About the Poetry Blog
The poets featured on this page are currently incarcerated, and many of them are in federal prisons far from home. Your feedback is a valuable source of motivation and connection to the outside community. These messages will be passed on directly to the author. Comments may not appear immediately on the site, as our team processes them to mail to the poets.
Click on the poem title to open it up, and then post your comments, feedback, and encouragement in the space below the poem.
Mirror
By DC
Forever seemed like never
Until pain found my doorstep
Some lines I leave lingering
Because I never want you to think less
Life is so impressive once you inherit this perception
Forced in different directions
But in every field I’ve been accepted
Maybe because my soul stayed pure
Or my differences from the rest I never let interfere
I hung love in the closet and put happiness on my back
Hid pain in a place I’ll never want to go to get it back
Address me right and your letter should reach its destination
I know workers with no occupations
And every second that’s been invested
Has been self destructive in various places
A dazed boxer was saved by a bell
A suicidal man was saved by religion
A lady that gave up on her dreams was saved by a vision
Now imagine you on the edge of that cliff
What’s going to save you from what’s tempting?
If
By JMA
If prisons
Lease our liberty
If seas
Rent our shores
If silence
Hustles penny songs
If power
Purchases helplessness
Then into this world
I step renewed
To float unbound
Cocooned in pleasure, in pain
Not yet spent
Comprehend, contained
A desperate paradigm
Unknown, unborn, untainted
If this time
I can love myself enough to live
War Child
By NH
Inspired by the book War Child by Emmanuel Jal
Oh War Child,
look at what you have become
Oppressed by a system that forced you to become wild
In the merge of guns and a mind that has no conscious
you have become a war child
Seeing blood flow from out the flesh of another has no case in your file
it’s just another memory that been shot
Pow!!!!
Oh War Child
Yes, you, African boy
You’ve been dredged from the hands of your sweet mother
and now look at you
angry by the fault of your circumstances
so you have no care in this world because you feel that you are on your own
but you are not alone.
Yes I feel the pain that trickles my soul
the war that replays in my mind is long lasting it never seem to get old.
Watching the bloodbath of my brothers drown them to death has triggered me
to become cold.
Oh War Child
look at what I have become
guns was my expression of the g code
and the fault of me being away from my sweet mother
has put me in depression of the survivor mode
Frustration has ruled my thoughts
all my effort to find a way out had seem to led to naught
There was no place for freedom
I was caught up in the system of oppression but
Oh War Child
you are not alone
I too am looking to find a way out
You Define Me
By JM
You take the weight of my world on your shoulders
See visions of a past life inside your head
You’re always welcoming when there’s a need to be held
Quell your frustrations between my legs
You’re something
When you ain’t got nothing else
Demand the truth, even when you lie to yourself
And self; is awed, by your style and grace
Your positive temperament
Your humble haste
You don’t ever complain
You possess the strength of which is famed
You take so much
Letters and phone calls
No matter what, you stay in touch
You are the vision when it’s hard to see
You see past the rest, optimistically
Do your best to hold things together
You hold it down
No matter
Whatever
You define me
You don’t care what people say
As years went by
You made me stay
You made me spend all those nights alone trying
You kept me alive
When everything else was dying
Essential
Necessary
The way you made me feel
Felt you in the past
Sometimes stronger
Always real
Never felt so much of you in the heart
And what is gained
Can never be taken apart
You define me…
HOPE!!
A Father’s Long Walk with Reality
By SH
Smacked by an enormous impact of shame
Brain drained from searching unchartered memories
Those times that will never be sitting in the depths of me
Consumed by my own cocoon
Burdened by my unfit deeds
Those responsibilities that I failed to meet
Makes it hard to face the mirror’s reflection,
That’s suggesting I tie up the loose ends
Begin again like those yesteryears never happened
Yet, I’m still haunted by my actions and my nightmares
Leave me drenched in my children’s tears
This distance can’t comfort confused fear
Or change how they truly feel
The wonderment hurts like self-imposed punishment
While my children shoulder the blame and their mothers
Picked up the weight of my mistakes
Left feeling like a lamebrain trying to explain away the pain
Painting a paradox of how life is give and take
That wrong and right are the two roads of reality
But my love wasn’t enough to keep me home and they’re feeling
Like they did something wrong
Cause I wasn’t there when they needed me the most
Never seen them learn, never watched them grow
My presence holds the essence of a ghost
And my name is all they’ve ever known
Since infant to full grown
I was just a figment of their imagination and they easily erased it
Replaced it–with their own image of a glorified hero
Making him better than me–smarter than me
More swag than I had
With more virtue than can fill a paper bag
And I’m cool with that as long as they don’t
Follow in my footsteps
Wishing that one day all this will make sense
A father’s long walk with reality
Refugee Life
By AG
Run that’s the first lesson
You learn where I’m from
To hell with kingdom will come
Run or you’ll be captured or tortured
By rebels with big guns, they want diamonds, tons and tons
Killing anybody children even nuns
No picks we all die
No mercy we all cry, and wonder why?
