"alcatraz" poems
Holding your soft hands and dancing through sunrays around in circles as we smile and cherish each other's comfort through the loneliness in our hearts.
Golden hour peaks and you sing through my treasure chest filled with open treasures of golden honey, and that honey drips down the surface of my fingertips as we kiss each other in a warm gleam of freedom and surpass realms of stars and dreams.
The honey trickles our kisses and makes a sticky hot mess under the steaming sun as it begins to set through white fluffy clouds.
Feeling high like cloud 9
I want to feel your chest pressed against mine, forever and key it into a lock that cannot ever be undone.
I love you.
The memories we make feel like a never ending escape through Alcatraz.
A portal so clean and pure.
Sep 15, 2021
Sep 15, 2021 at 1:26 AM UTC
I have hid behind broken shadows, disappointed daydreams and somber reminders.
I have been bitten by the black widow of life, poisoning my veins with her venom of death.
I have been mutilated like one of Jack the Ripper's victim on the dark streets of London, left to bleed out.
I have escaped the evil smiles of Pogo the Clown that crept in my dreams as I slept at night, crying my black tears.
I have been Bound, Tied and Killed by the innocent friendly neighbor, twisted in the head by the devil himself.
I could hear the screams of the pregnant actress as the Family took her life in a blood bath, as they began their Helter Skelter.
I can not escape this Alcatraz of torture in my mind, that has been placed there by the lunatics of our time. But it is fun in this asylum.
Welcome to my padded cell.
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 1:56 AM UTC
Here I go again
To this place
I cannot escape
It is my own personal prison-
I am the one who made
This inescapable cage.
The steel bars,
The prison guards-
All my creation.
My own personal Alcatraz.
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 5:08 PM UTC
Moonlight rains into
The windows of Alcatraz
At night we are gone
Rage and anger lift
Above walls so strong so thick
Meal time get your plate
Plate used every day
Has seen every food they serve
After but two days
The drug lords reign here
The killers keep to themselves
I talk to no one
The walls find my way
To the chain link barrier
The blood stings my palms
Running father now
Reality then hits me
Life is now defined
I live every day
Just a convict on the run
A killer on the run
Feb 7, 2010
Feb 7, 2010 at 4:16 PM UTC
I heard the window
shatter into memories
of dead men and the past
the bluebird flies in
and rips me to shreds
take me home
I beckon
my time here away
I'm fighting
I am escaping
escaping Alcatraz
lacking the limbs
to conform
to the wants of the bluebird
to the needs of the bluebird
gone, gone, gone
drag me away
because you did it
life just faded away
my role-model,
the average Joe
That's me
thrown into society
I'm thrown into ******* society
let me die, bluebird
let me die
eat you're ******* heart out
(I am free)
I am not free bluebird
you're controlling me bluebird
I'm locked in solitary
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to conform
to ******* conform
you are ALL
so far from being free
I'm losing it
but this is me
we're all dead
because we are all the same
bluebird
you watch me
you watch me go crazy
stay there and sing your song
and maybe after a while
I won't think you're wrong
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 2:38 PM UTC
Hollow points break to pieces
memories are liquid gold
time is the jet of life
school the prison
unbound from these links
the reaper looms over the fallen
like polar bears--those released are the new homeless
Chernobyl shall be our name
Alcatraz has abandoned thy past to repeat
A heart as strong as Hank Williams
in the end we are the England Patriots of 2007
but before that sorry night
2012 will be Disney World
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 5:00 AM UTC
The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past
And all the grey waves flamed to red again
At the dead sun's last glimmer. Far and vast
The Sausalito lights burned suddenly
In little dots and clumps, as if a pen
Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills;
The sky was like a cup some rare wine fills,
And stars came as he watched
-- and he was free
One splendid instant -- back in the great room,
Curled in a chair with all of them beside
And the whole world a rush of happy voices,
With laughter beating in a clamorous tide. . . .
Saw once again the heat of harvest fume
Up to the empty sky in threads like glass,
And ran, and was a part of what rejoices
In thunderous nights of rain; lay in the grass
Sun-baked and tired, looking through a maze
Of tiny stems into a new green world;
Once more knew eves of perfume, days ablaze
With clear, dry heat on the brown, rolling fields;
Shuddered with fearful ecstasy in bed
Over a book of knights and ****** shields . . .
