Saturday, May 03, 2003

My prison is my pain, My skin the walls.
My jailer is Vito "Slim" courage,
he is niether slim nor courageous.
I am in my cell alone,
solitary confinement.
My sentence is indefinite.
I was convicted by a tribunal I cannot see.
Is it the Holy Trinity?
or some evil force unknown?
Have I been convicted and sentenced unjustly?
Or am I guilty of sins unimaginable?
I have thought of escape but do not know were to start digging.
I dig through my past but seem to always come out somewhere deeper within the prison,
not outside into the fresh air and blue skies of freedom.
I sit alone in my cell and pray for the grace of a new beggining.
I can look through the bars of my cell and see my Wife and kids.
I see them playing and living and loving but cannot reach them.
I cannot give my son a piggyback ride,
or toss my daughter in the air and catch her in a bear hug.
I cannot make love to my wife through the confines of my cell.
Will I be in this prison for life or will I be parolled for good behavior?
There are many reasons why someone is sent away.
To keep them away from society to keep the innocent safe,
or they are jailed to rehabilitate them, to change them, to cure them.
Or they are locked up for mere punishment, to pay for there crimes.
Am I not good for society or am I being punished for some crime?
Can I be rehabilitated?
My spirit is confined within my prison, aching to soar free of restraint,
free to grow and thrive in the open air of life.
As Malcom X said "Only guilt admitted accepts truth."
What guilt should I admit? What did I do?
Some rot in prison, others are transformed.
Hamlet said "Denmark is a prison."
He, a prince, felt inprisoned in his world unable to change his cicumstances,
unable to make a choice to fight.
"O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. "
His mind held him in the hell he percieved.
Was it his choice to stay?
Or did the world conspire against him, doomed to live in misery no matter how educated he was?
"Nothing is either good nor bad but thinking makes it so."
Through every night there is a dawn, but can I see the sun come up?
Will this night last so long as to make me blind to the morning light?
Are the walls of my prison so thick as not to let any light through?
Do I care?