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?
 

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