Pandorathon TSL May 6 3 poems on the prompt when bookmarks come out and talk to each other on the books they were in given by Dr Santosh Bakaya

 When book marks came out and talked of their books TSL Pandorathon 2021 May 6 with

Santosh Bakaya

His Bible is well thumbed

His thumb or forefinger is the bookmark

(Earlier old men and women would lick their fingers

and turn pages,

though that had nothing to do with bookmarks

or book marking)

His Hard Times by Dickens

Has pages the top corner of which is folded

To make it easy to find them

His dictionary is dog eared

His keyboard is dirty and dusty from overuse

Not as you may think from being not used

As for bookmarks

Well, he does not use them much

Except for one in his Dad's big letter red leather-covered Scripture that was a ribbon

And a silver one in one he got his wife

That haunts his memory

So talk of them or them talking to each other

Has to remain imaginary or non-existent

The poem anyway has been written

Bookmarks Talking 2 with

Santosh Bakaya

May 6th Pandorathon TSL

Pressed flowers and leaves

My sister would keep them

My mother too

Dried flowers

And leaves that had become

Skeletons

In poetry books, novels and other books

Even record books of chemistry and zoo-

Logy and physics

They filled me with awe

And a certainty

Not given by

The leather or the paper ones

However beautifully made

That the divine was there.

Book marks Talking 3 with

Santosh Bakaya

Pandorathon TSL

with/for

Tikulli Dogra

To write is to read what is

Written and

To rewrite to

Try to fill in the gaps.

I love bookmarks

My friends, some of them

Make them

I love and honour their effort and artwork

This has become an evolving poem

I love the idea they come out at night

And talk to each other of the books

They are kept in

I love the kookiness

My imagination is not constrained to think of

edible bookmarks

And ones that beg for more life and you not to discard them

And complain of the books that they are kept in

Or like them

If I was one I would like to

be made of a mix of ribbon

and leather and leaf and bark

Maybe a single petal of a rose

Hide of a deer sounds too cruel

But one that has its markings on paper, maybe

I would want to be kept in the Bishop's Candlesticks section

In Hugo's masterpiece, Les Miserables.