It’s so quiet in the library today
There is I,
And a girl in the horror section
That I often see in here-
Her favorite author is Koontz.

There’s talk of bringing a Virtual Reality Rollercoaster
To town, and perhaps just
The thought of such rides
Drives kids away from books

I can’t say I remember when everyone had
An imagination, however
I do know this-
When I was a child,
I would play football with
Myself for hours,
Hurling myself over the couch, lowering my shoulder-
Bracing for the impact of the
Linebacker.

When I was little, i’d
Play cops and robbers with my cousin,
Who tried to run away with the valuables,
A plastic necklace stolen from my
Grandmothers dresser-
I almost always stopped him.
I was a good copper.

When I was little,
I’d invite my friends over
For some homemade pizza,
And though it didn’t taste the same
As the chains
They all ate the foreign pizza
In bliss
And we’d talk about baseball,
And books we had read
I read Huck Finn
Before anyone else had
And I was very proud to tell my friends
How immoral slavery had been.
My next big book, was
To Kill A Mockingbird
Mother raised me right.

It’s so very quite in the library today,
So I go over to the classics
To my favorite among them
The last checkout date on Mockingbird,
2008.
It’s been 8 years since even high schoolers have
Cared enough about social injustice to
Unplug from their rollercoaster rides,
As they ride a wave of ignorance and
A lack of imagination.