Prison Letter

 

Sometimes I cannot find the right words to convey the deep emotions I have reading their words...

....I only hope one is touched as deeply

 

 

Prison Letter

 

M.A. Jones

 

 

You ask what it's like in here but there are no words for it.

I answer difficult, painful, that men die hearing their own voices. That answer isn't right though I tell you now

that prison is a room

where a man waits with his nerves

drawn tight as barbed wire, an afternoon

that continues for months, that rises

around his legs like water

until the man is insane

and thinks the afternoon is a lake:

blue water, whitecaps, an island

where he lies under pale sunlight, one

red gardenia growing from his hand-

 

But that's nor right either. There are no

flowers in these cells, no water

and I hold nothing in my hands

but feare, what lives

in the absence of light, emptying

from my body to fill the large darkness

rising like water up my legs:

 

It rises and there are no words for it

though I look for them, and turn

on light and watch it

fall like an open yellow shirt

over black water, the light holding

against the dark for just

an instant: against what trembles

in my throat, a particular fear

a word I have no words for.

 

Arizona State Prison-Perryville

Buckeye, Arizona