I fully intend to read all the books I’ve purchased
and complete my task on my 592nd birthday-Anon.
Tiptoeing into this poem—
I know—to cast aspersions
on book readers is heresy, traitorous.
But I have noticed book worship
become endemic, post after post
declare the more books
you have the better you are as if
books were the gold of Midas.
Yesterday some wag chirped:
“How many books should you
have at any one time?”
30. On your bedside table alone.
Ah, the great pleasure—who has not—
stormed seas and souls with Ishmael,
ridden on National Velvet,
played the fool with Quixote,
heard Ivan rail against God,
Thoreau nest in Walden,
Rachel decry silenced Spring,
been Chaucered, Shakespeared,
Whitmanned, Eliotted, Emilyied.
Frosted and Pounded,
Faulknered and Hemingwayed?
I get it! I love to read
and devour books like
a starving man feasts.
In 1974 a conference to end hunger
was conducted in Rome.
Hundreds of scholars from
all across the world, millions
of words written and spoken.
Proposed myriad solutions.
Kissinger said: “In ten years
no child will go to bed hungry.”
Illinois Governor Otto Kerner
wrote a blueprint
to improve
housing for the poor in 1968,
a national best-seller, read
by everyone with concern.
But not much changed.
People of good heart strive
to feed, heal, build.
Answers all in the books—
read and read and read,
flipping pages, burn fingers.
The world rabidly prints
more books, more books.
Hurry up—Please,
it’s time for more books.
The hands that hold books,
could do more—Please.
I say: Do not kneel before
the book idol unless
we better the world.
Originally published in Down In The Dirt Magazine