LIKE BIRDS, BOOKS HIDE TO DIE … a poetic petition
“The only data centers I support are public libraries”
Free MoveOn Sticker
books are as mortal
and threatened
as we are
books die
when the reading eye
invests
in fast food cravings
elsewhere
books die
because there is such a thing
as speed of thought AI
ruling our brains
as it does the sky
books die
not because they burn
but because
they are subjected
to an indifference
of no return
like birds
books hide to die
in places
we could still find them
to save them
if we cared
we save whales,
pandas and butterflies –
books are as vital
to the planet of our mind
as the endangered species
of our bees
to the sustained life
of our plants and trees …
(c) Julia Wright July 17, 2026. All Rights Reserved to donations for the reinstatement of the Richard Wright Library in Hinds County, MS, shut down for lack of funds and several times vandalized from 2020 onwards – a glass case with Richard Wright artifacts having been destroyed. If you want to make a donation however small, even the price of one pencil or ball pen, please write to imaginesisyphyshappy@gmail.com and you will be placed on a list of donors to be contacted once we have a support group and a fundraising link. If you cannot donate but have an idea about book-saving, please share.
RICHARD WRIGHT’S WORDS UNHURLED … a poetic petition
““I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.””
Richard Wright
the other day
in air-conditioned solemnity
the question was asked
in a Congress hearing
primed to be historic
whether the practices of MKULTRA
still applied
everybody
hemmed and hawed
and beat about the bush
of a plush carpeted floor
to sort of agree
that it could well be
but nothing was actually specified
meanwhile MKULTRA
is all around us –
in the books we no longer
have to read to join the Ivy League
in chatGPT
and in AI
consulted around the clock
as our new oracle of Delphi
when it is not bombing
booklorn children in Minab
each book we fail to discover
from cover
to
cover
wilts
and its pages
are fallen petals
no season
can bring back
each book we leave to moulder
caged
in a library shutdown
for lack of our tax dollars
may be criminalized as fair prey
for illiterate youth
called vandals
while imperceptibly
the most advanced cells
our brain uses to read
are also left to die –
an invisible lobotomy
making us blind
stripping us
of our humanity
and
each book cast aside
executes its writer
one more time
be he alive
or an ancestor
whose words helped us thrive
we are a country
approving the death penalty
for books as well as men
for books as well as all sentient beings
for books as well as minds
We refuse to clamor
with the capturing elite:
books are dead.
long live the post literate King
(c) Julia Wright July 18, 2026. All Rights Reserved to donations for the reinstatement of the Richard Wright Library in Hinds County, MS, shut down for lack of funds and several times vandalized from 2020 onwards – a glass case with Richard Wright artifacts having been destroyed. If you want to make a donation however small, even the price of one pencil or ball pen, please write to imaginesisyphyshappy@gmail.com and you will be placed on a list of donors to be contacted once we have a support group and a fundraising link. If you cannot donate but have an idea about book-saving, please share.
Editor’s note: MKULTRA refers to Project MKUltra, an illegal, top-secret human experimentation program run by the CIA from 1953 through 1973. Its goal was to develop chemical, biological, and psychological method to manipulate human behavior and control minds. It was initiated by Allen Dulles, the CIA director shortly before the U.S. CIA engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh government of Iran. See History.com’s The CIA’s Appalling Human Experiments With Mind Control.
THE BOOK SNATCHERS – a not so sci-fi poem
to my father, Richard Wright, who loved science-fiction – especially “The Body Snatchers”…
this is my day
thought Mr Q
as he got up early
to don
his best suit and tie
this is the day
when i get my chance
to win
the one million dollar
post literate grant
and join the club
of a glitzy automated
and bookless world
all i have to do
to qualify
is to submit
to the book extraction
program
it was painless
he had been told
all he had to do
was enter a book extractor
with electrodes
attached to his brain
and heart
and when the current
had shocked out
all the remembered tales
of a life of reading
he would be ready
and clean
and pristine
what Mr Q
was not told
is that a hidden part
of the machine
siphoned off decades of book content
and all its creative residue
to the metallic minds of robots
waiting behind the scene
so the well-read Mr Q –
his eyes on what he thought
was a lucrative post literate prize –
entered the machine
all too eagerly
and
when he left it
he had become
a zombie
a hollow man
a throwaway
the book snatching elite
had no further use for
(c) Julia Wright July 19, 2026. All Rights Reserved to donations for the reinstatement of the Richard Wright Library in Hinds County, MS, shut down for lack of funds and several times vandalized from 2020 onwards – a glass case with Richard Wright artifacts having been destroyed. If you want to make a donation however small, even the price of one pencil or ball pen, please write to imaginesisyphyshappy@gmail.com and you will be placed on a list of donors to be contacted once we have a support group and a fundraising link. If you cannot donate but have an idea about book-saving, please share.
WHAT IF WINNING IS COLLATERAL IMPROVEMENT?
to Susan Abulhawa and Jennifer Jones – who understand TIME.
“Time is long”
W.E.B. DuBois
“There will be no easy victories …”
Amilcar Cabral
what if winning
is merely
a side effect?
and what if winning
is simply
collateral improvement?
and what if winning
makes us so dizzy
that we cannot see
the smoke and mirrors
hiding
a far longer ancestral
and unborn children’s trajectory?
and what if winning
makes
the quest look linear
when
it is not?
and what if winning
is only part of a spiral
headed for a crash
with backlash
until we end it?
and what if winning
is the mere rehearsal
of a leap
we are still afraid of
because it looks too deep?
and what if winning
makes
us seek
victories for the sake of victories
like craven trophy hunters
on inhuman safaris?
and what if winning
without changing
the capitalist world
in which we won
is all we get?
and what if victories
with impossibly flawless heroes
crowned with poisonous laurels
makes us forget that
time
our collective time
is long?
(c) Julia Wright July 20, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
