I didn’t set out to be a poet, and I'm still a novice in formal poetry. The truth is, I didn’t start writing until I was forty-five years old, in the eighties, sitting in a prison cell with time on my hands and not much else. Then, once more, in the late nineties, when I was foolish enough to “do what I was doing again.”

 

Insanity right?

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  What began as a way to pass the hours turned into something more when I realized other inmates needed words they couldn’t find for themselves. I wrote letters in poem form…for girlfriends, mothers, and sisters…anyone waiting on the outside. In return, I got what little a man could use in there, but needed to be purchased from the prison commissary. Stamps, paper, toothpaste, and…a favorite, Little Debbie pies. Needed a snack now and then. It was a long wait from 4:30 P.M. to 6:AM. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. More than that, it gave me purpose.

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-Peter 2026