Famous Long Prison Poems

Famous Long Prison Poems. Long Prison Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Prison long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 ( I )


for ‘JC’ of the TLS

Nightmare of metropolitan amalgam

Grand Hotel and myself as a guest there

Lost with my room rifled, my belongings scattered,

Purse, diary and vital list of numbers gone – 

Vague sad memories of mam n’dad

Leeds 1942 back-to-back with shared outside lav.

Hosannas of sweet May mornings

Whitsun glory of lilac blooming

Sixty years on I run and run

From death, from loss, from everyone.

Which are the paths I never ventured down,

Or would they, too, be vain?

O for the secret anima of Leeds girlhood

A thousand times better than snide attacks in the TLS

By ‘JC’. Fuck you, Jock, you should be ashamed,

Attacking Brenda Williams, who had a background

Worse than yours, an alcoholic schizophrenic father

And an Irish immigrant mother who died when Brenda was fifteen

But still she managed to read Proust on her day off

As a library girl, turned down by David Jenkins,

‘As rising star of the left’ for a place at Leeds

To read theology started her as a protest poet

Sitting out on the English lawn, mistaken for a snow sculpture

In the depths of winter.

Her sit-in protest lasted seven months,

Months, eight hours a day, her libellous verse scorching

The academic groves of Leeds in sheets by the thousand,

Mailed through the university's internal post. She...
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 'Twas in the year of 1650, and on the twenty-first of May,
The city of Edinburgh was put into a state of dismay
By the noise of drums and trumpets, which on the air arose,
That the great sound attracted the notice of Montrose. 

Who enquired at the Captain of the guard the cause of it,
Then the officer told him, as he thought most fit,
That the Parliament dreading an attempt might be made to rescue him,
The soldiers were called out to arms, and that had made the din. 

Do I, said Montrose, continue such a terror still?
Now when these good men are about my blood to spill,
But let them look to themselves, for after I am dead,
Their wicked consciences will be in continual dread. 

After partaking of a hearty breakfast, he commenced his toilet,
Which, in his greatest trouble, he seldom did forget.
And while in the act of combing his hair,
He was visited by the Clerk Register, who made him stare, 

When he told him he shouldn't be so particular with his head,
For in a few hours he would be dead;
But Montrose replied, While my head is my own I'll dress it at my ease,
And to-morrow, when it becomes yours, treat it as...
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 Who's she, that one in your arms?

She's the one I carried my bones to
and built a house that was just a cot
and built a life that was over an hour
and built a castle where no one lives
and built, in the end, a song
to go with the ceremony.

Why have you brought her here?
Why do you knock on my door
with your little stores and songs?

I had joined her the way a man joins
a woman and yet there was no place
for festivities or formalities
and these things matter to a woman
and, you see, we live in a cold climate
and are not permitted to kiss on the street
so I made up a song that wasn't true.
I made up a song called Marriage.

You come to me out of wedlock
and kick your foot on my stoop
and ask me to measure such things?

Never. Never. Not my real wife.
She's my real witch, my fork, my mare,
my mother of tears, my skirtful of hell,
the stamp of my sorrows, the stamp of my bruises
and also the children she might bear
and also a private place, a body of bones
that I would honestly buy, if I could buy,
that I would marry, if I could marry.

And should I torment you for that?
Each man...
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 1.1 "What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song? 
1.2 Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
1.3 Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
1.4 Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
1.5 And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain. 

1.6 It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
1.7 And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
1.8 It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
1.9 To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
1.10 To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
1.11 When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs. 

1.12 It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
1.13 To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
1.14 To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
1.15 To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house;
1.16 To rejoice in the blight that covers...
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 Could he have made Priscilla share 
The paradise that he had planned, 
Llewellyn would have loved his wife 
As well as any in the land. 

Could he have made Priscilla cease
To goad him for what God left out, 
Llewellyn would have been as mild 
As any we have read about. 

Could all have been as all was not, 
Llewellyn would have had no story;
He would have stayed a quiet man 
And gone his quiet way to glory. 

But howsoever mild he was 
Priscilla was implacable; 
And whatsoever timid hopes
He built—she found them, and they fell. 

And this went on, with intervals 
Of labored harmony between 
Resounding discords, till at last 
Llewellyn turned—as will be seen.

Priscilla, warmer than her name, 
And shriller than the sound of saws, 
Pursued Llewellyn once too far, 
Not knowing quite the man he was. 

The more she said, the fiercer clung
The stinging garment of his wrath; 
And this was all before the day 
When Time tossed roses in his path. 

Before the roses ever came 
Llewellyn had already risen.
The roses may have ruined him, 
They may have kept him out of prison. 

