Poem about Feelings written by local Prisoner Published by AD Winans

I published many prison poets when I published Second Coming
from 1972-89. William Wantling was one of the best of them.
His statement here express my own feelings on poetry. AD Winans

 

POETRY

 

I’ve got to be honest. I can

make good music and rhyme

 

at the right times and fit words

together to give people pleasure

 

and even sometimes take their

breath away---but it always

 

somehow turns out kind of phony

Consonance and assonance and inner

 

rhyme won’t make up for the fact

that I can’t figure out how to get

 

down on paper the real of the true

which we call Life. Like the other

 

day I was walking

on the lower exercise yard here

 

at San Quentin and this cat called

Turk came up to a friend of mine

 

and said Ernie, I hear you’re

shooting on my kid. And Ernie

 

told him so what, punk? And Turk

pulled out his his stuff and shanked

 

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a

metal tray in his shirt. Turk’s

 

shank bounced right off him and

Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

 

course Turk didn't have a tray and

caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his

lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

 

and he just lay down in the grass

and said, “Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit,

 

Fuck it. And he laughed a soft long

laugh, 5 minutes, then died. Now

 

what could consonance or assonance or

even rhyme do with something like that?