Poem: The Halls of the Sphinx

The Halls of the Sphinx

My beloved friend, my seeker of knowledge,

The answers you seek are beyond that ridge.

Nestled in a copse of willow trees

graced by a light and gentle breeze

Lies the greatest bookstore that ever was.

But to take a book you must follow its laws.

For if you don’t, if you ignore the only rule

A fate shall befall you that is ever so cruel.

It is called the Halls of the Sphinx,

And in its walls is a terrible jinx.

It’s tiny halls are filled to the brim

With books and rhymes of every whim.

There is no keeper or owner, because it owns itself,

But don’t begin to think it doesn’t know every bookshelf.

Once upon a time a man went in

And commited a treacherous sin.

Barter is the way of men, money the fuel

But to try to trade for coin you would be a fool.

To take a book from the store you must bring it one in exchange

Any topic, any look, any lore, it likes an extensive range.

This man took without giving the store something in return

He was a step out the door when his skin began to burn.

His life began to flash before his eyes

And he could not hide from his lies.

His life was laid before him naked and bare

With an inner fire everything began to flare

And each memory from his earliest days

Was ripped from him with increasing malaise

Until nothing was left but scattered pages in the wind.

The foolish man was no more for he had sinned.

Pages as white as bone, ink as red as blood

Began to fill a thick leathery cover in a flood.

The bookface, was his face, trapped in a gaze

That spoke volumes of his inner written essays.

Another man, tried to trade a single page

That was impossible to assuage

The needed balance for trade with the store.

A single page in exchange for a tome is to ask for war.  

So beware my seeker of knowledge

That you carry and acknowledge

A better trade than your breathing life

And avoid a death of everlasting strife.

For every man and woman that knowingly failed

To bring to the Sphinx a trade and was jailed

The Sphinx grows stronger.

And as the days grow longer

One day the Halls of the Sphinx

Shall have all the missing links.

Should we rue the day when the broad collection

of knowledge knows more than our recollection?

Until it knows us better than we know ourselves

Thousands of minds behind its countless shelves.

So beware gentle seeker and learner,

To trade well and be a careful discerner

Or you may be there for more than forty winks

In the tiny, breathing, living Halls of the Sphinx