Life Sentence Poems | Examples


List of Member Poems

Premium Member Life Sentence on Death Row

Back and forth the monkey paces 
Alone is his small backyard cage. 
He did not make his cramped cage,
But the small cage makes him. 
Far away, he sees children in a park 
Running free and laughing. 
He also sees birds flying free 
And singing far from his small cage. 
But in his barred cramped world, 
He can only take short paces 
Then swing rhythmically back and forth, 
Back and forth, among the bars, 
From day to day and year to year. 
The monkey does not laugh or sing, 
And no one plays with him. 
Long ago, when he was young,  
He ran free in a jungle with his brothers. 
But now, he only takes short paces 
Then swings back and forth, 
And back and forth, 
Waiting for a solitary death 
That may not come for years.

Life Sentence

Holding my head in my hands for two years.
Fooled me so often, don’t know him in mirrors. 
He’s crude and forgotten and fattened with fear.
Surely, I’m better than what I see here.

Is there a place where disgrace is best faced?
Chased family and friends in case they embrace
Me, erasing escaping in the first place just tames.

See what sins begin spilling willingly,
When filling with the chilling possibility,
that I’m admitting living miserably.
Killing more fitting than forgiving me.

Life Sentence

What is a life sentence?
Is it when a judge castes years upon your life?
Locked away behind medal bars,
With no chance of parole.
Or is it being born without question?
Your fate is in your own hands.
Whatever your wrongdoing is,
Comes back to you tenfold.
A life sentence,
With out the chance of parole,
Is the very life sentence you are living at this very moment.
Without those heavy steal bars,
Under lock and key.
Your free to roam,
Where ever that maybe.
But what ever wrong doing you have created,
You will have to answer to your own hands of fait.
It could be a painful sentence,
With years added on to your mortal life.
Or your life sentence can end quickly and painless,
With your very last breath.


Life Sentence

After the diagnosis,
each moment a dream
of years and then months
and days in between

After the surgery,
the dream became real
time again captured
—the sentence repealed

(The New Room: December, 2021)

Premium Member Life Sentence

We are all serving a life sentence of solitary confinement,
imprisoned within the boundaries of our own skin.

Premium Member Life Sentence

The needle slides in
Like a petrified snake
The dope shot in,
Time is a fake
But it's his break.
Oblivion sets in.
Content he dreams
Of far off misty lands
sweet musk, delicious tastes.
Oh heavenly dope, how it redeems!
 
Suddenly he wakes.
There's no one near him to care.
No one to kiss with love so rare.
Around is silence,
Deadly and bare
He wipes away a tear.
Time has passed quickly,
The sands in the hourly glass pass by.
Breath smothers him.
Wearily he drags himself
Towards his boring day 
A prisoner for life.


Life Sentence

life sentence 
I can’t go on with my life in addiction 
How can I ever have any kind of relations 

A week a month a year 
I really have no idea
It’s all the not knowing 
That’s stops life growling 
You build it all up 
begin to restore 
All the love and respect 
from your family once more 

There’s is no sane or sensible explanation 
Just another day when 
Your living in addiction 

I can not promise 
I can give no guarantee
all your worries and fear
I can never remove or relieve 

No one can live with that uncertainty 
No faith and stability 
Chance after chance you gave to me 

I was so blind I just didn’t see 
I was killing all you had inside for me
The saddest thing about addiction 
Is all your loved ones get caught in your affliction 

Most of me can be heeled 
addiction  though can’t be killed 
So what ever Treatment I decide 
addiction will forever be right by my side

Life Sentence

Life Sentence

 American picked up at Cambridge, 
 Astonishedly could not explain it.
 Was he guilty?  No doubt.
 He ran off at the mouth,
 And utterly killed the King's English.

Life Sentence

All my mind sees,
Is what you pray yours won't have to;
The things avoided,
with routine to distract you.
The sick and twisted nature of mankind,
The space,  the earth,  and any creatures divine,
The plagues,  the wrath,  the mindset of suicide,
But Most importantly,
what of when we die?.

I beg the stars all to unite, 
I hope for day,  in this endless night.
I wish away, all the thoughts of fright, 
It never works, I just pray it might.

All I desire, 
Is a change of conciousness.
Engulfed in fire,
Tell me what my problem is.
I need some closure, 
In this life of irony.
My mind finds,
then just as quickly leaves me.
Given such vision, 
But somehow still blind,
Translucent prison,
A sentence of life.

I beg the stars all to unite, 
I hope for day,  in this endless night.
I wish away, all the thoughts of fright, 
It never works, I just pray it might.

Premium Member Where a Life Sentence Should Be For Life - Emotive Write

I hope you rot in hell
In your prison cell

They should throw away the key
You should NEVER be set free

You were in a position of trust
Where you satisfied your lust

For you brutally defiled
Many an innocent child

You blamed your ‘immaturity’
For robbing children of their purity

I hope you rot in hell
In your prison cell

They should throw away the key
You should NEVER be set free

Based on a current news story which has upset me so much I got up at 4am to write this poem

06~04~16

Premium Member Eternal Life Sentence

Lord Jesus Christ is my number one love
no one or nothing else can compare
He is the greatest lover of all
one so beautiful yet exceedingly rare

Jesus has loved me from eternity past
promising to do so forever more
He indeed is fairest of ten thousand
lovers together heavenly we'll soar

What a sentence to be given
for a blessing of a crime
wish spiritual jails were filled
staying there to keep us in our prime

O wish there were more Jesus lovers
these that had their eyes open
to clearly see the saviour divine
the one that fills hearts hoping

May I love Him all of my days
being ready for our heavenly dance
when we'll skip His light fantastic
together then in everlasting trance

A Life Sentence

Dear freedom, your sweet innocent voice seems
Now like a distant echo, lost in the wind.
Hopes lost in a set of broken dreams,
With heavy chains, to your heart of stone pinned.

Day by day, night by night, without an end in sight,
Tortured by the ravaging beak of time, flying
With wings of solit'de, displaying its might, 
And hatred-filled eyes, watching me dying. 

These chains around my heart like a vicious snake
Poisoning my soul with darkness and despair. 
A dreadful nightmare from which I will wake
And look into destiny's most wicked glare. 

I stand under shadows cast by heaven's light,
And into sleep I fade, witho't a fight.

A Life Sentence

You breathe, you cry, you laugh , 
you learn, you fail, you wither, you die.

Life Sentence

We’re doing time on planet earth, 
our sentence started right at birth 

The sentence is, we’re here for life 
and with mistakes it will be rife 

The sentence cannot be commuted – 
We’re here ‘til to dust we’ve been transmuted 

We’re sentenced here with other lifers 
& follow each our own Pied Pipers 

We walk our paths from birth to death 
marking time with each drawn breath 

& when our sentence comes to end, 
we hope to heaven we’ll ascend 

Where, free from being bound in time, 
we’ll start to know a joy sublime 
 
And see that real life never dies – 
we just transform like butterflies 

We’ll lay aside our outer shells 
and rise above our private hells

Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.

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