One - Way Ticket
ONE-WAY TICKET
Whoever wrote the adage -
Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage -
Obviously never spent a life-sentence in solitary - an age.
With nothing to act as time’s gauge
Save heartbeats which tick their way through the bondage;
With no family to the pain assuage;
No hope for marriage;
And less for a small cottage;
Or passing evenings with cribbage.
I turn my book’s story page-by-page
And examine each stage
With no remote feeling of courage
But a repressed longing which would enrage
A saint, a scholar, a sage
Who tries to think about, to engage,
My situation; and to manage
To find a reason for these steel-bars’ tutelage;
To explain my life’s stoppage;
To justify all the psycho-emotional shortage;
To comfort me with my hopes’ slippage
On this slow one-way voyage
Where the last dreary stage
Is death - which is for sin, the wage.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Written for Miranda Lambert’s Contest BEHIND BARS BLUES
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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