Prisons Poems | Examples

Raped and Assaulted in Florida Prisons

they chain you up
strip you down
the lights never go off—
just the screams shift
to new throats.

the guards play blind,
or worse, they bet
on who breaks first.

some poor bastard
bleeds in the shower
and another one
learns not to cry too loud.

this place doesn’t correct—
it cultivates.
grows men like tumors
full of rage,
their names erased,
but not their pain.

you let them rot
in filth and fire,
then send them home—
like matchsticks
snapped and ready to burn,
now all they want is revenge.

We built their prisons from their own blood

Their blood was the poison that would kill them 
Their presence blinding 
That's why they hate them
They come too close and try to touch them 
But they didn't know that we are the sun
That trying to block out the sun
Would become their biggest problem

Actions have consequences 
And we were their karma 
The one thing they can't have our colour
Their envy would be their downfall
The sun feeds the earth its energy 
So when you take it away, you better hope it has empathy
Or maybe we should take a leaf out of your book and show no mercy

Revenge is a dish best served with a side of justice
If you haven't realised yet we are the sun
We will burn of your skin until your flesh and bone
And drown you in a pool of your blood 
So that you understood 
That we all bleed red and to dismantle your victimhood
And now we watch you struggle in a prison of your own blood

Glass Prisons

Man—  
born to think freely,  
now trapped in a prison of pixels.  

Facebook—  
a wasteland of worthless chatter,  
where minds rot in the soil of mediocrity,  
graves of shallow likes and empty words.  

Telegram—  
a playground for the desperate,  
lust clothed in secrecy,  
hands searching for meaning,  
finding only silence.  

TikTok—  
a parade of fools,  
dancing for scraps of validation,  
feeding off the carcass of real life,  
while the world spins into chaos.  

WhatsApp—  
a pit of beggars and sycophants,  
lives traded for coins,  
desperation dripping from every message,  
humanity stripped for change.  

Twitter—  
a battlefield of blind warriors,  
fighting wars that don’t exist,  
spitting out opinions like venom,  
while the world keeps turning—unmoved.  

Man—  
meant to think,  
to feel,  
to change the world,  
now reduced to a slave of the screen.  

Unsocial.  
Unpolitical.  
Doomed to stare,  
to scroll,  
to rot in glass den 
Break the screens.
Burn the cages.
Find your mind again.

The Cruelest Prisons

Impenetrable fortresses built from the many stones of regret, 
re enforced with the concrete mistakes we can never forget.
Confined within these walls only your guilt shall dwell.
The cruelest prisons are the ones that we build for ourselves.

Prisons of Promise

These walls.
These walls are strong in structure.
These walls are as cold as ice.
These walls bake in the summer sunshine.
These walls know our truths, our fears, our lies.

These walls witness our darkest dreams living.
These walls see our happiest smiles.
These walls watch our bodies weaken.
These walls hear our most painful cries.
These walls are not just bricks and mortar.
These walls are the prisons of promise we bought for our lives.

Prisons Long For Company

Prisons long for company,
Itching to swallow many;
One ruinous day and we are there,
In their confinement graduating to heir...
Simply an indictment mimicking a spear, 
Scarcely reckoning how to others we are dear.

One doesn’t have to be misdeeds haunted,
Our handcuffs not by our infractions prompted;
In deed any allegation at last alighting on your skull,
By this preparing you for an enclave offering a life dull;
Crime crackers the thing prodding further,
Clinching a chance rounding it off as murder:
Just for the sums that from bailing sprout,
The consoling thousand from  a pocket out.

Of Pockets and Prisons

Whole countries abide in my pockets.

Places that live in closets of cloth,
pokes, pouches, and nests hid darkly
as the cloistered and inert.

Mossy dens and dimples of lint they are,

until hands fumble for a castle,
a temple or even derelict homes;
then as fingers recall their shape
they reform to places
that can be entered again.

Once I was in a prison

I strode many lands
climbed horizons, journeyed by the light
of waymarking moons.
yet I was a prison within a prison.

I live in a small plot now,

it can be counted in feet not acres,
yet I own the whole sky,
I can only be measured
in expanding circles.

There are worlds in my pockets,

each one represents
a pebble picked from one beach
to take to another.

That other shore is not far now,

there I will empty those pockets,
all thoughts of time and place.

