"jails" poems
the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...
we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.
I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...
and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.
the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.
195.8k
during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment
and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.
141.9k
in the hospitals and jails
it's the worst
in madhouses
it's the worst
in penthouses
it's the worst
in skid row flophouses
it's the worst
at poetry readings
at rock concerts
at benefits for the disabled
it's the worst
at funerals
at weddings
it's the worst
at parades
at skating rinks
at ****** ******
it's the worst
at midnight
at 3 a.m.
at 5:45 p.m.
it's the worst
falling through the sky
firing squads
that's the best
thinking of India
looking at popcorn stands
watching the bull get the matador
that's the best
boxed lightbulbs
an old dog scratching
peanuts in a celluloid bag
that's the best
spraying roaches
a clean pair of stockings
natural guts defeating natural talent
that's the best
in front of firing squads
throwing crusts to seagulls
slicing tomatoes
that's the best
rugs with cigarette burns
cracks in sidewalks
waitresses still sane
that's the best
my hands dead
my heart dead
silence
adagio of rocks
the world ablaze
that's the best
for me.
13.8k
1532
From all the Jails the Boys and Girls
Ecstatically leap—
Beloved only Afternoon
That Prison doesn’t keep
They storm the Earth and stun the Air,
A Mob of solid Bliss—
Alas—that Frowns should lie in wait
For such a Foe as this—
10.4k
The lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...
we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.
I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...
and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.
the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 5:31 PM UTC
I cried at the breakfast table this morning
my father carefully explained,
"wives must be submissive to their husbands"
"housecleaning is the domain of the woman"
"God created woman because man asked for a partner"
This past semester I wrote two papers
One, a fire and brimstone sermon
I quoted Anais Nin
sending the creators of sexist commercials to eternal suffering
**** them!" I said. "May they burn in hell."
For the women they portrayed were doormats
Misconceptions
Monsters
The other, the role of women in the 1920s,
No longer confined to the kitchen
they dropped ballots with their new freedom
they wore short dresses and short tresses
fingers wrapped around cigs
they quoted Wilde instead of Alcott
they danced until their feet hurt
I read of Anais Nin's "new woman,"
her partnership, not submission to man,
I craved a room of my own, neigh demanded it
For sheep stayed in the kitchen,
The Woolf had a study.
I read poetry
Sexton,
Plath,
I wept for their starved, depressed selves
caged, suffocating inside the clasped hands of a man.
Loved like rib-cage jails.
Adrienne Rich made me angry,
her daughter-in-law
forever trying to fit into a box
she was always too big for, spilling
at the edges, her shaved
legs like "white mammoth tusks"
I was finally
happy with my womanhood.
****** ****** ***** ********
they are mine.
******* free to move unrestrained,
jiggling under my shirt.
Wetness between my thighs.
Menstrual blood,
they are mine.
mine.
I am not ashamed of what I am
because there is no shame.
I am woman,
I am girl,
I am lady.
I am a creature
with a voice
a mind.
a creature who endured much abuse,
continue to endure.
I am woman
and I don't have to be wife or mother
unless I want to be.
I was not created for man;
I was created for the same reason he was,
to serve the same great purpose on this tiny blue dot.
I am not rib.
I am ****** ****** ***** ********
******* free, unrestrained,
Wetness between my thighs.
Menstrual blood,
I am a per.
I am a wo.
I am a hu.
Man and son need to back down,
collaborate not dominate,
speak not command,
for when less are forced into silence,
the maddening scream
hidden inside skin and bones and muscle-meat
becomes song.
this world of car horns and tire screeches
crying and wailing from raw throats
angry protests of indignation
could use a little music.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 6:59 PM UTC
Evil might creep in different forms Depending on what's going on around ... It might come in the shape Of a hand-gun or In other shapes ... If it is a hand-gun ,then It means satanic and ugly Simply because if it is in a coward's hand , It means there will an inevitable crime and Innocent victims too ... All ugly evil-doers end in jails , hanged ,or In the corners' trash cans ... ___________________________________________________________________
Feb 12, 2015
Feb 12, 2015 at 10:03 AM UTC
An inland blockade from Israel cut off life
giving supplies to the Palastians in Gaza.
This happened around 2010.
Formulated was the "GAZA FREEDOM FLOATILLA".
Their strategy was to dock in Gaza-away from land-and deliver much needed life saving supplies.
However, the flotilla was seized- on the sea -by the Israeli
Navy consisting of one hundred and fifty sailors.
Around ten people from one of the flotilla ships
were killed and brutality reigned supreme. ( a Turkish ship fought back )
Incarcerations from the floatilla to Israel's jails took place.
And so I dedicate this writing to these wonderful people of
conscience and their brave hearts upon the sea...
