Every good novelist is a good conversationalist
You find them at parties thronged by crowds
Shouting out answers to every question he poses
Bad novelists are just monologists
By the end of the night their audiences
Have all dwindled away
Poets? Poets are good to have around
Depending on the quality of the verse
But don’t think of it as a free pass
Outside, misted in the darkness, bad poets
Make the sound of bony fingers
Tapping on thin windows
The good ones stand alone in corners
And wait for the silence that arises
When the stories have all ended
Just when we think there’s nothing
Left to say the poet comes forward
To salvage the evening
He takes the awkward silence and squeezes
It into a compact ball that fits in your palm
And before long
We all begin to hear the beat
Of it bouncing, a sound
That has been there all along
Everyone is already dancing
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