Books on a Plane

By Brian Webber

Books on a Plane

This is my poem in celebration of the written word
This is my poem to say out loud
I’m glad I had fiction and non-fiction
Glad for political humor and history, glad I can read almost anywhere
Even in the movie theatre just before the lights dim

This poem is for Isaac Asimov
who wrote “I write for the same reason I breathe,”
For William Faulkner who said “Read, read, read!”
For Oprah and her book club
For Stephen King for teaching much of the craft through his memoirs
For my parents, and step-father who also love to read and write
and who passed it onto me
For the inventors of the printing press, the typewriter,
and Microsoft Word.

This poem is for Anna Karenina
For Joe Christmas
For Mackenzie Calhoun
For Ramses the Damned
Some heroes, some not, all characters in books that I loved
For the public library, for Barnes & Noble
For used book stores and Hunter S. Thompson
For paper and ink,
For the sensation of turning the page
For learning, laughing, crying
For Mark Morgan for coining the phrase “Obeisance before the written word.”
For historical fiction, the immortal question of “What if?”
For Harlan Ellison, For J.K Rowling
For the books of my childhood, some no longer with me
For the fanning of the flames of the imagination
For making me want to create, to share my visions by way of the written word.

This poem celebrates literacy,
Telling stories and telling truths
Without books, how little would I know?
How ignorant would I be?

This poem celebrates the few movies that got it right
That did their books justice
That honored their authors.
This poem celebrates the authors who made it and deserved to,
It grudgingly acknowledges those who made it but shouldn’t have
It celebrates Peter David and Terry Goodkind
And Diane Carey and Eric Schlosser
And Al Franken and Eric Alterman
And Michael Moore and Richard Dawkins.
To the writers of film and of songs as well
To Dylan and Kurosawa
To Larson and Mitchell
To Lennon and McCartney
To Kevin Smith and Cameron Crowe.

This for the authors who left too soon.
For Douglas Adams, who died on a treadmill, and never got to tell us about Dirk Gently’s trip through the nostrils of a rhinoceros.
For Sylvia Plath, who met her end in an oven, who never lived to see the impact her work would have.
To Frank Herbert, who left with several trips to the world of Arakis left unfinished.
To Jim Baen who brought sci-fi to the masses like never before.
To J.R.R. Tolkien who never finished his last journey to Middle Earth.
To John Lennon who told his stories through song,
And was taken from us most cruelly.
To the poets who took their own lives,
To Orson Welles who perhaps peaked too soon.v To Jay Gould who helped show us the wonders of evolution through his books.

This is a poem against “I don’t read,”
Against “books are for losers,” and “put that stupid book down,” and “it’s not polite to read in a restaurant.”
This is a poem to say:
I read and write for the same reason I breathe.
For Plath, and Adams, and Faulkner, and O’Toole, and Tolstoy,
their immortality through my reading.
To Richard and Christi-Anne,
fellow writers, acquaintances, who I know will make it someday.
I can write. Not to do so would be to shame myself,
and my family who love the craft as much as I do but never get to practice it.

I’ve lived with bullies, with family squabbles,
With wars and corruption and theft,
With loss of friends to random circumstance.
I’ve lived with heartbreak and uncertainty in my work,
my education.
But through it all, I’ve had books, and light by which to read, either the natural light of the sun, or the artificial of a lamp or a blank computer screen or flashlight.

Understand I know exactly what I got: entertainment and knowledge
And I will not justify it.
I am not going to suffer the odd looks of fools who feel like I’m missing out on something by having my nose buried in a book.
I have love.
I have a home.
I have a job, money with which to buy my books.
I listen to music, go to the movies.
I get buzzed with friends.
I go on vacations.
I live. Don’t say I don’t.

I will read.
I will write.
But I will do more.
I will work to make this world a better place so that we never again see books being burned. Not in my country, not on my watch, not when there is still so much left for me to read.

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