Love of the written word

I                
                 
I’ve spent too much time                  
away from their Holy grounds;       
                 
their imagery and metaphors –                  
ones that molded my belief                  
through fine point verse                  
not needing to be understood                  
to be absolute truth.                  
                 
Sometimes it’s difficult to grant the dead          
an audience when the living demand                  
every moment you have to give;                  
                 
or, when sprinting toward home      
but never reaching its butterflied      
tactics of evasion with your dreams.                 
                 
They become unkempt memorials –               
years coating their cracked spines                  
with light inhaling the vibrancy                  
of their once richly dyed skin.                  
                 
II                  
                 
Tonight, I inadvertently bumped                  
against their epitaph while packing –                  
their shelved cemetery vibrating                 
under the category two imbalance.              
                 
Trapped in a web of melancholy                  
I wiped the dust, adhered as lichen-                  
munching to the embedded words                  
carved over their stone allegories,                  
                 
I thought about their sacrificial lives                  
their masticated ribs between                  
the yellowed teeth of glue                  
slowing pulling them apart;                  
the sternum of their bloom                  
casting downward when opened                  
seeds across a hardwood understory.            
                 
I thought about their hearts                  
vulnerable and exposed in death;                   
starving animals vying for remembrance                  
in a dying world too busy to notice                  
their once painful existence.                  
                 
I thought about my life too, and yours                  
among these dormant 'Winter Trees'                  
the perpetual cycle of this lifetime –                
as some 'Handyman'                
who could never get ahead                  
despite how hard he tried                  
                 
III                  
                 
My weekend bag is packed                  
waiting beside the door                  
as a faithful dog;                  
there is gas in my car –                  
and he patiently waits            
beside the hearth      
with a meal and warm fire.           
           
Yet, I sit unmoved on this floor                  
listening to the dead orate                  
in their forgotten tongue of words.               
                 
IV                  
                 
He'll understand –                  
It’s not like I haven’t told him                  
like everyone else                  
there would be times                  
I wouldn’t choose anything                  
over the books;                  
letters, emails, texts,                  
calls, or pouting silence;                    
                 
it’s not like I haven’t said                  
I wouldn’t be swayed                  
by bulging zippers                  
or swollen suitcases                  
by the door                  
yes; including my own;            
                 
it’s not like I haven’t said,                  
‘If you want to be first                  
in someone’s life                  
you must know                  
it can never be mine.’                  
         
V          
                 
“It was at that age that poetry                  
came in search of me."                  
saved me from the living                  
and fateful beginnings              
               
I am a soul inductee                  
into a 'Dead Poet’s Society'                  
Thus, I pay homage                  
to their skeletal memory                  
with the only thing left                  
in this world I fully possess:                  
                 
Myself                    
~                  

In the bleak salt spray, watching baby seals at play, a book, rather a page, steals my mind away -
a book buried within my palms that harms progressive social conduct - I wash my claws of it.
My soul instructs one chapter more,
excused away to the cottage floor
stretched out as a ribby cat
that shamelessly rolls about beside a roaring fire.

The Father begins a conversation on appropriate walking shoes, fetches a map for forward planning
all of which are shoved to a corner nearer the binding,
purring fondly over a place and time, these folk at the table can't comprehend.
Eye-watering is meal time when punctual convention dictates extraction. Food is king.

The teacher is small, so close to ending, humans outside shaking with impatient need for attending -
my heart still leaping far, far fom this headland. The fondest memories of this tale will be with me for years.
The violet sky burns above the page edge, as the author and I share our final moments.
Three more days left and no replacement against predators of my time.

In the bleak salt spray, watching baby seals at play, a book, rather a page, steals my mind away -
a book now sat upon bedside table, the holiness of it still burning within every thought.
My soul instructs to hold on a little longer,
let it linger as we muse hikes upon the cottage floor
stretched out as a ribby cat without her warmth,
shamelessly lusting after a too-long ended fire.

Chapter 1
  
 Ancient art, for on cave walls  
The alphabet of life was drawn  
 Perils faced from tooth and claw  
 Cave mens records, captured scrawls  
Just bits and boobs the intrigue of their lifes and skills  
   
Chapter 2  
   
Civilisations come and go and war lords fight another day  
Wise men and the prophets    
The visionary they taught just by hearsay  
Folklore gathered round the fire  
 Stories handed down the elder statesman to his son inspired 
   
Chapter 3  
How came the written word  
My guess was commerce trade and such  
Tallys kept the abacus  
To make your mark and not bring shame upon your house  
The slate is crossed, the wax bears your emboss    
   
Chapter 4  
Egyptians used papyrus scrolls    
To document there daily toils  
The mathemetics of the piramids  
That dynasty the hieroglyphics of the life they lived  
The Rosetta stone the key to unlock all  
   
Chapter 5    
For onward languages they seemed to thrive  
The Chineese wrote on a paper from plants derived  
And so the scribes complied a book    
So inscrutable wrote in reverse    
 Secrets the characters the orient contrived  
   
Chapter 6  
The bible and all holy works    
The Pope the power of the church  
They kept the populus in fear  
With latin text  and ignorance and brutaliy indeeed  
   
Chapter7  
That time would always come the metal  
It was wrought the furace cast the letter  
Roman numerals to form the rows    
Sentences and paragraphs and chapters grow  
That  library we all enjoy may the Kindle die unpleasantly  
   
Chapter8  
That ink upon the page  
That book its spine of the modern age  
All learning imaginations profound profanity  
The affair to keep you glued to the last page  
But are we dust up on the shelves    
   
The end