Bibliophile

(prose poem)

Here is another poem that came out of a Surreal Prose Poem workshop last spring. Unlike some of my recent postings, this one returns to one of my ongoing themes: persona poems involving unusual personae. No, this is not from personal experience.

Bibliophile

He digs his bunker badger-deep, termite-tunnel-complex, and begins his work of preparing for apocalypse. He has a wife, she goes in first, then his children, and he tamps them down firmly to make room. They will be OK, there is enough air, he is pretty sure. He needs to make room for all his books, they are what he needs to bring along into the distant future when it is safe again to come out. Books of all centuries, of all nations, in all languages, stuffed down the burrow and into the rich earth, where they will perhaps sprout one day into civilization. No music, no art, no technology, not even a bicycle makes the cut. Only books and books about books. He is pretty sure he is not obsessed because he has a psychology book that says so. It is very reassuring, like all books, which allow him to forget about the human beings who wrote them, or who read them, or who are part of his family, safely smothered under all the books. He feels ready. It is very fortunate that he does not care about people and won’t miss them, not even his wife and child, now pressed into rectangular shapes of paper at the most precious place, at the bottom of his vault.