New Work from Northern State Correctional in Newport, VT (First of 3)

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“This Too Shall Pass”
by Anonymous
Northern State Correctional Facility

 This too shall pass

The words were scratched onto a piece of notebook paper

Yellowed with water stains and cigarette smoke

Arriving at my prison cell as I begin a sojourn through hell

That will last twenty years.

 

Tears burn at the corner of my eyes

So much the powder in the corners of the paper

Scored off the yard, used up and disintegrating in toilet water.

The high too shall pass

Like the sands of time that is my life

But will the agony pass as well?

I think not.

 

But with the parting words of the hope-lost lover,

It seems that my path should change.

Must change.

Or sacrifice the empty carapace of the life I have left.

 

This too shall pass.

The demons once fallen will never rise again.

Unless I continue to place them with powder and paper

Disintegrating with my life in the toilet water.

One crumple paper must be the last,

It must be I who removes the damage

And ends the chaotic cycle of decay.

 

“For Too Long”
by Anonymous
Northern State Correctional Facility

 

For too long have the waters

Raged above my head.

Sunlight trickles through

Angel hair thin.

It sears my pale skin

And my night-blinded eyes.

 

I am drowned beneath

These crashing waves

Scrambling for the surface

Unsure of what the land will bring.

 

Breaking the surface,

I taste air as if for the first time.

Now it’s my turn.

Too long have I been claimed

By the shadowy depths

Threatened to be smothered

Into futile oblivion.

 

No.

I cast aside

The velvet cloak of delirium

And choose once more to stand.

 

“Do You Know?”
by Anonymous
Northern State Correctional Facility

 

Do you know what I just heard?

Do you know what he’s in for?

Do you know what he is?

After being cast out of the light of society

One would think to find some commonality,

If not some comaraderie,

Amongst the dregs of humanity.

Yet we squabble to find who is first

Among the last

Who is king

Of the garbage heap

Never mind that we are all the same

To those beyond these four walls.

The word “inmate” is said through gritted teeth

Like a racial slur.

“Inmate lives don’t matter”

“They make their own beds”

And to no one do we have recourse

Because who would listen to the voice of a monster

Let they find that we all

Make our own beds

And that we aren’t so different after all.

Gary MillerComment