Days of siege
Days of conscience
Days of hope
Sailing to their destination
Days remembered
Day's compassion
Days remembered these needed cargoes held
Engines turning on paths of caution;
love is carried on sailing symbols
Each ship and boat will shout her name
Will shout in spirit dear Rachel Corrie,dear Rachel Corrie
Will shout in spirit dear Rachel Corrie
Brave hearts you suffered so upon the sea
Brave hearts you fought for truth, hope and dignity
Brave hearts on floating love
Brave hearts you are that peaceful powerful dove
Brave hearts you are our guiding light
Brave hearts you pierced that darkened blackened night
Brave Hearts upon the sea...
Sep 8, 2014
Sep 8, 2014 at 1:34 AM UTC
Better the gorillas of Rwanda are given birth certificate
Within a brief while of their visiting the earth,
Their security is guaranteed by the state machinery
Basking in the full confidence of three meals a day,
Not wary of political repression based on suspicion,
They have a national day in their honour
Fully agitated for clean environment
By the political incumbentcy,
They are now the first class citizens
As the Rwandese citizens of human origin
Of varied political stand suffer under agony
In prisons and exiles, jails and hideouts
On the run for ever for fear of their lives.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 8:34 AM UTC
tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar
*not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute*
a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected
naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?
here is the hard part.
your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am
*gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:*
I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…
Apr 9, 2023
Apr 9, 2023 at 2:12 PM UTC
You are gone,
yet everywhere
that I touch,
breathe,
see, with my sensitive eyes
and heart.
You are gone,
Yet we never stop looking.
We know you're out there.
Each morning we call the
hospitals,
morgues
the jails.
You are gone.
Day after day
we hear nothing.
We wonder,
we hope,
we pray that you
are alive.
That no one has hurt you too badly through the night.
That you've not hurt yourself too much to come back from.
You are gone.
Yet the shadow of you is here.
It is everywhere.
Your shadow floats down from the
moon light,
and at night
covers such deep sadness
we know then that we miss you beyond the stars.
The You
that was You..
May 24, 2019
May 24, 2019 at 10:05 PM UTC
The solitary reminder,
a sole survivor,
hopeful-placed,
forgivingly encased
in little boxes decorative
hidden in plain sight
throughout our home.
Single and incomplete,
the lonesome leftovers,
openly hid upon bookshelf,
desk corners, fireplace mantels,
storage units of the
I am unlost,
I am unfound,
Raise your hand,
stand up and say
that is me,
that is me.
Minor treasure chests,
of carved wood, seashell real,
acquisitions of trips
to faraway places,
these boxes, they themselves,
visible but unremembered,
just there, no cares,
no one knows,
when or why.
that is me,
is that me?
Space fillers, memory taunts,
grandchildren's playthings, delight,
when they someday come visit,
weather and parents permitting,
finding keys for locks, doors,
from three homes ago.
Can they unlock me too?
Boxes hoard the things
we have lost, but cannot discard,
can't sacrifice, gotta keep,
an admixture of buttons,
dried flowers, faded notes that
once upon a time mattered,
shook someone's world...
Some kept in hope,
others, sequestered, lock-up,
jails that we are both
jailor and jailed,
the joke being on me.
Should we, you and I,
exchange these
cases histories of lost hopes, memories,
it would not be surprising,
if when opened,
the contents identical,
even if you are in Manila,
Leeds, places of need,
and yet,
we would be shocked,
asking,
*that is me,
is that me?*
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 6:34 AM UTC
Once we're on the slippery slope,
With assisted suicide,
That's when the sick people,
Have nowhere left to hide,
Now that the clock is ticking,
Where will it all stop,
Next is the old folk,
We'll chop them till they drop,
Down Syndrome men and women,
Elderly, infirm who can tell,
Doctors must authorise,
Shipman did that well,
Then there's the druggies,
We'll have to use a rope,
Injection would be stupid,
Like giving them more dope,
They'll not be the last,
The unemployed are next,
They'll not be sent a letter,
We'll do it all by text,
Get them all lined up,
We'll do them one by one,
Give them the death injection,
Nowhere left for them to run,
The fat ones need to go,
Costing too much cash,
Eating too much food,
Use a knife to slash,
If your neighbour's a bit different,
You know, a bit like that,
Take out your weapon,
And stab him in the heart,
Clear the jails out,
The place if your a crook,
If we need more killers,
It's the very place to look,
Dignitas will be redundant,
We'll **** them all in house,
It'll be good business,
Shooting them just like grouse,
Forget about the smokers,
Assisted suicide's not their game,
With their lungs and breath failing,
They're dying just the same,
Life is so **** precious,
Killing's against God's law,
Commandment number six,
One of ten we shouldn't withdraw.
