Brookwrite

The Living Dead

Sitting in a clean, well-lighted place
the works of ages in my face
that never left a word to waste
or spoiled their work in fevered haste.

As I sit here on the floor
amid shelves of poetry and lore
I'd quote the raven evermore
to get one foot inside the door.

I want some words so appropo,
for those I look to Edgar Poe,
or maybe even you, Thoreau,
to show me everything you know.

And maybe you can show me, Keats,
the verse the hungry public eats
that makes lone hearts forget their beats
and rivets lovers to their seats.

Above all I must ask the Bard
how he wrote things time can not discard,
his wisdom I will swear to guard
til the last book is burned and poem charred.

It would hurt you all to see the measure
some people take to act as censor
which only helps to make them denser
and the rest of us a little tenser.

But perhaps the censors have a point
our world some writers never joined
reusing letters they've purloined
ingenious they themselves annoint.

So I look to you, the living dead,
to pour your souls into my head
or through my pencil lead instead
to tell about the paths I tread.

This poem was partly inspired by a defunct bookstore whose name is buried in the first verse.