The ship slowed, jarred and stopped. There, straight ahead,
Were dock and fellows. Stumbling, he was whirled
Out and away to meet them -- and his back
Slumped to the old half-cringe, his hands fell slack;
A big boy's arm went round him -- and a twist
Sent shattering pain along his tortured wrist,
As a voice cried, a bloated voice and fat,
"Why it's Miss Nancy! Come along, you rat!"
2k
I see you in the park.
I want to look at you.
You want to look at me.
Our eyes ricochet
off each other.
I can't catch you
looking at me.
I can’t even give
a smile to you.
You’re Alcatraz and
I’m swimming to your rocks
and when I get there
you'd rather stay in jail,
kissing the walls.
There is no you. There are a thousand yous.
I know no you. I see 30 yous an hour.
Where are you?
Are you out there?
You’ve got to stay away. You get too close
and you crumble,
or I crumble. Gravity sends
two lives shaking into screws, identities
unable to hold.
But I could know how fragile you are.
How you sit on an iron bench and open
your long, dark lens
to the ultraviolet April blooms.
Shamble into my arms.
I won’t laugh. I promise I won’t laugh.
I’ll break your fall.
It’s my mistake to think
that you’re fragile, that
you’re a flower.
You are a flower, but
flowers are only
advertisements
for the tree.
Flowers fall away early
leaving only the wide, armored waist.
It isn’t you that will crumble.
It’s only me.
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 12:21 PM UTC
this dead city is alive with stray cats and missing person fliers, but the locals are dancing
on hardwood floors and [ ferocious yellow drums ] are striking the black-most
and the back-most star, sinks
it's cleat into
banished sunrise
with No End
in Sight !
the pride of most eyes,
too blind
to witness the free
oblivious,
As corn-fed black holes
swallowing the wisdom of crowds... as the unctuous clouds
of our dismay
are ever, ever at play; where the thin pool thickens.
where our blown bubbles French with thick tongues... our open lips
rebuffed to an invisible sheen.
the running of the Bulls is always an Alcatraz in a Free Will.
we dip into shallow cathedrals
where our Mercies slip through
nausea and dank
and Islands
of Less Ocean... where
The weakest Archipelago
In a Severed Chain
Of Dreamt
Events
are you
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 14, 2013 at 11:44 AM UTC
I left my heart in San Francisco
I lost my mind in Alcatraz
Atop the waves of the bay that day
I realized I could never go back.
I realized all decisions were final
And to be in love is a fatal thing
That sometimes you see the best in someone
Even when there is no good to be seen.
Those empty hallways that once held souls
Are now just pictures to a tourist
And not a single person can possibly feel
What each criminal that lived there witnessed.
Those busy city streets that whistle,
Screaming life and revealing 'self'
Could make a person feel the most whole or empty
Depending on which corner you find yourself.
Oct 18, 2015
Oct 18, 2015 at 1:03 AM UTC
plica semilunaris,
I see you from the corner of my eye,
leftover moonlit shadows,
sibilate bullet proof lullabies.
As the whisper turns into a sigh,
the murmur insinuates an intimate view,
we confide in the news of a,
discerned conception.
Deception of course.
You should of known those metaphors bought time,
to make it hard to find
what your eyes could see so clearly.
Nearly.
In retrospect prescience, presently knew.
Visualised you from another point of view.
And now in far sight,
hindsight betrays idyllic portraits,
never true in the first place.
So the worst case scenario,
typhlotic tyrants,
amaurotic darkness left sightless in blindness.
The darkness is an Alcatraz of bars made of gold.
Senses stolen from the repentance of souls.
Allusive in it's finest form.
Dec 28, 2015
Dec 28, 2015 at 8:34 AM UTC
Approach the steps and the
bus driver says "Thanks You,"
ignoring the reality
he's driving a bunch of
broke-ass adults whose only wish
is to escape from the middle of nowhere.
Pass the cows, the one steer
in the dairy field stares at
me, looking down once we've left.
Eyes looked intelligent like he should've
been reading T.S. Eliot while sipping green tea.
The two-mile bay goes quickly, holding
its breath as we wave goodbye. It acts
like it never danced before.
Onto another town
the people can't wait to leave.
