Another Night In The Library Of Hell
where the creatures meet…
The stacks are packed.
Signs command silence.
Nietzsche impotently fantasizes
syphilitic Germanic maidens.
The sun refuses to rise on Hemingway.
Melville’s bad case of Moby Dick itches.
Saint Paul burns for Bettie Page.
Shelley dreams of drowning.
Plato lusts after Oscar Wilde.
Picasso squints at a Warhol print
and is dismayed at its price tag.
Madame Curie glows lonely.
God wishes he had worked harder
and proofread the Bible better.
Tumescent Jesus wants a wife.
The Tao Te Ching says nothing.
Dostoevsky feels like an idiot.
Anne Sexton is hoping to
buy an elegant gas mask.
Bukowski masturbates and pukes.
Whitman sniffs his armpits.
T S Eliot feels pale and wasted.
Sylvia Plath reads a recipe book.
Einstein plays dice with
Schrödinger’s cat and loses.
Robert Frost weeps freely at verse.
Faulkner is furiously sober
and unusually intelligible.
Darwin curses singular finches
and prays for forgiveness.
Homer worries he should have
made Penelope a trollop.
Socrates refuses to examine life.
Heinrich Himmler whispers
final solutions to Ezra Pound.
Donald Trump mines Mein Kampf.
Mark Twain despairs of life
after the Mississippi.
Emily Dickinson wearies
of touching herself and
tending that dismal garden.
Conrad’s heart dives into darkness.
Dante grins and roasts pope
shaped melting marshmallows.
Fitzgerald hasn’t drunk enough
and experiences the bleak reality
of mounting horny, zany Zelda.
Buddha checks his lottery numbers.
Dylan Thomas yearns to go gently
into the White Horse Tavern.
Williams considers opening
a hardware and poultry shop.
And, always off by himself,
Shakespeare still can’t imagine
one single, new, original plot.
Frustration envy, and rage
mount dangerously until the
librarian announces opening time,
and everyone slips back
into the frozen comfort
of their own covers.
If you like this piece, and can afford it, please dribble a few coins into the busker’s cup.
Poverty lifts you up to the bottom…
