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