Help? Only refuge is suicide
Mediterranean Sea, is the place we said to meet
I’m so tired and these cuts from rocks hurt my feet
I need to get there fast, but I’m so weak
Hopefully they give me water, even better something to eat
Finally time to reap what my heart has sow
get on the savior AKA the boat
Pray, and paddle, to place I don’t know,
Somewhere, anywhere
But Sierra Leone
Fall
By WD
I would rather rise
Than fall in love
Or fall into the trap
That makes the gap
In heaven’s gate, separate
Here I wait
For the fall of all enthralled
In destruction
To trust in reproduction
Is to wish in what will cease to exist
A raised fist
Is symbolic of how I stand erect
With the effect to make walls stretch
Intellect can never be confined
Ahead of time
Is where we should be
And if we didn’t fall
We would be
But that’s neither here nor there
Because where we are right now
Is all that matters
And looking back won’t change matters
So disregard the fall of all that are here now
And what you hear now
Is me making the fog clear now
Meditate
My Tormenter
By TC
Once warmer than the deserts of the Sudan
Now colder than an Arctic blizzard
Winds so sharp like daggers to the face
Lost to everything like an asteroid floating through space
Cold and darkness all around
No type of warmth or light could be found
The cold becomes comfort
The darkness becomes virtuous
Pain no longer hurts
Emotion no longer exists
Torn between what was and what is
Feeling anguish of what if
Tears dried up
All deceit, no trust
Travail becomes pleasure
No longer thinking when we were together
Love…my tormenter
So I became numb to it
I cut my heart out and tossed it in the trench
Positive it would never be found
For I don’t ever want to feel this love again
My tormenter, who was once my friend
My Helping Hands
By AW
It’s always something it’s our daily struggles.
It don’t matter if it’s money, jobs
Or even walking to work
We all strive to make things work.
Place into situations
Trying to figure out how things would work.
I ain’t into a lot of things
That will make people hurt
If the message I make clear to see
If I can take away the hurt,
Pain, agony so much things
That would be a tragedy.
Over 50 million people would love
To be a rapper or movie star.
Some folks love who they are;
If you believe in yourself
You’ll be your own shooting star.
So let’s not take things too far
And pause and make a wish
And try to catch that shooting star
You better know your dreams aren’t too far
So listen to your heart
And it will show you where to start.
I hope you love
Being your own star.
Tears of Hope
By LG
Dedicated to Free Minds Volunteers
Poetry bleeding from my instrument
Staining my canvas for years
Generosity pouring from my peers
Transforming my hope into tears
It seems like it was just yesterday
When I realized this wonderful gift
Ever since I opened my present
My life has taken a shift
When your desire for something is strong
The manifestation will come to pass
Uncontrollable emotions
As you say to yourself, “At last”!
Cursed since my incarceration
now blessed and highly favored
Indebted to a Free Mind
This taste will forever be savored
After a finished masterpiece
I step back and stare in awe
All thanks and glory to god
For a talent I never foresaw
Eager to encourage the world
I humbled myself with joy
With passion to strengthen the weak
Into a fortress no one can destroy
It’s hard to express with words
But thank you for giving me hope
My tears describe my emotion
As a brilliant kaleidoscope
Police Terrorism
By JM
Installing fear and terror in the minds and hearts
Of mothers and little children
Fearing one day they’ll get the call
That their son or father has become a murder victim
It’s a shame, who knows if this will stop
Being young and black in Amerikkka
My thoughts are, “Will I get slain by a cop?”
Police brutality
Has evolved into mass police terrorism
This is the harsh reality
Look at the times in which we’re living
Police getting away with murder
Never having to see a day in prison
It’s everywhere for the world to see
Via the Internet and television
So many hearts and homes are broken
With the terror of breaking news
Police abusing their authority
How many lives must we lose???
For several generations
Countless lives have been taken by the hands of the police
Police terrorism will cease
Once love overcomes hate
And then maybe we’ll find peace
Until then, it’s Just Us
Looking and fighting for Justice…….
Mirror
By DJ
Sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t
Recognize the reflection looking back
I wish I could back track rewind my actions
For the past decade
All of my problems seem to be man-made
I’m losing my identity trying to seem strong
When everything around me is wrong
In the pen struggling trapping
What the f*** happened to my life
I know it’s not the end
I just can’t wait for the good times to begin
I can’t even slow down jumping from plan to plan
Chasing that million dollar dream, Get rich quick scheme
In a place where your only escape is through a book
When I look in the mirror I see eyes dark from so much pain
It’s a miracle I’m not insane
I don’t remember the man that use to laugh and joke
And brighten up everyone’s day
Through this pen and pad I release my rage
One day I’ll be free from this cage
And the mirror will know me then