If only I were dirt poor
and living in a garret,
getting by on canned beans
and the occasional soupbone.
And if my sole possession
was a manual typewriter,
a clunky Remington
rescued from the dump,
and I typed away
on cranky keys,
clunking out poems
on scraps of paper,
night after night.
And if my friends
were starving
fellow writers and artists,
each as scrawny
as pens and paint bushes,
and we got together
drank cheap booze
and talked loudly,
in the lowest dives.
And if we were
rounded up from time to time
by the authorities
for being subversive,
dumped in a dingy jail
where the prison food
was worse than what
we ate on the outside.
Being civilized,
living in reasonable comfort,
is awkward more than anything.
Like when I suddenly speak up,
“Hey, I’m a poet.”
People have no idea
where the sound is coming from.