Prisons

Traversing veiled and hazy twilight sleep
My thoughts meander and begin to creep 
Through channels only visible at night
Unleashing fears kept harnessed by the light 


When faces reappear from deep within 
In shame, remorse enhances my chagrin
To face the truths of weakness hidden still
From those I’ve loved and lost through silent will


If I could only have just one more chance 
To speak the words I felt within this dance
I’d scream with all the courage I could find
And leave behind the prisons of my mind


How we regret, not just some things we do
Yet worse, those left undone though not meant to
Like saying, I love you, to those we love
To end up just in dreams with thoughts thereof

Prisons Are Not Made of Walls

Bricks and cement do not make walls for a prison
Only cruel minds and premeditation 
Is it not murder?
Is it not fraud and theft that locks one in?

Castles and Prisons Seem Cold

Castles and prisons seem cold 
High ceilings 
Icy walls 
Rules galore 
Who would want to live there? 
Not me. 
Princess or prisoner. 
I want neither role. 
Castles and prisons seem cold.

Prisons of Conceit

Confined within the steep banks of a narrow mind 

is a cryptic river where men stumble in and go blind

They construct reinforced dams that hold them back

from accepting the candid truth;  white is not black

Like the slow moving current of a trickling stream

their thoughts are clogged and clot like curdled cream


What chance do the recalcitrant ones have to accept

reality if they allow no vision of being circumspect

of taking fault and blame for having a closed mind?

These are the ignorant, the foolish ones aptly defined

as those destined to stagnate until they decompose

It's the subsequent end to the stubborn who oppose

a new premise or concept with which they don't agree

They rot inside prisons of conceit;  a human tragedy

The Cruelest Prisons

Impenetrable fortresses built from stones of regret,
reinforced with concrete mistakes we can never forget.
Confined within these walls only your guilt shall dwell.
The cruelest prisons are the ones that we build for ourselves.

In Prisons Brimming With Their Tears and Lost Gold

In Prisons Brimming With Their Tears And Lost Gold

Where does man heal his tired soul when old,
in black castles brimming with sad tears and gold?
Along rivers that ooze of his stinging dark pains,
imprisoned in shades of his misery and stains.

Lord knows we made our foul and blackened beds
filled them with savage cuts in our hard heads!
While we danced with world's greatest deceivers
in our shallow joys, begged we to be receivers!

Now our wicked souls cry for that sweet kindness
rare gems we cheerfully tossed away in our blindness
O' how we now beg to be given greater goals
such that will never again tarnish our weeping souls.

Where do bad men redeem broken spirits when old
in prisons brimming with their tears and lost gold?

Robert. J. Lindley, 4-23-2016

Note- Finished today, original started in May 1986...( a fragment)
Titled -- Dreams and Memories Lost, A Sad Look Back.
PARTS 1,2, and 3

This is part one. Parts two and three are both fragments-to be finished before I die--
if my muse leads me to the water to thus drink again..

In Prisons Brimming With Their Tears and Lost Gold

In Prisons Brimming With Their Tears And Lost Gold

Where does man heal his tired soul when old,
in black castles brimming with sad tears and gold?
Along rivers that ooze of his stinging dark pains,
imprisoned in shades of his misery and stains.

Lord knows we made our foul and blackened beds
filled them with savage cuts in our hard heads!
While we danced with world's greatest deceivers
in our shallow joys, begged we to be receivers!

Now our wicked souls cry for that sweet kindness
rare gems we cheerfully tossed away in our blindness
O' how we now beg to be given greater goals
such that will never again tarnish our weeping souls.

Where do bad men redeem broken spirits when old
in prisons brimming with their tears and lost gold?

Robert. J. Lindley, 4-23-2016

Note- Finished today, original started in May 1986...( a fragment)
Titled -- Dreams and Memories Lost, A Sad Look Back.
PARTS 1,2, and 3

This is part one. Parts two and three are both fragments-to be finished before I die--
if my muse leads me to the water to thus drink again..

We All Have Our Prisons

Take care not to slip
Into that dark tunnel
Where vision narrows 
And focus is lost for 
Fate often waits to funnel
Us into places where lives
Are often randomly tossed

Guard well your free will
Beware of false visions
Be master of your domain
Tho’ few really do…
And know that we all
Have our own prisons
And all of our debts
…will come due…

• Short Prisons Poems
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• Long Prisons Poems
• Prisons Quotes