You'll be a lousy, solitary, misunderstood poet Someone told me as they buttered my fresh baked bread. Time slowed The winds stopped moving And the afternoon sun shifted its path To follow those words instead. The knife made its way Still slippery and warm Back to the butter dish You'll become a coarse and crummy poet, they said you're tailor-made for it, you're ugly and skinny, quiet, dull and dreary. You'll write in small rooms with low light, pensive and poor you'll write, they said as the butter now soft soaked into the bread in front of a screen on cold nights drinking wine tainted with scorn weeping with sorrow, and rage, and dread The knife had by then sunk into the butter the butter my poem, the knife the life I have led.