I wrote the poem and if she did not do something NOW I would contact her publisher and they would destroy her account.

She took the book down and emailed me another sob story about how I was only doing this because I knew she was on probation and any trouble with the law could send her back to jail. Personally, I don't care. She took the book out of circulation and I have my poem back. That's all I wanted.

So that's how it went down. Still working on that writing thing. I really swear I am. I just sit down sometimes and I get like 5 or 6 lines and then I run out of inspiration. I need to get a good one going so that I can finally FINISH one.

Thanks again to everyone who supported me.

<3 Poison