henry miller library

books ornament the trees

for christmas in june

and all on the walls like

pompeii are crested in words

toni morrison wrote all over

the walls of a monument

in a norman rockwell thanksgiving

mouth full of genre, geography

of american tongues

i like eating the words like worlds

off wood plates walls coated in

chalk graffiti professing 

to your greedy children

to eat their newspapers back

letters from ferlinghetti to

ginsberg look at each other

as naked blue bodies with

the feet and hands missing

books are hollow trees

like a broken ukulele is

with loose strings that have

lost their vibrations to ease

a stage for music is empty

and so are all the seats

but there’s this little group

of gentle folks, five or six

in a circle watching that production

that goes on behind closed lids

and if you look at the designs

of rubbed chalk on that doorway

for long enough maybe you

can go inside too

lookin at the words and pictures

under your feet like the footprints

of the poets and musicians

and travellers who stepped there