Old Time Prisoners Poem
Step into my body,
Take a trip with me.
Take a look at my world,
See the things that I see.
Slip inside my heart,
Feel what I feel.
The anger, pain, loneliness,
And sadness is all so real.
Walk the corridors of hopelessness
That fill these walls.
Hear the woeful, muffled cries
That I know so well.
Now return to your world,
Away from this nightmare of hell,
And be the same person you were.
Tell me if you can!
Freedom and Pain
I stand in the vastness,
The sea in front and sand behind,
A seagull soars and a crab tries to hide.
I feel small surrounded by such grandeur.
My spirit flies with seagulls
And knows freedom with no limit;
My heart hides with the crab
As it creeps to the edge and can go no further.
It disappears in the small cramped space for one,
Just as I can go no further than wire mesh
And retreat into my own shell, a cell,
Where darkness surrounds, fear paralyzes,
And pain reigns.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.
Old Time Prisoners Poem
