Are you bibliokept or biblioklept?
He leans towards the former, unkempt
A trickster in mixture old in spirits
A fixture for quicker burns seared in
Drinking while he smokes in revelry
From when Gethsemane was a better dream
He takes a pull over pepper gray
Itching his beard with something to say
Smoke bleeds out as he croaks:
“We sit amongst the smoke
Now assembled untrembled
Unbowed and inconsequential
Is there any chance of this
Leading to anything but two bits of rare wit?
To writ; do we have a recorder here?”
No pens are scribbling,” he laughs through clear
“Such an important proceeding
Should at least count some heeding.”

“We’re still breathing, and such a meeting
Isn’t enough to bear second reading.”

“Ah, Aisha I can be a boor
I was afraid if I didn’t come you would close doors.”

“Not on your account,” she says from scaled lips
“And I don’t hear it bubbling over your quips.”

“Do we even have, anymore, the tales to tell?”
Says the third in a voice from a deep well

“Of course, Hector, my friend and companion
After all this time you know the state of my sinns.”
He passes the pipe along
“I feel like a rector appointed to song
I can still spin as well as when I was young
Better than anyone under any sun.
A friend of all beasts of the field
No matter how far afield from what’s real
I can have forty lions in forty days and forty nights
I leave them in ecstasy, daze and firelight
Outspit, outwit, outwrit any outfit
My enemies cower at the mere thought that I emit
Of course I am the best dressed
A tailor and seamstress will perform my inquest
My voice moves the holiest of mountains
I have so many riches that my mind gave up counting
Naturally, I am beyond riches, you see
For the bells on my feet enchant infinity.”

Across a forked tongue: “Well, have at it then, Abhay.
We didn’t come all this this way for a show-stage”

A diaphragm now bellows
Creating heat for fellows…