Library Poem by Joshua SinclairThomson

The other night I was in the library,
The one on campus,
I’ve been going there quite a lot lately,
Since I discovered it had a record player.
I go there mostly to listen to music,
Usually around midnight
When the library’s empty
And I’ve got the place to myself.

I brew some coffee before I go
Using a stovetop coffee maker my mum gave me,
It’s a tiny impractical thing the size of my index finger,
And it only lets me make one espresso shot at a time.
It takes me about half an hour
To brew enough tiny cups of coffee
To fill a quarter of my flask:
As I am doing this
I am reminded of being a child on the beach,
Building sand castles with motes.
Once you'd finished building a sand castle with a mote
You always had to spend the rest of the day
Running
Back and forth
To the sea
To keep the water in the mote.
You knew that if you let the mote dry up
All those pesky little invaders,
The ones you couldn’t see but you knew were there,
Would cross over
To the
Castle
And attack all the little people inside that you were supposed to be protecting.

Finally I walk over to the library with my flask
And my notebook,
Through the perpetual storms
In my Nike trainers
And
Deerstalker hat,
Looking like a fashionable hermit.

When I get inside the building,
I have to walk past the noisy bit
Where people are permitted to talk to one another,
And it’s always busy there no matter what time it is,
Full of people eating pizza and chatting away,
The sides of their faces sunned by laptop screens.
These people are always there but they never actually look like their doing any work,
Like they’re just extras in a film waiting for someone to say action.
I quickly pass them by, moving on into the quiet bit,
Which is usually empty,
And from there I go straight for the records in the music section.

I get the feeling like I'm an astronaut
When I’m alone in that library,
I pretend it's my space ship and I'm looking through all the various intergalactic catalogues trying to decide which planet I should visit next.

Once I’ve picked out a record,
I go over to the record player
And climb into the big blue chair,
I put the headphones on, press the start button and put the needle down,
And prepare for take off.

I swing the chair round to face the myriad bookshelves
And grip the arms of the chair, waiting, trying not to move.

The first track on the record finishes, and by that point Im starting to get a little impatient,
But finally,
The waiting pays off and the ship takes off.

From left to right, the automatic lights start to shut down,
They spasm and dwindle out one by one with a sibilant crackle,
Until all is darkness
And I’m just sat there staring into infinite space.