Paroled

[theirishsea]

until the warden comes
turns the rusty lock
the cell gate
like a shower stall door
slides
and I walk to the heavy man's office
he gives me back my keys to poetry
tells me I'm on parole
I sit despondent
questioning my every word
and the sentence

I hear the clanking of keys
I am taken to his office
a spider web is in one corner of the ceiling
he has no papers on his desk
one of those clean desk freaks
he looks at me paternally
sighs his fatherly God-like words
gives me a talk I don't hear
mostly I sit with downcast eyes
shift in my seat some
trying to settle into comfort
yes, I know "be good."
let your inner critic go
long enough to free imagination
and that crazy brain that goes off
on what other people call tangents

you sit and you remind yourself
you seem like that New Zealand poet
some years ago
but he was bi-polar
you are just singularly
an adult crowded out
inside your head by the inner child
you don't mind that
you like to play
the warden is all business
don't look in his eyes
he will know you have not reformed
even as old as you are
your inner child says
"that is pretty old"

and so here we are
a confession in front of me
the warden says "remember"
that word has a past and a future
I had signed this confession
but I didn't leave my middle name
I don't wholly subscribe
to what I say
the lawbreaker is too adolescent
to ever sign his middle name

[saw]

has kind of Spencer Tracy as an old Irish priest feel to it....and seems to speak of the censorship we have talked about on other threads...the imagery is vivid, like those old 40's movies.....dark, dramatic