#Poetry The Bookcase by Fiza Pathan

The Bookcase

My dearest one, beloved of my soul – I love you more than any other non-living entity in the world,

Your chambers are the places where I escape from cruel reality and in your cells of wood do I smell the odour of the ancients – you mean more to me in every letter of the alphabet, because you are my bookcase, my house of treasures.

Men often change their moods and spit out venom at my touch, but you dear bookcase lend your paper bindings gently upon my palm,

You shelter me from the storms of the day and the crack of lightning at night – you show me the world that I cannot access…you show me the people who I cannot love.

But dearest old bookcase, I love you and will enchant your senses of sawdust by adding more treasures of papyrus to your collections,

I hug you when sorrow over powers me and when in deep thought, I plunge my hand into you…not to pick a book dear bookcase but lo and behold, I pick your very heart!
Silver fish are your enemies and white ants your predator,

So I drive them out from your bosom with malice upon my face, how dare they touch your smooth dead bark skin…my love…my enchantment…I will never leave you naked to these gnats.

I’ve indulged you dear bookcase to many a splendid polish in wax and in return, you have pleased me well with your bountiful gifts in paperback and hardcover,

Dickens and Thackeray, Milton and Shelley, Wordsworth and Frost, Joyce and Collins, Shakespeare and Wilde, Conan Doyle and Christie, Verne and Wells, Moore and Aquinas, Augustine and Homer, Hemingway and Bradbury, Twain and Carroll, Dahl and Walliams, Salinger and Rand, Huxley and Fitzgerald, Stevenson and Stoker…..they are all here encased within your pure teak bosom, my jewel, my love!

You tease me with the ruffle of paper and your charms outsmart the book lover in me,

I want no other man but you dearest bookcase, make me your bride and spread the scandal of our elopement to the bookstores – so that we may fill our hours in marital ecstasy, by brooding over books which then I shall purchase to cover your nudity.

Dearest bookcase don’t say you surfeit of my excesses for indeed I do but only give this foolish world a sample of this love that is shared between you and me,

Let me tickle you dear bookcase under your stern chin and while doing so, pick a bookmark that I have left in one of the Bronte sisters’ breasts…how naughty and careless of me!

I’m not a pervert nor a nutcase but for you dear bookcase, I can be both and much more,

What man cannot do for a woman you do to me dearest bookcase, the keeper of the wisdom sent to us mortals by the gods of literature and history.

I pray now…don’t allow me to be away from you, for I am but your human slave and you my rhapsody in wood,

Literature and Language, History and Geography, Biology and Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, Logic and Sociology, Philosophy and Psychology, Economics and E.V.S, Art and Hobbies, Music and Comics…what more can I say… I love you dear bookcase and your shelves strewn with the knowledge of the cosmos.

One last word to you in the night of symphonies I say aloud – kiss me dear bookcase with the parted pages of sweet breath,

Let me then pick up yet another book from your shelf so tenderly took and peel away my days in the wonderland of our little small galaxy.

Copyright 2014 Fiza Pathan