Word into Light

I was taught as a child that

Every book was as sacred as Bibles.

There would be no writing in them,

No tearing or bending of pages.

There would only be the reverence of reading,

Of epiphanies waiting for seekers between the lines,

Of new chapters opening in the face of closed doors.

There would only be the reward of seeing libraries as temples,

As spaces where chapter and verse minister to every unknowing,

Of seeing bookshelves as sanctuary where God begins as word 

and transforms into the light.

 

© Camisha Jones, 2012

Book of Kells, 8th Century; from Wikimedia Commons
Now in Trinity College Library, Dublin

Give Me Something to Write

Give me something to write.

Inside me I hold a book,

Filled with page, after page, after never-ending page of hungry space.

My pages long for tales of the countless hours we’ve spent running through the night,

Of the oceans of color we’ve consumed painting the world with our souls.

There are words

That dripped from your lip like dew drops on a desert flower.

My pages thirst for them,

Were made for them,

Want  them to come home.

Send them home.

Your very walk inspires metaphors,

Metaphors with the power to make rational thought question its own existence.

Send your words and your metaphors home.

My pages will cradle them – like the moonlight,

Show them the freedom they were born to possess.

Run with me.

Let’s find our way out of this strange skin we wear,

So that we can unhide our holy.

Release the ember inside us that wants to burn like a bonfire unbridled.

This holy bonfire that burns truer than anything else that has ever burned,

This, too, would I write on my pages,

If you would let me.

My pages want only to remember:

Stories of us;

And of how we got here;

Stories of how we bent ruthlessly the rigid lines of this world’s senseless sheet music.

On those nights we ran, the paint still wet under our fingernails,

We pursued an irony we had only heard existed,

Tried to outrun a past we were destined to miss like a lost limb,

Our steps, accidental brush strokes on an ever-shifting canvas.

My pages want to remember the days,

The days when we knew what we wanted

Yet didn’t know what we knew.

We recognized beauty in all its forms.

And simplicity came naturally.

They were yours, and mine, and ours.

Send them home.

Inside me I hold a book.

So give me something to write.

© Axel Cooper, 2012

Artist Painting at Central Park
Photo by SpyON from Wikimedia Commons