Straight To The Heart. By Sherri Whittaker
From Behind The Walls
These false orange disrobed
with which I was painted;
deceitful aural attack
and prevarification desist.
This narrow dwelling
is not sanctioned by the state
nor has the holy odor
of the small cell where
several people have ended their days.
Would I led such a life
instead of this existence,
with sweet pines of Carmel,
salt breeze, and farmers
too busy and tired for sin.
Steel shackles crack,
steel bars which cross my mind
and vision have been bent by force
to make an opening sufficient
for only hands to slide through.
The guards and warden
show little or no interest,
turning to cause another pain.
The big iron gates are locked;
I hide quietly behind a steel door.
Smug agents of probation,
misguided and perverted,
feign indignation at the escape
from their profit and low-life embrace.
Instructors of victims of the system,
to be corrected, accepting
a culture of dependency,
foreign to this land and good,
shameful in its dark corridors.
Ash, illness, stench, abuse,
and disregard of normal society,
politicized by rejects scattered
from towns and cities
where tradition rules,
right, commerce, mayor, and church.
My skin is pink of pumice stone,
soil drained without a thought
except of peace and freedom.
I am not too old
to contemplate a future
rinsed of oppression and vice.
It takes time to cleanse
the traces of hellish restraint,
the miasma of regret and muck,
some months of interim struggle.
For the first time in a generation,
I think of a different home
in a different city
new experiences, people, and places...
The hall is dry and dusty
beneath the turret-topped wall,
through corridors and tunnels,
and the walk is long.
My feet hurt.
I am cautious
for the very first time.
I live with a person
whom I know and and who is
unconcerned with this,who has a forward view,
is compassionate and full of grace,
with no thought of irritated talk,
anger, depression, the past,
prosperity, riches, social glee,
it's me all for her, and her for me.
© Copyright 2005 Spizod Sherri Lynn Whittaker 8/15/2005
with which I was painted;
deceitful aural attack
and prevarification desist.
This narrow dwelling
is not sanctioned by the state
nor has the holy odor
of the small cell where
several people have ended their days.
Would I led such a life
instead of this existence,
with sweet pines of Carmel,
salt breeze, and farmers
too busy and tired for sin.
Steel shackles crack,
steel bars which cross my mind
and vision have been bent by force
to make an opening sufficient
for only hands to slide through.
The guards and warden
show little or no interest,
turning to cause another pain.
The big iron gates are locked;
I hide quietly behind a steel door.
Smug agents of probation,
misguided and perverted,
feign indignation at the escape
from their profit and low-life embrace.
Instructors of victims of the system,
to be corrected, accepting
a culture of dependency,
foreign to this land and good,
shameful in its dark corridors.
Ash, illness, stench, abuse,
and disregard of normal society,
politicized by rejects scattered
from towns and cities
where tradition rules,
right, commerce, mayor, and church.
My skin is pink of pumice stone,
soil drained without a thought
except of peace and freedom.
I am not too old
to contemplate a future
rinsed of oppression and vice.
It takes time to cleanse
the traces of hellish restraint,
the miasma of regret and muck,
some months of interim struggle.
For the first time in a generation,
I think of a different home
in a different city
new experiences, people, and places...
The hall is dry and dusty
beneath the turret-topped wall,
through corridors and tunnels,
and the walk is long.
My feet hurt.
I am cautious
for the very first time.
I live with a person
whom I know and and who is
unconcerned with this,who has a forward view,
is compassionate and full of grace,
with no thought of irritated talk,
anger, depression, the past,
prosperity, riches, social glee,
it's me all for her, and her for me.
© Copyright 2005 Spizod Sherri Lynn Whittaker 8/15/2005
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From Behind The Walls
From Behind The Walls