And she who brought them, being Fate, 
Made roses do the work of...
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RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines, 
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines; 
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare 
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air; 
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud, 
Where the fading twilight lingers, when the winds are wailing loud; 

Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines, 
Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens. 

Underneath these regal ridges - underneath the gnarly trees, 
I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely breeze! 
Sitting by an ancient casement, casting many a longing look 
Out across the hazy gloaming - out beyond the brawling brook! 
Over pathways leading skyward - over crag and swelling cone, 

Past long hillocks looking like to waves of ocean turned to stone; 
Yearning for a bliss unworldly, yearning for a brighter change, 
Yearning for the mystic Aidenn, built beyond this mountain range. 


Happy years, amongst these valleys, happy years have come and gone, 
And my youthful hopes and friendships withered with them one by one; 
Days and moments bearing onward many a bright and beauteous dream,...
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 Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass
Singing? and is it for sorrow of that which was
That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be?
For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing.
--Our lady of love by you is unbeholden;
For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden
Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; but we
That love, we know her more fair than anything.
--Is she a queen, having great gifts to give?
--Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live
Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain,
Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears;
And when she bids die he shall surely die.
And he shall leave all things under the sky
And go forth naked under sun and rain
And work and wait and watch out all his years.

--Hath she on earth no place of habitation?
--Age to age calling, nation answering nation,
Cries out, Where is she? and there is none to say;
For if she be not in the spirit of men,
For if in the inward soul she hath no place,
In vain they cry unto her, seeking her face,
In vain their mouths make much of her; for they
Cry with vain tongues, till the heart lives again.

--O ye that...
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 Mournful groans, as when a tempest lowers,
Echo from the dreary house of woe;
Death-notes rise from yonder minster's towers!
Bearing out a youth, they slowly go;
Yes! a youth--unripe yet for the bier,
Gathered in the spring-time of his days,
Thrilling yet with pulses strong and clear,
With the flame that in his bright eye plays--
Yes, a son--the idol of his mother,
(Oh, her mournful sigh shows that too well!)
Yes! my bosom-friend,--alas my brother!--
Up! each man the sad procession swell!

Do ye boast, ye pines, so gray and old,
Storms to brave, with thunderbolts to sport?
And, ye hills, that ye the heavens uphold?
And, ye heavens, that ye the suns support!
Boasts the graybeard, who on haughty deeds
As on billows, seeks perfection's height?
Boasts the hero, whom his prowess leads
Up to future glory's temple bright!
If the gnawing worms the floweret blast,
Who can madly think he'll ne'er decay?
Who above, below, can hope to last,
If the young man's life thus fleets away?

Joyously his days of youth so glad
Danced along, in rosy garb beclad,
And the world, the world was then so sweet!
And how kindly, how enchantingly
Smiled the future,--with what golden eye
Did life's paradise his moments greet!
While the tear his mother's eye escaped,
Under him the realm of shadows gaped
And the fates his thread began to...
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 Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here to Papa.
Sit on my knee.
I have kisses for the back of your neck.
A penny for your thoughts, Princess.
I will hunt them like an emerald.

Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as a honeysuckle.
Once
a king had a christening
for his daughter Briar Rose
and because he had only twelve gold plates
he asked only twelve fairies
to the grand event.
The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thing as straws,
her eyes burnt by cigarettes,
her uterus an empty teacup,
arrived with an evil gift.
She made this prophecy:
The princess shall prick herself
on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year
and then fall down dead.
Kaputt!
The court fell silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.

The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew...
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 Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
Thy had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
 neighborhood, looking for Jews.
They were not Jewish, they were Irish.
They brandished broken bottles, tough guys with blood on their
 lips, looking for Jews.
They intercepted Jewish boys walking alone and beat them up.
Sometimes they were content to chase a Jew and he could elude
 them by running away. They were happy just to see him run
 away. The coward! All Jews were yellow.
They spelled Jew with a small j jew.
And now they find out they are Jews themselves.
It happened at the time of the Spanish Inquisition.
To escape persecution, they pretended to convert to Christianity.
They came to this country and settled in the Southwest.
At some point oral tradition failed the family, and their
 secret faith died.
No one would ever have known if not for the bones that turned up
 on the dig.
A disaster. How could it have happened to them?
They are in a state of panic--at first.
Then they realize that it is the answer to their prayers.
They hasten to the synagogue or build new ones.
They are Jews at last!
They are free to marry other Jews,...
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 Near the village of Udorf, on the banks of the Rhine,
There lived a miller and his family, once on a time;
And there yet stands the mill in a state of decay,
And concerning the miller and his family, attend to my lay. 

The miller and his family went to Church one Sunday morn,
Leaving behind their darling child, the youngest born,
In charge of brave Hanchen, the servant maid,
A kind-hearted girl and not the least afraid. 

