Tag: words

the risen

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Time to post another ‘found poem,’ created from lines written during a single writing session inside. These go back to the week we read and responded to Maya Angelou’s “I Rise” poem. That poem elicited a lot of extremely powerful individual writing; taken together, lines from the minds and pens of many weave into a true battle cry:


From a past that is rooted in pain
always steered this way and that
I had to rise –
this was no good place to stay,
a constant state of eclipse.
After this journey I’ll never be the same.

I am the dream and the hope;
I carry possibility in the tip of my pen,
the wonderful absurdity of laughing through the tears,
daring to be bold.
I will not give up and not give in.

The bright lit midway’s
bitter twisted lies
loved me, couldn’t live without me?
Every addict ever known
passed that love along to all their friends. Continue reading →

‘the golden road’

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One of our writers, who has been a regular member of our writinginside group since February of this year, left prison just prior to this week’s circle. We are so proud of her ongoing hard work to heal herself through treatment before she returns to her home community. As a parting gift, she left the following poem asking us to share it with the group:

One last poem
as I prepare to go:
your words like gems
mean more than you’ll ever know.

So goodbye to you, my trusted friends,
people I’m lucky to have met;
my time is at an end
but you, I won’t forget.

From you I’ve learned so much
with all your sweet and funny ways –
you girls have got the touch;
in my heart you will stay. Continue reading →

connecting despite walls

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Last Thursday evening as I was leaving the prison late, I experienced one of those moments that touches a place almost too deep for words.

I happened to look through several layers of glass into a distant room. And there, standing a bit to one side in conversation, stood one of ‘my’ writers. She hasn’t written with us in our weekly writing circles for some time – she’s been on an emotional roller coaster for a while. Yet every time she HAS joined us, her writing has been powerful, raw, and (according to her own words) more valuable than any counseling session — because of the depth and immediacy of shared experience. She always thanked me for coming and appeared genuinely grateful for the chance to reflect on and learn from herself and others in the group.

Our eyes connected. I put my hand to my heart, patting a soft fist against my chest two to three times in a gesture I reserve for those I most care for, nodding as I did so with a smile. And SHE crossed both arms over HER chest, holding my gaze with tender intensity as her own head nodded ever so slightly.

The compassion that can pass through time, space, even glass prison walls – not to mention the enormous divide between us in terms of where we are in our lives . . . !

THIS is good work indeed.

my heart’s deepest craving

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If only we could all listen to these women inside Vermont’s prison, we’d discover, and quickly, that we are not so very different in what we want for our selves, our loved ones, our lives. The writer below addresses her yearning in simple and eloquent words:

to want to feel more than the immediate
to close my eyes and dream of more than sweet release
to hear and be heard
to touch the world with my words
to infect lives with laughter
to heal with naked truth
stripped down to a new beginning
one where the intro is worth reading
and the middle has real substance
where the end simply makes me crave
another page

JL

we are waiting for . . .

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What we want

. . .  a letting go, a blind falling . . . permission to breathe again . . . as if our whole lives depended on . . .

These phrases from Linda Pastan’s poem, “Interlude,” opened last week’s writing circle inside Vermont’s prison for women. The ten women around the table lifted pens, wrote without stopping for 20 minutes on yellow tablets, then shared their words — some with trepidation, some boldly, some with tenderness. After their words had been held and heard, we spoke back into the circle phrases that resonated with us. These ‘read-back’ lines became the material for the following ‘found’ poem, whose title is one of the lines:

I SIT ON THE EDGE

 moral fibers now frayed
force my shoulders to drop
teetering between my two selves
self-righteous self-loathing
twisted into shards
struggling to breathe
in the armor I construct for myself. Continue reading →