Freedom's Just Out My Window

[Bianca Alabaster]

< Poem written by me in a male persona.>

Freedom’s Just Out My Window

Feels like death row
stale air of hundreds near
closed in a cell near a window
my home for the tenth year

Noise so loud from all
the hundred voices and
guards yelling, cat calls
bars slamming – constant clangs

Concentrate, I must make
silence, or I will go mad
slowly, the quiet – mine to take
breathing, yes, peace is had

Listening now to the sounds
out the window, blowing
sweetly into my ears – wow;
distinct, click-clack on-going..

Women’s high heels, it must be!
tapping on the sidewalk
as she walks just below me
breathless, stricken, I can’t talk.

I inhale deeply to try and
catch her scent of perfume
I smell her hair and sigh
- my cell becomes our room.


© 3/24/2010

** I visit a prison that has "closed custody lifers" in it. I was walking on the sidewalk one day and a lady in front of me was wearing high heels. I wondered if the guys could hear her, because I can hear them through the window. I put my head inside a mans... or tried to anyways... I really saw "him" craving to smell her, wanting to see her with his imagination and be with her...

[billy]

(for me) the man in the poem doesn't come across as
someone who'd be doing a long time Bianca.
the story feels to nice if you know what i mean.
maybe it should be heavier or darker. jmo


though the last stanza is perfect.
thanks for

[addy]

I really, really like what you're trying to do with this piece, just the idea of it. You could add even more punch to it, I think. More than just trying to write from the perspective of a man, try to crawl into the skin and inside the head of a convicted man who hasn't seen a woman in ten years (assuming there are no lady prison guards)... his reaction to a sexy lady would probably be more passionate

[Bianca Alabaster]

They see plenty of female prison "officers" and I know men inside been there for over 10 years. They could be "not too nice" as you guys have put it, but they also haven't forgotten their tender side. They are very lonesome and I see them as fragile sparrows a little bit. Yes they are hard-core convicts who have done very bad things (you don't want to know) but they don't age inside, they are forever trapped in that 'year of their crime' and what it has done to them. I had a line in my head that I was thinking that the man was "feeling" that he thought of himself in Monster in an "ape house" - a gorilla who would beat up any other ape for the chance at that woman and he stood there crying as he smelled out that window.

[Touchstone]

I'm not up for much critiquing but this caught my eye:

...they don't age inside, they are forever trapped in that 'year of their crime'...

I think there's a poem in that (for you to write, not me )

[Bianca Alabaster]

hmm, something to think about indeed. thanks.

[addy]

agree with touchstone, that might also be an interesting emotional angle to explore

I do admit that I've never met anyone who has done or is doing that kind of hard time so I can't claim to accurately imagine what's in their head... but I suppose you're free as a writer to interpret it with that "gentle beast" angle if it really does ring true for you.

[Bianca Alabaster]

I might know something.... I'm married to a man who'se been down for 16 years. Beauty and the beast you might say. But he's beautiful and I'm the "moody beast" half the time - being melancholy and such, tis the poets mind. he he. He gets out this Tues the 17th. God changed him while he was inside into a genuine good soul, and I have known him for 4 years now. (Been married 3) he's my best friend.

We connect like no other person has ever truly known me before and I can't wait for our new life together. He writes poetry too, a little bit.

[addy]

Wow, you sound really good together Amazing, so happy for you guys.