Burn Me With These Books

The books on the shelves amaze me. Book on shelf, by shelf by shelf by me as I imagine ripping every single page out and pouring them out onto the floor.

I wonder.

I’ll throw the covers through the windows, floating through the liquid glass that shatters and lines the ground outside as drops of rain in the winter.

First goes the 500s.

Second, 900s.

Third will simultaneously consume 000s, 200s, 300s, 400s, 600s, and 800s,

leaving 700s alone for the time being.

All that will remain will be the children’s books, and selected poetry, so that I will remain

forever young and insane, like I like to be.

I would climb the tower of pages

and light the flame to begin the games,

the empty stands roaring in glee as I push myself past the breaking point and leap.

But I do not fall.

Anywhere except in love, that is, as I never grow old,

leaving all the people that never would have called me friends.

I am a stranger in my own land.

I know will hug the stuffed dog I sewed for myself to keep me company through eternity on a bed of knowledge that pisses me off. I hate it. All the ones I once knew (yet never knew), and will not know, they’ll grow into their skin and leave me. On their wings they forget that I ever existed. It pisses me off. Why am I nothing?

They’ll forget while I remember them in insanity. I’ll never be anyone else than I am now.

On top of my tower of paper I’ll burrow and wrap myself in Walt, Lawrence, and others in hope that I’ll stay warm as through the years my blood will seep through the pages from the top to the bottom, compressing them until, after I marinate in my own blood and the rotting pages and I finally touch the floor. Forever a child. I remember back when I was happy, and had a purpose besides pumping my heart, urging it on to keep running from my chest off to the side, pooling on the pages that I can’t see.

I let my fingernails grow out enough that I could gouge my eyes out a month after I started.

I wish I could see. No I don’t.

Because then I could see them. Then I would surely lose my grip.