reading in my cozy bed, ridiculously late
words begin to slur and rhymes, to blear
my eyelids fight me — like a heavyweight
goodnight, sweet sleepy zzzzzhakespeare
—Terri Guillemets
books
Long ago now
I am searching for my feelings
through shelves of dusty books
can’t help but feel I’ve left them
in some forgotten ancient nooks
as if an author long before me
captured my emotions in his day
and saved them in fine poetry
for future me to find someway
—Terri Guillemets
What I do
altered prose by Terri Guillemets, 2019
from The Man Who Loved Jane Austen
by Sally Smith O’Rourke, 2001, page 53
Book party!
Let’s get drunk at the library
and have a book party!
“What a good time!” she said
in an excited whisper.
—Terri Guillemets
scrambled blackout poetry created from F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925, Scribner trade paperback, 2004,
Middle
A headstone is just a bookmark in our unfinished lives.
—Terri Guillemets
Censorship
To kill words with fear,
It’s a dreadful thing.
—Don’t.
blackout poetry created from Charles Dickens, “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain,” 1848, as published in The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens, edited by Peter Haining, 1983 edition,
—Terri Guillemets
A life with papers
Any real writer — or reader — has had a papercut on the forehead at least once.
—Terri Guillemets
Classics declassified
Grass of Walt
[D!@%] of Moby
Boz gets Lit
Bard’s the [$h¡t]
—Terri Guillemets
Nineteen eighty-seven
Been collecting quotes
since nineteen eighty-seven,
Be collecting them ’til
the day I go to Heaven.
And if by chance
it’s to the contrary,
Here’s hoping Hell
has a great library!
—Terri Guillemets
P.S. I had this on the
Petals & leaves
i love to
smell the flowers
and sniff the books
sitting in gardens
and library nooks
—Terri Guillemets
From the library to the park
Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a
—Terri Guillemets