A crying child enters and the family moves
back, further back, to sit
behind me as I'm writing this poem.
I've never seen innocence so excited
to ride the Greyhound.
Innocence, why won't you shut up?
Failure, please stop glaring at her like that.
She's only a little girl. The smoke
stacks have no comment.
The truck driver keeps appearing
next to us trying to tell us we're all angels.
The trees around the lake agree.
The horses agree, if only
because we harness more horsepower.
The redwoods on each side of the highway
are blocking my view, but I don't
mind we're headed toward the future.
City lights are my future, fog
is my future. The 101 South is my future.
The woman two rows in
front of me sounds like a man.
(S)he is my future.
**** Rio Dell, there's nothing
to do there. Garberville isn't much better.
The green algae pond says hello.
"Will you save Richardson Grove?"
it asks. I didn't answer.
The winding roads are making
me insane. If I didn't
answer, would you notice?
Ferlinghetti must be driving because
he can't keep on track. Oh
where will you take us tonight?
I wake up to the mist on the
water holding my attention.
The Alcatraz of my mind saves
me from myself.
Nov 15, 2011
Nov 15, 2011 at 11:48 AM UTC
She had a tongue that could open a wine bottle.
Razor-sharp articulation.
A fine art, some might say.
Living sentences on a knifes-edge.
It started in a unblunted manner,
The force hit smacked splintered minds like a hammer.
Honed in cuspate motions,
Incisively smashing the nail on the head.
She wasn’t wrong often.
Vivacious wit vivid oscillating witch,
some might say.
Not I.
I followed in the downstream of her resonance.
A quivering wreck,
soaked from head to toe in her libretto.
She marched in stilettos,
locomotive tip-toe motion,
devotion to the traverse.
Deviating as s he ambulated across lurid cobbled paths.
How she manages, alas.
Evades my comprehension.
She had this brunt agitation,
as if,
she couldn’t hear the words you say to her.
Maybe it was her nescient nature.
A think naive conversant,
If only it was that simple.
Those dimples on her cheeks were like craters in the moon.
That cheesy laugh fractures.
She escaped from Alcatraz,
Caught only by the dereliction,
of her minds conviction.
Infamy lapsed,
as she collapsed in a pretzel of marvellous contortion.
She radiantly turned to stone,
a statuesque stanza.
Cloned in allure,
that never found answers she was looking for.
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 4:50 AM UTC
***Clear your hazel gaze; you are completely submerged in an underwater paradise, suspended in the motions of the current. No, you're not drowning, I've given you enough endearment & sustenance for you to breathe on your own- even in the abyss of my oceanic heart.
Of course, you always knew you could dear.
So smile & sail along the swaying tides of teal, graze my shipwrecks with your gentle hands & kiss along my roughest of reefs. Find a mermaid with an elfish face, maroon hair & red lips to taste. Feel no limitations of world above the surface, staying in this place with you forever would be oh-so perfect. The albatross of our concrete lives, lived out in cities made of glass and steel, would never be found in a place such as this- we are forbidden to sustain ourselves through more of such unhappiness.
For down here, we simply float on.
We can get high in the waves, and sing all of your songs. For the water lifts all the worries we may have, in times when we are not strong.
You dove into me, simply chipping away at the stoical walls I've fashioned over time. The fortress comparable Alcatraz, I built to keep my demons in and every single soul out. But you, the flighty sea spirit (believe me we are birds of a feather), made your way to my castle among the waves; soaring over all misconceptions & doubts.***
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
I Ran
She had this hedonistic Houdini nature,
She escaped from Shiraz,
Her personal Alcatraz,
She laughed as I asked;
How did you escape?
"I Ran" she said "I Ran"
She was particularly Persian,
Beautiful soul,
Perfect prose,
stunning, gorgeous,
My dreams came true,
As we ran the gauntlet between our acquaintances judgemental glare.
She walked through the door,
With shallow breath and a panting chest;
Windswept hair.
Late.
How did you get here I asked?
"I Ran"
She came so far,
To say I was her King.
Her shy Shah,
She said.
The concept of this,
Flew over my head,
As I asked where she was from,
she paused for a second
&
told me she came from Iran.
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 6:23 AM UTC
Bouncing Betty in the closed corridor
The white walls bleed red
The red walls bleed white
Oh, how can we escape this squalid shell?
