Shakespeare’s Candle
I met a poet that had 12-state acclaim. His eyes looked down on me even though we were the same height. I told him I was fortunate to meet him. His shifted stance said that was obvious.
I asked him about his process. He sneered like a prince amongst peasants. “Process?” he laughed. “There’s no process. You read and you write and it’s as simple as that.”
I smiled like I agreed I was the buffoon he implied, but my heart began to dance to bee bop jazz no one else could hear.
“What books have inspired you the most?” I asked with the humility of a street corner panhandler hoping for a buck in their cup.
He chortled in a way that said that I was a child bringing Crayon art to a maestro, and he spoke with the confidence of a prophet. “Just stick with the greats,” he said. “Baudelaire, Rimbaud, William Blake, maybe some Yeats and Keats, a little Milton, and of course the Beats, too.”
My voice shrugged indifference and I said, “Sure. I’ve read ‘em. They’re all ok I guess.”
His eyes pierced me like I was a heretic as he tossed out “and don’t forget Shakespeare.”
“Meh,” I smiled, “He’s never really been my jam.”
The poet with 12-state acclaim and $200 blue jeans gasped like I’d hit him with a low blow. “Shakespeare,” he whispered like a saint afraid for my soul. “How can you be a poet if you don’t read Shakespeare?”
I started calm as a mongoose waiting for a cobra to strike, and I began, “I was born reading the covers of food stamp books and I studied the worried foreheads of poor mothers that had sons.”
I could feel the smoke beginning to steam as I continued. “I studied the numbers on used heroin spikes and taught myself how to find the constellations from the gutter.”
“I read the palms of lepers. I read between the lines in human eyes that held ghost stories too scary to be uttered aloud.”
The poet whose name was known in at least 12 states was frozen in surprise and begging for an escape route when my tea kettle began to whistle.
“I read the 12-steps. I read to men who could not read. I told stories to the deaf, and painted pictures with my words for the blind. I sang songs even when there was no music.”
My voice sounded like I was speaking to a large crowd now. “I read a thousand factory standard operating procedures, and I read hazmat warnings on the sides of metal barrels that held chemicals no one could pronounce the names of.”
“I read union contracts and I watched the news on the knuckles of human hands that knew nothing but hard work. I saw those working people discarded like empty fast-food bags when they could no longer labor for their bread.”
The 12-state poet that moments ago breathed haughty celebrity air, was deflated and trying to slip away like a man afraid of danger, but I wasn’t done with my sidewalk sermon.
I called out like a watchman, “I read the signs of beggars and the body language of the homeless. I taught survival to those who never stood a chance. Life gave me hate and I turned it into bundles of love.”
“I wrote manifestos and people called them poems. I wrote love letters to underdogs and revolutionary death threats to the rich and people called them poems. I wrote prayers for the helpless and ode after ode to the workers of the world. I wrestled with the devil, spit into the wind and questioned God.”
“Shakespeare,” I said. “Shakespeare couldn’t hold a candle to a shot out streetlight on an inner-city block that is hidden from the sun.”
Dan Denton is a midwestern blue collar writer. His work is widely published and has been nominated for various awards, though he remains most proud to have been voted the best writer in Toledo. He has authored five books, including the recently released novel, The Seven Stages of Middle-Class Life: An American Fable (Roadside Press, 2026) and he has two additional books under contract for publication in 2027.
A father of three amazing humans, Dan lives full-time with his literary agent, Yoda Sylvia Plathcat, in a 25-year-old travel trailer dubbed “The Scrapes of Wrath. He believes in supporting your local unions.
