It’s day 24 of the month long challenge in which poets and madmen strive their very best to put into words thoughts they might never have had any just cause to express.  Thinking on that and the challenge of the day, I decided to write a poem called Margin Call.  The challenge being to write some sort of poem on or about or sparked by marginalia.

Margin Call
by Michael Romani

Fragments of intertwined thought
Posted on the edges of books bought
Provide the seeds of fragmented insight
On what is seen as wrong or right
In the fundamental yin and yang
Of those who really give a dang

Marginalia proffers its mesmerism
In a way of utilitarian mannerism
It is the prelude to possession
Rich in its blatant conception
That marking a book is indispensable
To making it most comprehensible

To say that you know what you think
Takes the thinker to that brink
But absent the ability to self express
Is to say that one doesn't know, I must confess
The best of reading is a two way conversation
And its highest respect is your own interpretation

(c) April 24, 2017 Michael Romani