LIBRARY

these lined books
are the poor owners
of a sole anecdote
they can’t stop performing

they have hundreds of wings
but even if you tease them
they wouldn’t know how to get started
they are the desperate escape-artists
of a solo number
they can’t afford forgetting

the shelf doesn’t care
to have the eyes in the shadow
and not to manage to read their tales
it knows by hearsay
they don’t have that much to teach
but it likes to display them
as teeth in an arms race

it kind swallows them
every now and then
when a search
budges and rummages
to no result

trapped on their insides
the readers spell
random passwords
out of their shell

and silence is a voice in the head
hovering overhead
like an unremitting stream
leaking from the ceiling
to nobody else's annoyance