Inmate Authored Poem

Manifesto

Never silent
We lived so hard
And so authentically
We decided
To Write our lives
My fellow poets
Our hearts shake the world
A constant tremor
We heard the call
And chose not to remain
Silent
Now they have our
Hearts in their hands
This is how we pulled them
Into The Conversation

No wrong
Just Write

A matter of survival
Expressed with style
The world is full of weapons
We chose
To split the atom
With words
Vaporizing our worst enemy
Ourselves

We hold the keys
To our mental prison
the thousand separate
Islands of our despair
In a world full of pain
We chose poetry

And became masters
Of the healing art
Beginning with ourselves
The sickest patients
We wrote out the prescription

A world of drugs
We recommend words
You can spit them out
If you don’t like the
Way they go down.

We realized our lifetime goal:
To get high enough
To escape Earth’s atmosphere
We soared
And crashed
Just to tell you what it’s like
Up there
Madness is no longer an escape
Go there and find us
Waiting for you
Saying:

No Wrong
Just Write

You pioneers
Of following
You Onanistic
Voyeurs
You superstar
Stranded in last year’s
Deflated kicks
You unique copy
You ignored idol
You stolen gift
Based on a true story…
So it’s not a complete lie…
Here we are.

-RW