when the money is gone,
and they've taken everything away...
they padlocked your house,
and repoed your car...
the years have passed,
have taken their toll.
even the fires of love,
burned down to embers...
at the end of the day,
at the end of the road...
all you have left are the children.
they carry your heart
to a new day and a new world...
love the children!
every child that is born
carries the holy seed.
whatever it takes,
love the children!
a Jesus, a Buddha, a JFK,
a Gandhi, an Einstein,
a Whitman, a Jefferson...
maybe a stronger, better,
reflection of you!
love the children!
You are like me, you will die too, but not today:
you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:
if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been
set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost
radio, may never be an oil painting or
Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are
a concordance of person, number, voice,
and place, strawberries spread through your name
as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me
of some spring, the waters as cool and clear
(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),
which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:
and you are a lily, and aster, white trillium
or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star
in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving
from its earthwards journeys, here where there is
no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,
where there was snow), you are my right,
have come to be my night (your body takes on
the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep
becomes you): and you fall from the sky
with several flowers, words spill from your mouth
in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees
and seas have flown away, I call it
loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,
a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,
and free of any eden we can name.
I held your beautiful face
Within my two hands
On a sad day in Autumn.
I wiped away your tears,
Whispering softly in your ear:
"This can't be the end,
We'll be together again."...
I turned and walked away,
My plane waiting at the gate;
And when I was out of your sight,
I began to cry...
I cried so very much -
The lonely tears of a broken soul...
That sad Autumn morning,
My bags packed and ready to go;
You came into the bedroom
And found me crying...
I recall the cab ride to the airport,
Every place along the way;
A man painting a picture
On a beautiful Autumn day...
I held you in my arms under that warm sun,
My flight had been delaayed;
And we held each other closely
For the last few hours of our day.
Oh how I loved you,
And the deep friendship that we shared;
The touch of your soft skin
And the smell of your long blonde hair...
Yes,
I remember holding you in my arms,
And looking into your beautiful blue eyes
For the very last time...
I said that it couldn't be the end...
I had lied...
Jeg elsker dig, min smuk Kone, med alle min hjerte.
Bitter cold was the day -
You could see your breath in the air;
Shivering beneath a thin wool blanket
And the government jumpsuit that I wear.
The silence is haunting,
Interrupted only by footsteps down the hall;
I wish I had something to read
Besides the cries written on these walls.
My memories are all that I have now,
And a very tiny sliver of hope keeps me going;
I think that because of the cold
Outside this cell, it must be snowing.
I had to break the ice in the toilet,
This morning like every other;
And I wish I could tell someone of this frozen hell,
If even a phone call home to mother.
At meals, I can just see the eyes of my bro,
Through the tiny food slot in the cell across the way;
He's talking less and less,
And his eyes seem to die a little more every day.
I don't know how long we've been here;
It's been at least a month, I know,
Since the night they chained us up
And carried us down here from the hole.
I don't know how long I can hold on,
I'm feeling weaker with every single day;
But I know I must stay strong
For my dying brother across the way.
There's about thirty of us down here,
Maybe more, I just don't know;
They had us packed like sardines in the cellhouse -
Maybe a hundred or so?
We spent Christmas and New Years,
Four of us to a tiny prison cell;
Until that night they carried us down here,
One by one, to this frozen hell.
I'd only been in prison a few months
When a riot broke out one winter morning;
It was December nineteenth,
And the entire prison was taken over without warning.
National Guard and Federal Agents came,
My unit was the second one to be hit;
They fired tear gas canisters in on us,
And that was all she writ.
We couldn't breath and couldn't see -
Snot poured out our tortured nose;
And I got hit especially bad
From a canister fired in too close.
They beat us with clubs and tied up our wrists,
We surrendered without a fight;
And I was taken with some of my bros
To the old cellhouse late that night.
And now I'm in this ice cold cell,
My mind slowly slipping away;
And all I can do is try to hold on
As I try to survive just one more day.
I try to do anything to feel somehow alive,
I pace the length of this eight foot concrete floor;
I wait on the daily meals and a little warmth
When just three times a day they open that tiny slot
To feed us through that solid steel door.
Today,
I came to find a butterfly,
Fluttering in my window sill.
I gently captured her in my hands
And took her outside,
And I set her free.
She seemed to grab hold of a summer breeze,
And flew happily into the field.
And as I watched her fly freely away,
I thought to myself:
Had it been just yesterday
That this beautiful creature
Had been a lowly worm?
Today,
I came to sit beside the ocean shore,
And I watched the tide come in
Like so many times before.
It was your birthday yesterday
But you weren't here,
So I celebrated with a bottle of whiskey
And a tear...
I thought I smelled your perfume
Within the summer air;
But when I called out your name,
You weren't there....
I could hear baby birds in their nests
And their song of peace and love;
And for a brief moment I thought I heard you
From somewhere up above...
Things have gotten better,
And they say that's a start;
But I still miss my best friend
And the way you touched my heart.