As Hanchen was engaged preparing dinner for the family
She chanced to turn round, and there she did see
Heinrich Bottler, her lover, and she sincerely loved him,
Then she instantly got him something to eat and bade him begin. 

And in the midst of her business she sat down beside him,
While he did justice to the meat and thought it no sin,
But while he was eating he let fall his knife,
Then he commanded Hanchen to pick it up or else he'd take her life. 

Then as she stooped down to pick up the knife,
The villain caught her by the throat, and swore he'd take her life,
Then he drew a dagger from under his coat,
Crying, tell me where your master's money is, or I'll cut your throat. 

And still...
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 I 

The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood 
Put me out of love with God. 
I can't believe in God's goodness; 
I can believe 
In many avenging gods. 
Most of all I believe 
In gods of bitter dullness, 
Cruel local gods 
Who scared my childhood. 

II 

I've seen people put 
A chrysalis in a match-box, 
"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come." 
But when it broke its shell 
It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison 
And tried to climb to the light 
For space to dry its wings. 

That's how I was. 
Somebody found my chrysalis 
And shut it in a match-box. 
My shrivelled wings were beaten, 
Shed their colours in dusty scales 
Before the box was opened 
For the moth to fly. 

III 

I hate that town; 
I hate the town I lived in when I was little; 
I hate to think of it. 
There wre always clouds, smoke, rain 
In that dingly little valley. 
It rained; it always rained. 
I think I never saw the sun until I was nine -- 
And then it was too late; 
Everything's too late after the first seven years. 

The long street we lived...
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"SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 
Comest to daunt me! 
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5 
But with thy fleshless palms 
Stretched, as if asking alms, 
Why dost thou haunt me?" 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10 
As when the Northern skies 
Gleam in December; 
And, like the water's flow 
Under December's snow, 
Came a dull voice of woe 15 
From the heart's chamber. 

"I was a Viking old! 
My deeds, though manifold, 
No Skald in song has told, 
No Saga taught thee! 20 
Take heed, that in thy verse 
Thou dost the tale rehearse, 
Else dread a dead man's curse; 
For this I sought thee. 

"Far in the Northern Land, 25 
By the wild Baltic's strand, 
I, with my childish hand, 
Tamed the gerfalcon; 
And, with my skates fast-bound, 
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, 30 
That the poor whimpering hound 
Trembled to walk on. 

"Oft to his frozen lair 
Tracked I the grisly bear, 
While from my path the hare 35 
Fled like a shadow; 
Oft through the forest dark 
Followed the were-wolf's bark, 
Until the soaring lark 
Sang from the meadow. 40 

"But when I...
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 On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa, 
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a 
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent 
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville 
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.

AUGUST REIN: 
from a last camp near St. Remy

 I dig in the soft earth all 
 afternoon, spacing the holes 
 a foot or so from the wall. 
 Tonight we eat potatoes, 
 tomorrow rice and carrots. 
 The earth here is like the earth 
 nowhere, ancient with wood rot. 
 How can anything come forth, 

 I wonder; and the days are 
 all alike, if there is more 
 than one day. If there is more 
 of this I will not endure. 
 I have grown so used to being 
 watched I can no longer sleep 
 without my watcher. The thing 
 I fought against, the dark cape, 

 crimsoned with terror that 
 I so hated comforts me now. 
 Thomas is dead; insanity, 
 prison, cowardice, or slow 
 inner capitulation 
...
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 Read by the poet at The Public Ceremonial of The Naional Institute 
of Arts and Letters at Carnegie Hall, New York, January 18th, 1941.

Great Muse, that from this hall absent for long
Hast never been, 
Great Muse of Song,
Colossal Muse of mighty Melody,
Vocal Calliope,
With thine august and contrapuntal brow
And thy vast throat builded for Harmony,
For the strict monumental pure design,
And the melodic line:
Be thou tonight with all beneath these rafters—be with me.
If I address thee in archaic style—
Words obsolete, words obsolescent,
It is that for a little while
The heart must, oh indeed must from this angry and out-rageous present
Itself withdraw
Into some past in which most crooked Evil,
Although quite certainly conceived and born, was not as yet the Law.

Archaic, or obsolescent at the least,
Be thy grave speaking and the careful words of thy clear song,
For the time wrongs us, and the words most common to our speech today
Salute and welcome to the feast
Conspicuous Evil— or against him all day long
Cry out, telling of ugly deeds and most uncommon wrong.

Be thou tonight with all beneath these rafters—be with me
But oh, be more with those who are not free.
Who, herded into prison camps all shame must suffer and all outrage see.
Where music is not...
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