Another poem from Trev's fertile imagination. Best served with a cup of coffee...

BORDERS (how many books?)

On the border lines of literacy
Forests of publications
In neat and labelled lines lie in wait for curious hands
To turn pages and turn in cash.

Along the shelves, among relative worlds of
Middle Earth and Narnia
Undergraduate hobbit sociologists
Study the zoology of the Mastercard race
As they hand over visas on the
Border lines of the purchase zone

But soon they Switch to the coffee Deltas
Of Starbucks in the corner
Where they unwittingly star in Brummagem’s own
James Joyce’s unpublished novel
As he scribbles words on till receipts.

But there among the shelves,
Clones of Socrates walk the store shouting
‘Knowledge is a commodity in the money-go-round, megaplex of modern life.’

Outside in the hornet’s nest hubbub,
My car was booked by a traffic warden
Who read the car’s astrology and noted the number
On the Tarot plates as evidence of identity
On the borders of banality.

But now the books leap off the shelves
Spilling knowledge over the carpet
That seeps through floorboards
And into the ignorant streets.
Pavements chant poems and girders contort to listen
And knowledge that once was power
Seeps into your room,
And if you’re clever you can catch it in a net
While the books stay in the shop
Longing for eyes to share their words with.

Trev Teasdel