Ceiling fans Awaken
Silent hardwood floors,
They run screaming into the dull darkness
Let's feed the creature
That's lurking below.
Does the creature exist outside my mind?
All my rainbows fade
TO SHADES OF COPPER.
All the browns of the trees still look the same.
The mind can be a
Prison for your eyes
Let's escape Perceptual Alcatraz.
A silver dawn waits
For the queens return.
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 6:04 PM UTC
They don't want to hear it
These minutes of a life; this synopsis
That could only make sense to you
Even if it doesn't.
It's your baby, your Alcatraz, your Auschwitz;
Don't expect any sympathy
And then they won't bare their own scars
Of things you haven't even dreamed of.
Dig a hole and bury that pain in secret,
Like a cat buries its dung,
In the dead of night.
Paste on a fake, plastic smile
In a bright color, early next morning.
Life is shallow, because we are selfish
In our weakness-
How about pink?
Mar 10, 2010
Mar 10, 2010 at 2:37 PM UTC
In my dreams they say “San Francisco,"
That’s where I should go.
But what’s for me in San Francisco?
That’s what I’d like to know.
I’d take a road trip north, I guess,
And visit the Golden Gate.
Or visit the walls of Alcatraz,
But maybe that could wait.
Should I wear flowers in my hair,
When I go to San Francisco?
Or should I tread without a care,
Or maybe I just won’t go.
For there are other places waiting for me,
A different sun.
A different sea.
And many of these places I’m soon to go.
But for now, they’re not San Francisco.
Jun 1, 2011
Jun 1, 2011 at 2:07 PM UTC
there were dandelions on the grass
dear girl, the smell of an Alcatraz flower is fresh on my linen
but sometimes I look back
and wonder if this city wears a too thick a coat
while it struts pantless over the sidewalks of
Macarther Park
there is liturgy mumbled, a woman waving her hands in the air–
Sunday school prayers being learned in Spanish
tri-folded pamphlets on the floor
and gum over the pavement blackened by the cooperative march
of immigrant workers speaking in all tongues and carrying
on their backs, the tower of babel while halted at a red light
heavy cargo trucks speeding down Alameda Street
wearing down the road and the patience of drivers
tents multiplied, and R.V's lining the streets
the old buildings being torn down and neighboring apartments getting face-lifts
"beautification"
costs
more than headshots–
more than a rhinoplasty–
more than the real estate of DTLA–
when you see two kids come out of a tent with their school backpacks on
–you begin to grasp the price
Is this what Keats meant: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever "
even while destitute
the neon pink on their bags seemed like another gift of spring
and their perseverance the paragon of a psalm of life
Mar 10, 2020
Mar 10, 2020 at 11:07 PM UTC
I live with these words.
I love with these words.
These words sit on my shoulder,
They call out at random,
crying to be heard.
Sometimes I let them leap from my
***** shoulders,
When I feel they are ready to slice the air
like the silence of lovers' lips.
Other times I can't let these words leave,
They weep and holler
to be let out of my masculine prison.
but I don't feel they are just.
I feel those words are
perhaps
far gone,
or far ahead.
I try my best to oppose their freedom,
But on rare occasions,
They spoon their way out.
The Alcatraz words.
They found a way out,
And they're criminals.
They'll ****
They'll feed on beauty, pain, and resentment.
They'll gnaw out the cloth
on my shirt,
Until my chest, bare,
reads them for all
crawling eyes to see.
Those words are elegantly dangerous,
and they're my favorite ones.
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 9:10 PM UTC
just today, i was walking past a house, where someone was
trying to "encourage" an "alcatraz" escapee
back into the home & abode...
but as i walked past, and turned around...
its pupils were glaring back at me... yellow...
seeing without a camera lens.
anyway, i remember times, maybe before the digital
way of encoding photographs,
that on a rare occasion, in a photograph,
your pupils would turn red...
perhaps due to dilation, and the idea
of the dark room being morbid omni-red...
you can't encourage cats to do what
you want them to do... you might put a collar on a cat,
but you can't exactly attach a leash to that collar...
it would be like telling a gorilla:
grow some testicles on your head!
but yeah... yellow pupils of a cat without
taking a photograph, and the once upon a time
red pupils of peoples' eyes in photographs...
