Prison Pains

Little dots of orange

walking in a line.

Forgotten inside these walls of concrete and steel.

Some live with anger.

Others with regret.

Some are headstrong, while others barely feel.

Pictures on a wall,

stuck there with toothpaste.

Cause no tape is allowed.

People fading from your memories eye.

Stuck in the bleakness,

of the here and now.

Letters slow than cease.

As all they have to show,

for life is age.

Desperate for friendship and peace.

But stuck with,

prison politics and rage.

Miles away the world drums along.

Unaware of what is happening.

Yes they must pay the price for their sins.

But what good will this punishment bring.

It grows hate and nurtures fear.

It wipes out the human in us.

Oh yes they've paid the price for their sins.

But now, what do we do with empty human husks.

Reintegrate the battered mind?

Give counseling?

Find a trade?

They've been locked away

from society for so long,

their mind is lost inside that place.

So jails and prisons,

keep them out.

Of good, respectable, people's lives.

And jails and prisons,

take their humanity,

and keep it locked inside.

Yes you are safe while they are in.

But what causes me to doubt.

Did we create a monster,

much worse than before they came in?

And now we are letting them out.

A soul is precious, yes, even theirs.

Our God, he loves the lost.

To kill the soul,

so you can stop the body,

Who's left to pay that high a cost?

No one's to far from help.

As long as their heart keeps beating on.

For what good is locking away a shell,

When the soul inside is already gone?

F.C. Posey 12115

Reviews

[Tom]

An interestingly well thought out analogy on the merits of penal servitude/state incarceration !