Borders (How Many Books?) (poem)

Appears in my book Nightfall in Sorrento
THIS ONE'S A PERFORMANCE POEM RATHER THAN A SONG
Written on a visit to Birmingham in 2005 to see the new Bullring Centre. Having seen the Simpsons episode where

 everyshop is becoming a Starbucks, we walked quickly past it in Birmingham and in to the new Borders shop. 'How Many books?' was the first reaction - it was massive - espeically as a lot of people find their info on the internet now! Going around the corner in the store we were stopped in our tracks - there was even a Starbucks in Border - the Simpsons were right! We sat and had a coffee and I wrote this poem. Have done in in performance many times now including in support for poets Brian Patten and Keith Armstrong and in front of the manager of a Borders Bookshop!

BORDERS (HOW MANY BOOKS?)

On the border lines of literacy
Forests of publications
In neat and labeled lines
lie in Wait for curious hands
to turn in pages and turn in cash.

Along the shelves,
among relative worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia
Undergraduate hobbit sociologists
study the zoology of the Mastercard race
as they handover Visas on
the borderlines of the purchase zones.

But soon they Switch to the Coffee Deltas
of Starbucks in the corner
where they unwittingly star in Brumagem's
own James Joyce
as he sits scribble notes on till receipts.

But there among the shelves,
Clones of Socrates walk the store shouting -
"Knowledge is a commodity in the money-go-round, megaplex of modern life."

Outside in the hornet's nest hubbub
My car was booked by a traffic warden
who read the car's astrology and noted the number
on the Tarot plates,
as evidence of identity
on the borders of banality.

But now the books leap off the shelves
spilling knowledge over the carpet
that seeps through the floorboards
and into the ignorant streets.

Now the pavements chant poems
and girders contort to listen
and knowledge that once was power
seeps into you room
and if you  are clever
you can Google it in a net,
while the books stay on the shelves
longing for eyes to share their words with.

Trev Teasdel 2005 (Birmingham)