cat's yellow pupils in the night.
right now? this is a digression by the way...
i'm thinking of innovating egg-fried rice...
cook the rice... fry an egg... jumble the two together,
and add some bits & bobs to the mixture...
soya sauce.... and sweet chili sauce...
i'm scheming up a recipe for a mongol...
i'd love to see a cat with an american spy in
a soviet museum... sleep deprived...
just a "thought" experiment...
it would probably equate to seeing idiotic
people making cats ingest l.s.d. tabs in america
that were once available online...
ubran myths these days, i'm afraid...
well, you know... people have their kicks
and pleasures...
the only people i have respect for
are the people i'd sit down and eat some food with.
respect and people i'd drink with?
i'm a lone wolf in that respect...
i prefer my own company when drinking
a liter of *** and trying to think up some bonkers recipe on the sly.
oh... the wolfish hunger recipe?
add 3 pieces of rye bread with some butter, just before falling asleep...
next day?
a **** that comes out of your ***
like a knife cutting through butter.
May 12, 2017
May 12, 2017 at 5:46 PM UTC
I lived in a trailer for 8 years, what a home
But it was where all the friends I had ever known
Were and had grown
So I never felt alone
My sister had joked about moving with ease
I would wail with this release
"Walls, don't leave me
I would die from sadness, please"
It didn't matter how I would plead
That joke became a reality
But I didn't cry or die or bleed
This byzantine struggle was to much for me to see
Such a blocking aquamarine, as if I was cast to sea
I felt isolated
Cold and inundated
In Alcatraz with Mom at my aunt's
My bubble burst in my face
In this, my own, absolute zero space
Left to read or watch TV
Just to play in solitary
I flowed onto more houses
Like water spilled on the floor
Setting down emotions at every new door
I was running out of steam
And so of course it almost became no thing
Moving more than I have fingers
Almost no feelings that linger
I moved mostly in one city
But as a kiddie one mile may as well be forty
Close didn't bring me friends, see-
There's no chance I could speak to past me
But if I could, I would say "just be glad to be"
To love your mom, even without daddy
Life isn't a tragedy
So don't water it down to just what could be
Just be glad to be
These movements were just opportunities
Your life will form, one day you'll see
If you're water then boil it down to these
Love, friends, transient, but not yourself, just be-
Just be glad to be
Dec 14, 2014
Dec 14, 2014 at 1:48 AM UTC
I was heartbroken in San Francisco
But it wasn’t San Francisco’s fault
I had been abandoned
And I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I say,
left for dead
Isn’t that how you always feel?
When someone you love abandons you?
Like they wouldn’t care if you died
It’s not their business to care anymore
That’s the beauty in leaving
And the travesty
So I walked up the winding hills
And I took in the beautiful Bay Area
And I stared out at Alcatraz
And I walked along the Golden Gate Bridge
And when I asked my best friend,
How many people do you think have jumped off this bridge?
She said, let’s go home
We took a ferry to Sausalito one day
Where it was just as beautiful
We ordered tacos and margaritas
I couldn’t eat the tacos
I couldn’t eat anything
I was on the heartbreak diet
I tried to mask it,
Lord knows I failed
But I tried
I went to every gay bar I could find
I covered my face in makeup trying to mask the misery
I blasted the happiest song I could think of,
Which was Love Shack, by the B52s
I met a preschool teacher,
She offered me ******* in the bathroom of some bar
I don’t do drugs, but sometimes
You have nothing to lose
When I leave California, I told myself,
I will leave heartbreak behind
I will leave my heart in San Francisco, if you will
But that didn’t work out too well
Because when I got home, it was everywhere
It was in the walls, it was the smell of my own sheets
It was his leftover cigarette butts on my balcony
It was the flannels he bought me
Because I was always shivering at night
And his lighters in my coat pocket
Even the slight slant of my apartment’s floor
That he would always complain about
It wasn’t San Francisco, it was anywhere
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 5:02 PM UTC
I am an island
Like Alcatraz
Abandoned and haunted
People rarely visit
No one ever stays
My conditions are changing
I thrive life and beauty
No longer just to survive
I am an island
Maybe someone will visit
Maybe even stay
Nov 22, 2017
Nov 22, 2017 at 5:11 PM UTC