Why the Books Need to Breathe

The staff keep you quiet in the library so the books can hear each other breathe. It is the only concession to the prisoners' wellbeing.

The inmates are not allowed to actually talk, but they may communicate quietly across the concourse, like lonely whales in a sea free of waves, inhaling and exhaling slowly, steadily, reassuring their friends that they are ok, that they are not in the library alone.

They stand up straight in their shelves, wedged in back to back, too tight for neighbourly exchange. So they breathe to stay hopeful, to while away the long long hours for which they sit there helplessly, ready to be taken out.

Dancing Iguanas

When I close my eyes I see dancing iguanas. They rumba in the rushes on the banks of Lake Mahoy.

They don't know I'm there. I just watch, attach my eyes to their swaying samba hips, the Brazilian rhythm marked out in ripples on the water. They're mostly paired up, boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls - libidinous lizard dancers raunching happily away.

I'd like to go and join them, free my hips down there on the bank, gyrate my way through to the loose louche satisfaction which they all seem to enjoy.

But I can't go and join them, because they don't really exist. They're just part of the picture, the moving picture which paints itself when I close my eyes. Any sensible person knows that iguanas don't dance.