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
reading
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
Ex Libris R. Le G.
“…multum ille et terris jactatus et alto
Vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob iram,
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio:…” —Virgil, The Aeneid
Having no home, what should I do with these,
Tossed as I am about the sounding seas,
Sport of exiling winds of change and chance—
Feet in America, and heart in France.
Homeless, ’tis meet I find my books a home:
Coffined in crates and cases long they lay,
Distant from me three thousand miles of foam
Dungeoned in cellars cold and nailed away,
As in a sepulchre, till Judgment Day.
Lost to their gentle uses in the tomb,
Cobwebbed companions of the spidered gloom,
At last they rise again to live once more,—
Dread resurrection of the auction room.
Books I have loved so well, my love so true
Tells me ’tis time that I should part from you,
No longer, selfish, hoard and use you not,
Nor leave you in the unlettered dark to rot,
But into alien keeping you resign—
Hands that love books, fear not, no less than mine.
Thus shall you live upon warm shelves again,
And ‘neath an evening lamp your pages glow,
Others shall press ‘twixt leaf and leaf soft flowers,
As I was wont to press them long ago;
And blessings be upon the eyes that rain
A tear upon my flowers—I mean on “ours”—
If haply here and there kind eyes shall find
Some sad old flower that I have left behind.
—Richard Le Gallienne, “Ex Libris R. Le G.,” May 1905
Censorship
To kill words with fear,
It’s a dreadful thing.
—Don’t.
—Terri Guillemets, “Censorship: What the D!ck@%$?”
blackout poetry created from Charles Dickens, “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain,” 1848
Only bruises
Poetry allows
my soul to age gracefully
my mind to land softly
amongst the new gray hairs —
without it I’d have thunked
into my forties with
tail bone, funny bone
and spirit broken
—Terri Guillemets
Classics declassified
Grass of Walt
[D!@%] of Moby
Boz gets Lit
Bard’s the [$h¡t]
—Terri Guillemets
Stimulant
Reading in bed is a gateway drug to writing in bed.
—Terri Guillemets
Biblioinsomnia
Up late with books, reading in bed—
Up early with coffee, extra lead.
—Terri Guillemets
Antennae
Read instead of watch TV?
Now there’s a novel idea!
—Terri Guillemets