Outside The Wire by BJ Neblett

I taught Creative Writing, Poetry and ESL for a while to inmates in several federal prisons. While I like to believe my efforts touched and helped my students, I was the recipient of a very eye opening education. I came away from the experience with several new poems, material for more short stories, and a decidedly different outlook. Here is one of several poems I wrote from an insider's view point. If it frightens you... good! Be sure to like, link and comment.
Peace and love,
BJ

Outside The Wire

BJ Neblett

© 2007, 2014

Outside the wire

Sun shines warmer

Wind blows cooler

Air smells fresher

Life tastes sweeter

Outside the wire

Rivers sing

Flowers dance

Children wish

Mothers pray

Beyond the wire

A blood red sun

crosshatched with chain link

and razor wire

surrenders to an indifferent world

while a bloodied fourteen year old

pot marked with scars and tracks

and tags and tears

surrenders to the blue crush

of cold steel and sequestered dreams.

Beyond the wire

idealism is the commodity

compassion the cost

Folsom

Huntsville

Attica

Eastern State

Dachau

Inside the wire

Smiles are painted

Eyes are tainted

Minds are gelid

Hearts are hardened

Inside the wire

the velvet carpet of night

swallows Sodom’s towers

retching out filth

and waste

mean streets and mean thoughts

a ribbon of highway

a smugglers agenda

life exists between

the ticks of the clock

the beats of the heart

in the darkness of souls

in the shadows of reality

Beyond the wire

amidst the myopic madden masses

the blind man leads

Jail

Prison

Lock up

Slammer

Death camp

Outside the wire

Birds sing

Grass grows

Bees sting

Snowflakes kiss

Amos Fuller Doesn't Speak by BJ Neblett

Amos Fuller Doesn’t Speak

(A winner 2007 Penn American Writing Program)

by BJ Neblett

© 2006, 2013

Amos Fuller doesn’t speak.
He sometimes sits with us when there is room,
His stark dinner tray occupying his private
quarter of the table.

His khakis are always neat and clean,
Wrinkle free, yet strangers to an iron;
His heavy black boots shiny and worn.
He never wears sweats, or sneakers, or
T shirt,
Just the same long sleeved uniform, winter
or summer.

If the salt and pepper are out of reach he
does without.
Sometimes one of us will place them in front
of him.
Then mashed potatoes become snow covered
mounds,
The single, thin slice of meat an ash laden
shingle.

Bent in posture yet proud in manner,
Amos Fuller doesn’t speak.
He wears his thinning Afro like a skull cap;
His withered brow reads like the rings of
a southern pine.

He bows his head in prayer, and raises it
in drink,
His vacant eyes prisoners to a different
time, a different place.
Fork clenched tightly in a rough arthritic
fist,
The lacking meal is meticulously
consumed:

           Dry green salad;
           Mean portion of rice or potatoes;
           Meat.
           Two glasses of water.
           Always the same.
           Never dessert.

Once there were cucumbers on his tray.
Halfway through the meal Amos Fuller
burped, expressionless.
He wiped his puffy brown lips
and continued to eat.

Someone said he murdered his wife and
her lover;
Their splattered mingled blood stained the
Curtains and carpet of the tired motel room.
That was 40 years ago,
The last time anyone heard Amos Fuller
speak.

Dinner was silent and tense tonight,
Eyes shifting about like butterflies.
I stood to leave, dropping a wrapped candy
mint on his spent tray.
He raised his blank face to mine,
and rapped his scarred knuckles on the
table.
Amos Fuller doesn’t speak.

                                                      

The Trouble With Walls by BJ Neblett

The Trouble With Walls

by BJ Neblett

© 2005, 2013

The trouble with walls is

            They can’t feel

They can’t distinguish between love and hate

They just keep things in as well as out

The trouble with walls is

            They have no eyes

No way to see the loss without

No way to know the soul within

The trouble with walls is

            They cannot taste

Outside the rain is as bitter

As the tears that are shed inside

The trouble with walls is

            They cannot hear

Longings of loved ones echo back into the night

The cries of despair are absorbed deep within

The trouble with walls is

            They have no heart

They know nothing of suffering

Have no capacity to understand

But even the strongest of walls are flawed

For they cannot contain the spirit of man

                                    Boston, MA

                                    June, 2005