The Warden and The Prisoner
The turbid air was a danseuse
Protecting my livid vision
I was in the deflating heart
Of this turbulent ocean
Of people living in direst—
Fixers without their fixes,
Journeymen fated to sojourn,
Poets of hallucinogenic riddles,
Mad men of mad realities,
And mad men of mad expectations.
From the latticed grills and sanguine floors
Silence spoke of emancipation
Blaring the lamentations in the palms
With the swansong of this requiem
Playing a vehement scherzo
Invoking a bad case of dysentery
To gyrate at the corners of my head
Churning the rusty gears to run
And the verdigris bled out
While the old knee winded
With a nail buried deep
Like a dagger in a shattering stone
Cloven docilely with a covenant
To seek refuge in redemption.
I rummage in the fathoms of darkness
Where the shadows pranced in saturnalia
As the light of the candle bobs the wick
And the wind howls a ghastly octave
Blowing the candle's light out
And the light left in an espionage
To incessantly haunt of hope
In the oppression of forever,
In the perpetuity of the vesper.
The warden winced at the prisoner
Surrounded by mongrels and scoundrels
And the sullied mirror unfurled
A vivid soliloquy capitulated
In the asylum of my head.
poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
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