Improper

I know it was a bit improper

to peer over her shoulder

but instead of the Bible on her lap

a copy of Northanger Abbey sat

The Girl Who Loved Rain

The Girl Who Loved Rain.

I remember the girl in year nine

who used to stare through the window

at the rain

when the class was doing silent reading.

They would all be reading their books

but she would be reading the rain,

 its steady rhythms

stroking her as if

she were a cat.

*pic courtesy of Unsplash

All The Lovely Books

All the Lovely Books.

All the lovely books

give me black looks

as if to say,

you’re so hard to read

these days,

once you turned

to us always,

but now you

barely look.

Les in Real Life

Les in Real Life,

The book of Les’ s poetry just fell off the desk

onto the polished wood floor.

At 783 pages it created quite a bang.

The millipede on the wall twitched.

The fluff sausage dogs in the corner jumped.

Les in real life was as hefty as his ‘Collected’.

He wrote poems celebrating the fat, his tribe,

including Quintets For Robert Morley,

the bushy-browed, triple-chinned English actor.

with the plummy voice.

There’s nothing plummy about our Les’s poetry.

It is wide of girth as Les himself, capacious,

containing jokes, puns, outlandish rhymes,

skew whiff metaphors., and clever insights.

It is written in Aussie English.

I bent down, picked dear old Les off the floor.

No need to go to gym tomorrow

lugging Les around.,

Waterlog

Waterlog.

The rain has begun.

I park the car close as possible, then dodging the drops, duck into the library.

“Ahh,” says the librarian, “we’ve been wading through your requests and look what’s washed up.”

It is like Santa handing over a present.

“Ahh, ‘Waterlog’”, I say.”The perfect book to read in the bath,”

“Just don’t drop it,” he says.

I should have seen that coming but Steve is quick, very quick.

“Thanks,” I say and we have a brief chat on the merits of reading in strange places, like baths.

“Have to go”, I say. “The rain’s getting heavier.”

By the time I get to the car, the book and I are waterlogged.

Steve would have appreciated that pun.

Now I don’t have to worry about dropping it in the bath.

* what’s the strangest place you’ve read a book?

Surly

Surly.

Bono looks surly.

Putting him beside a book called ‘Euphoria’

did it.

Bono feels anything but.

Euphoric, that is.

He’s been languishing on the Express Shelf

for three weeks

while books all around him have been flying

off the shelf.

‘Pissed’ is closer to the mark

as in ‘Pissed off’.

Bono is not used to this sort of treatment.

I would take him home myself

but I already have.

If the book was as lean and finely crafted

as a U2 song

it’d be different.

But it is as bloated as a Pynchon novel.

Curdle

Curdle

I like nothing better at night or on languid afternoons

than to curl up on the couch with Tessa Hadley

reading me one of her tales,

familiar yet fresh, cozy yet curdling at the core

like a Victorian murder mystery

Bono in the Car

Can’t keep Bono in the car for too much longer.

It’s a warm day, getting warmer.

I can’t let Bono get overheated, not on my watch.

He was good enough to come with me,

make himself available.

It’s my fault.

I should have gone to the library AFTER

I had done my grocery shopping

but I was excited. The book had just come in.

What if someone nicked it?

After all, the book is in high demand.

53 requests for it when I put my name down

and only 5 copies.

Bono would have been proud.

And I want to get home quickly and start getting into it,

before the heat starts curling the pages,

and Bono starts sweating.

I’ve seen him live, the sweat oozing out of him.

It’s a bloat of a book at 563 pages.

I hope he’s good at prose writing as he is

in writing songs.

But first there’s these veggies to get.

Hang on, Bono. Won’t keep you waiting long

*pic courtesy of pinterest

These Books

These books have been around the block.

These books have done the hard yards.

They’ve had the stuffing knocked out of them

like a much loved teddy bear,

the sort of sorry, scruffy specimens grandparents bring

to ‘The Repair Shop’ ( UK ).

Is there an equivalent place for bruised, battered books?

What happens to them?

Is there a retirement home for old books?

A Hospice where sick books go to die?

Are we allowed to visit?

Is it over for paper books,

like it is for paper bills?

Is the future for books solely digital?

I for one like to hold books

like children teddy bears.

Wall Flowered

 Wall-Flowered.

This book of cautionary tales has languished on the Express Shelf of the library for weeks while more modestly titled books alongside it have whizzed off the shelf in days.

How to explain popularity?

How does it feel to be wall-flowered?

What’s that do to a book’s ego?

What’s not to like in the title, ‘Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls’?

I was half tempted to borrow it myself except it would only confirm the chief librarian’s opinion of me.

I tried to imagine what one of these tales would be called, what it would be about, even how one of them would begin, but I just couldn’t. Can you?