A Book and a Cover

 A Book and a Cover

 

‘Don’t judge a book’. This she might’ve said

and yet she chose a car that’s red,

clanking its ugly, hulking, brutish tunes

while carelessly parked in choking fumes.

Keen on demarcation. ‘These are my lines;

now, go write them out 100 times’,

she squared off security for some years,

to fight space for what was never hers.

Branded. It sears itself into leather skin,

indelible grimace that passed for grin,

rummaging within a bag of boiled teeth

that grinds and grinds itself into splinters.

Gnarled bark that’s seen too many winters,

there never was such a thing as Spring

to fruit the trees that Summers bring,

and carpet meadows in windfall rugs.

Too late. Covers shaped by single season,

bearing illustrations of unreason,

jackets pagescrawls of mistempered rules;

lights her way for yesterday’s fools.

Sad. Some are buried with a shrug,

who peddled misery like peddled drugs,

remembered seldom with distaste,

we box them up with needless haste,

and those that smiled for years discovered,

you always should judge books by covers.