A Gathering Of Poets

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He explains how he did some time
on a drug offense
and there were all these guys
in there on drug offenses,
all poets like him,
and how they wrote and wrote all day,
hardly slept some of them,
and he says, it wasn't so bad
when there's no distractions like that,
and that the outside world
may be good for the soul
though not for getting out what's inside you.
You need the slam of cell doors, he says,
the hard floor, and the uncomfortable bunks,
one on top of the other.
You need guards strolling by,
night and day,
rattling your cage
with their billy clubs,
real animals who, but for luck
or whatever, would be doing more
time than any of us,
who can't decide whether they
want to wring your neck
or sodomize you.
You need to hear the howls
of the real criminals
at the other end of the block.
You need to eat the lousy food,
work the lousy work.
I show him my poem of
the humming birds at the nectar feeder.
He shows me what he wrote
about the guy who got knifed in the yard.
I like the style, I say,
dodging the blade of the bloody detail.
Just can't believe those birds
would leave themselves exposed like that
is his only comment.