Aug 2, 2015
Aug 2, 2015 at 1:53 PM UTC
There was a saviour
Rarer than radium,
Commoner than water, crueller than truth;
Children kept from the sun
Assembled at his tongue
To hear the golden note turn in a groove,
Prisoners of wishes locked their eyes
In the jails and studies of his keyless smiles.
The voice of children says
From a lost wilderness
There was calm to be done in his safe unrest,
When hindering man hurt
Man, animal, or bird
We hid our fears in that murdering breath,
Silence, silence to do, when earth grew loud,
In lairs and asylums of the tremendous shout.
There was glory to hear
In the churches of his tears,
Under his downy arm you sighed as he struck,
O you who could not cry
On to the ground when a man died
Put a tear for joy in the unearthly flood
And laid your cheek against a cloud-formed shell:
Now in the dark there is only yourself and myself.
Two proud, blacked brothers cry,
Winter-locked side by side,
To this inhospitable hollow year,
O we who could not stir
One lean sigh when we heard
Greed on man beating near and fire neighbour
But wailed and nested in the sky-blue wall
Now break a giant tear for the little known fall,
For the drooping of homes
That did not nurse our bones,
Brave deaths of only ones but never found,
Now see, alone in us,
Our own true strangers' dust
Ride through the doors of our unentered house.
Exiled in us we arouse the soft,
Unclenched, armless, silk and rough love that breaks all rocks.
2.6k
My friends without shields walk on the target
It is late the windows are breaking
My friends without shoes leave
What they love
Grief moves among them as a fire among
Its bells
My friends without clocks turn
On the dial they turn
They part
My friends with names like gloves set out
Bare handed as they have lived
And nobody knows them
It is they that lay the wreaths at the milestones it is their
Cups that are found at the wells
And are then chained up
My friends without feet sit by the wall
Nodding to the lame orchestra
Brotherhood it says on the decorations
My friend without eyes sits in the rain smiling
With a nest of salt in his hand
My friends without fathers or houses hear
Doors opening in the darkness
Whose halls announce
Behold the smoke has come home
My friends and I have in common
The present a wax bell in a wax belfry
This message telling of
Metals this
Hunger for the sake of hunger this owl in the heart
And these hands one
For asking one for applause
My friends with nothing leave it behind
In a box
My friends without keys go out from the jails it is night
They take the same road they miss
Each other they invent the same banner in the dark
They ask their way only of sentries too proud to breathe
At dawn the stars on their flag will vanish
The water will turn up their footprints and the day will rise
Like a monument to my
Friends the forgotten
2.2k
(For S. A.)TO write one book in five years
or five books in one year,
to be the painter and the thing painted,
... where are we, bo?
Wait-get his number.
The barber shop handling is here
and the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist,
and the flame orange scarf.
Yet there is more-he sleeps under bridges
with lonely crazy men; he sits in country
jails with bootleggers; he adopts the children
of broken-down burlesque actresses; he has
cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson's
father; he pencils wrists of lonely women.
Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago
and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa
and feel the tall grass coming up in June
and the ache of the cottonwood trees
singing with the prairie wind?
2.1k
A smile is knowing
The dark crease of a well-arched spine
The dewy white lotus petals
The sad title of concubine
The blue glass so plainly beautiful
With its cold smooth sides
A blown vase that sits precious
Atop a dead deer's stretched hide
The hallowed slope of a portruding illiac
And the decadent crust of a sweet fruit pie
On a black vinyl stage floor
In a room filled with echoing cries
The reverberance loud and hollow
With ears ringing opened wide
The bends of her young tendons
In her ropey pale limbs
They flex and harshly twitch
How a scared and hooked fish swims
The cyclic orbits of planets and lifetimes
A ballerina's pirouette spins
Now the tarlatan and muslin gets torn to shreds
And the blinding stage lights quickly dim
The wet heat of a hungry tongue
Slaps upon her sweating skin
The audience simply does nothing
Just like the tall plant stalks of the green motel
Or the muddy vines in swamps in Rwanda
Or white wallpaper in the locked rooms of certain hells
The diseases that squirm in tainted waters
Of Liberia's ***** wells
The missing limbs of wartime amputees
Reflected in the golden glint of spent brass shells
Amidst the screams of
NO
STOP
NO
It yells the words
GO
GOD
GO
Through the grinning lips of the manifest destiny
And the arms of Khmer Rouge's killings
Its legs are formed from the many faces of lynch mobs
Its hands are hewn of American prison facilities and county jails
It's dripping deadly doses of fentanyl in local ****** shipments
And ****** dancers
Jul 29, 2017
Jul 29, 2017 at 8:20 PM UTC
Dear Rosie
I wonder, what kind of black woman are you?
