Books of Bone

 

A dusty smell hangs in the air.

The smell of long forgotten times and

of rusted knights and heart-broken heroines,

more fit to burn on the dragon’s pyre.

The books line the shelves, the most orderly of soldiers.

Their spines exposed for all to see, white and cracked.

These books are made of bones, the pages of stretched skin.

Horrible red words are scrawled across the yellowing parchment,

the meaning a mystery solved not by knowledge

but by the speeding up of heart and breath.

 

The tops of the shelves are hidden by foggy incomprehension

and The End is cloaked by cracked linoleum that

stretches onwards down into the darkness,

a maze of epic poetry that twines

like the serpents poisoned tongue

calling out to entice and snare.

“One bite. Just one bite. So juicy. So good. So…

damning.” Words that form a noose,

tightening slowly around the snow white neck of

the Mad Scientist’s hubris.

 

The lighting is grim, lamps with shades made of

rotted grapes and dripping scarlet down Atlas’s marble body.

A flock of chairs gather around each of the lamps, stuffed with the bodies

of dead mockingbirds and burnt phrases.

Laughter of a crazed clown and of many mad men echo

disjointedly against the walls comprised of hidden eyes.

Always watching.

Always waiting,

for that one careless moment when ignorance is thrown off

in favor of the golden moment,

the clarity that comes before the descent.

No catcher there to save the rye.

 

From below comes a thumping vibration belonging to

a heart long since forgotten, along with the croak of black feathers

rubbing together, signaling the death of

the Mad ones and the coming of the painted queen

with her red/black entourage.

 

Off. Off with their heads! Off with all pretension.

Follow. Follow the flick of a stripped tail and a gleaming grin

to the sulfur coated desk where the librarian sits,

mourning the loss of angelic light and a

star that shined so bright.

 

Trapped, waiting for hoof beats of the unknown that

lurk in the maze of aisles to draw nearer and for the rose to fade,

The End following shortly after.

 

Author's Note

This is a poem that was written for my Fundamentals of Writing class. The guidelines were to write about a dream or about bending reality. I don't know if I met the prompt nor do I care really. I'm just curious as to whether it works as a poem.

Reviews

[R J Askew]

I think the previous one was better. I recall feeling good about the earlier one. At first read i thought verse one a bit slow, though when I look again, I do like the last two lines. I think the poem gathers force and power in the middle of the second verse and you develop menace well. I think some of the details bothered me...i.e. the word 'dusty' up top...dusty/musty seem obvious...is there another word? I also wonder about the word 'horrible'...thought I don't instantly know what might be better. 'Mad Scientist'...definitely think that cld be fresher. 'The coming of the painted queen' I liked, sounds like a line from a Doors song! 'Off with their heads' also put me off a bit as not fresh. But really like 'Follow the flick of a striped tail and a gleaming grin'. I like the idea of the librarian sitting there among all this pent up devilment. I wonder if you cld make him the centre of the poem? have him in the top verse going quietly mad? and then make him gradually madder as the thunderings and thumpings increase?