I lived in the M and M Hotel
On Fifth and Howard Streets when I got
Into the city waiting for the court
To grind its beef with me
Down into an edible sentence
For me to eat in the Federal Penitentiary.
I didn’t know the bar below the hotel;
I bought mine from the grocery store
At four for a dollar and
When I was read the verdict
Served a sober 1964-1965 as
Refuse, saying “No” to Vietnam
And the killing of Jack Kennedy.
I got out and drank a lout,
Sobering up to the aches in the holes
Alcohol ate in my soul and stomach.
There had to be something to live for?
While I sobered up I befriended
A bartender from the M and M Hotel’s
Ground floor bar. His history was that he
Served customers, mostly reporters from
The old Metro Newspapers, who were
Tired of typing, wanting to talk, while
Others simply lined the edges, crumpled, alone.
This bartender tendered bar and drank
Only later to pass out on the floor before
The others passed out the swinging doors.
And so the want-to-be poet and
The drop–out engineer sobered up each other
Until a woman drove-by in a side car
Version of a motorcycle and hit me, the poet, so
I fell into the body of her machine.
She died when I was eleven months sober and
Her tribute was a posthumous book of her poetry.
While I wrote the instructions on how
The volume was to look and feel, I could not read
The text until thirty years after her death. Now
I’m able to write again: a little now-and-then ode, when
Bee-thought don’t attack the strange honey as the enemy’s.

Very nicely written. Strong emotion with a story that gains depth with every line. Nice work.