Because as we discussed various -isms, you refuted your womanism, you refuted racism, you refuted sexism. You are "Rosie"
Dear Rosie
I want to know where you come from. Who taught you to tear down women that look like you, that came from a black woman's womb just as you did. Where did you learn to silence us in that confused mind of yours where you said our opinions irritate you and are worthless to your education?
Dearest Rosie
Tell me how the oppressed became the oppressor. Because as I look at your dark chocolate skin I am curious what you see when you look in the mirror. A reflection of privileged whiteness? You say oppression does not matter. You asks for facts. Well, statistics show us that people that look like you are dying whether you acknowledge your blackness or not. Women like you are being silenced and underrepresented in the public sphere regardless if you take it for face value. Women like us have lost sons to officers, husbands to cells, brothers to jails.
Dear Rosie
Wake the **** up. Each time you slice our tongues from the black reality that black women may not matter as much as they do in this safe space, each time you preach of your humanist kumbaya resolution that separates us from race gender and sexuality, each time you say our opinions do not matter, they win. The system wins. Because they'll use some token like you to represent our mass majority and say "She agrees with us so all black people do too." I refuse to be represented by a peer that denounces my womanism, my feminism, my black nationalism because it's not white enough for her (black) skin.
Not inclusive enough to a white population that has excluded people like me for centuries. It is not my duty to make some ************ feel comfortable with my blackness ,to relieve them of guilt when they've perpetuated guilt on me because of my blackness.
Dear Rosie.
Don't let them win.
Oct 24, 2014
Oct 24, 2014 at 1:32 AM UTC
I DON'T know how he came,
shambling, dark, and strong.
He stood in the city and told men:
My people are fools, my people are young and strong, my people must learn, my people are terrible workers and fighters.
Always he kept on asking: Where did that blood come from?
They said: You for the fool killer, you for the ***** hatch and a necktie party.
They hauled him into jail.
They sneered at him and spit on him,
And he wrecked their jails,
Singing, "God **** your jails,"
And when he was most in jail
Crummy among the crazy in the dark
Then he was most of all out of jail
Shambling, dark, and strong,
Always asking: Where did that blood come from?
They laid hands on him
And the fool killers had a laugh
And the necktie party was a go, by God.
They laid hands on him and he was a goner.
They hammered him to pieces and he stood up.
They buried him and he walked out of the grave, by God,
Asking again: Where did that blood come from?
1.7k
in memory of the children of South Africa
Freedom!
Lifted out of the ashes and into a river of hope
A river of joy
A river of peace.
Cry freedom!
Freedom!
As a country dies
And children die because of
What they believe in
Cry freedom!
Freedom!
You jail them in your jails,
You ****** them,
Torture them,
Burn their schools and home
But we still
Cry freedom!
Freedom!
You can do all these things
And make spoils of it
And yet tell them they are not free
But we will with all our hearts--
Cry freedom!
Freedom!
No matter the strife
Feeling powerless at times
When there is no power
But yet we will forever---
Cry freedom!
Freedom!
You break us down
Break our spirits
But we forever
Cry freedom!!
Jul 5, 2017
Jul 5, 2017 at 7:12 PM UTC
My heart condemned to a cell
became so shrunken by disuse
All my lovely things
shoved to a corner
near a radiator
for its rhythm, right, and heat
Crushed by all the useless rules
reigned down from The Above
proclaiming—
"Certainty!"
of “what should be.”
My heart was never made for such a small space
But now—
atrophied and bowed by fear
prison garb seems comfortable
I don't think too much of hope or love in here
Too wary and too tired
to defend the right or wrong of it—or me
The sentence: so much more than I could bear:
“Life of Loneliness
no parole"
It’s good I didn’t hear the words
I would’ve died of grief
But all those years—
I served!
____
I wipe my eyes on the reprieve
Spent some time—
on my release
in cold gusts by the shore
where there’s room-- so finally
to breathe
Lifted my eyes into
the risk of clouds
the withered sun
If wind and sorrow
share the tears
that have returned
I figure...
so can we...
...share love
in a large room
knocking down guilt’s darkest walls
where souls make jails to keep from getting free
...Let them find each other there
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 5:24 AM UTC
Wired within us by nature or nurture we feel this thing
The one that stops the clock, mind and rewrites decision codes
The strong get weak at it and sometimes it uplifts the weak
Even when you say no, build defense walls, and inject yourself with a universal immunity drug, it disregards all.
Is it unstoppable or we're just yet to find the solution.
The antidote to it has been more of a placebo
Do we even need a solution at all for something that all who don't have want to have?
Maybe yes, cos the ones who land in the wrong jails of it cry out for freedom
Nobody seems to have the help
When it knocks and you ignore, it keeps knocking with persistence unimaginable
It gets frustrating and exciting sometimes to know it is love knocking again
May 8, 2017
May 8, 2017 at 10:26 AM UTC