Reading The Writer

By J.D. Finch

I once wondered how you, a librarian, might write,
If freed of your Dewey Decimal shackles,
Your towers of bookish knowledge,
A fallen rubble of words at our feet.

Could you speak of our lives; existence itself?
Say we’re freaks, part insane,
Unlearned buffoons,
As your legend is born in your freedom?

You once told me how Whitman –
A self-promoting queer who made and set his own scene –
Existed in Camden,
A narrow river from my Philly home,
In days before Pine Street became a brief nexus of calm,
A hurricane’s eye of intellectual wealth,
If not fame.

But what can you tell me of legends today?
Are they any truer than the dead?

My own news comes off presses cold and I think:
“Those old legends, like Philadelphia's own Franklin,
Would have died before allowing
The silences of ominous blank white on these pages.”

If you were my legend,
And our only distance,
A signing table,
As I bought your book,
With your fresh scrawl inside…

Would you remember
How we’d planned to fuck at home later:
A fuck befitting your legend?

Or would you just smile,
And write “All best wishes”
To another stranger?

J.D. Finch is a founding member of Ousider Writers. He edits The Naked Opinion.  It's cool.  More info about him can be found on this here site.

Last update : 22-03-2007 22:26

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