Broken spined books
Lay atop him so casually
No man like he
Could feign such reality
Living in pages
Dancing with pictures
Reading his home
Always quoting scripture
Living in shelter
Of other men’s words
Out in the cold
Drifting off on the curb

Once he had chased
A whale great and white
Then followed the river
On a raft all night
He awoke, the next morning
On the beaches of Troy
Then sailed off to meet
An old man and a boy
“What are you two doing,
So far out at sea?”
“We’re catching our fish,
The old man and me.”
The next thing you know,
He was forced into war
And Scarlet O’Hara
Waved so long at the door.
Then he sought a crazed man
Down the African river
Who’s dark disposition
Made the strongest man shiver
He then met a ****** angel
Who’d fallen from high,
With paradise lost
And hate in his eyes
Then he met a rich man
Who said, “Good fortune has found me”
And spoke of his father’s wise words
So profoundly
Then the reader met
A bearded man on the grass
Who spoke of his captain
To all who would pass
While in the Utopia
He spoke unto Pip
Who warned him of dangers
He’d find on his trip
In king Arthur’s court
A knight did he arise
And the next day they named him
Lord of the flies
At a party with Ghatsby
His charm was a pleaser
And with noble Antony
He cried out “Hail Ceaser!”
He marched with Italians
From the first Great War
He heard from a bird
Who cried “Nevermore”
And with great Ulysses
He blinded a brute
And helped forty thieves
Carry their loot
Then he and Sun Tzu
With a blade in each hand
Led the Hollow Man
Into the Waste Land
A fearsome beast
Made of lightening and bone
Cried “Beware,
The life you save may be your own.”

And just as the Reader
Traveled in deep
The book fell to his side
He’d fallen asleep.