Diurnal Prisoners

Diurnal Prisoners
by: Harrison Smith

“Them damn niggers,” he said. “I swear to godfrey, it’s a wonder we have as little trouble
with them as we do. Because why? Because they ain’t human.”
-William Faulkner, “Pantaloon in Black.”

Count the contusions on my blue-black back
That cake’n’clump the now white lasting lashes.
“Your snow streaked stripes, new signs of purity,” they say;
In truth my mass-marred etchings of each prison day.

My father torn away like a fresh scab
And tossed inside a splintered, seasick cell.
My mother their moan’n machine, her womb a cog,
To push the product out with flesh for steel.

A laughing mule? A somber hog?
I eat with fork and spoon, and drink from cups!
Where is the soiled hay– the bed for beasts!
Where is the fly-filled, tarnished trough– the fount for swine!

My skin my shackles and my chain-made yoke,
I wear my colour like a healthy leper.
We gnash at the flogging fever of the serrated sun,
And dreaming dance, soothed by the balmy moon.

We curse the cock, that plume punctured warden,
Who calls us crassly to our agony;
Then from our barless prisons coldly rise

To burn our backs beneath deaf-skies.

A poem in free verse.

In Vain I Plea to my Afflictions


Despair, living brother of Death,
Cease your sinister howls and sadist spells,
Untie all the nasty nooses that hang
Like thick weeping-willows in my maimed mind!

Jealousy, insidious jester of Sorrow,
Inject me not with your noxious serum,
Unstrap my organs from your electric chair,
And fill the pit burrowed deep in my stomach!

Temptation, fawning sophist of Sin,
Desist your sugar kisses and crooked whispers,
Unhook the tickling sickle that rips and rubs and tugs
Like black silk cat-claws upon my Flesh!

Lust, foul mutation of pure Love,
Drag me not into the jagged wasteland of vice,
Unlatch your parasites that prey upon my prudence,
And spare my passions; lest I become a rabid dog!

A poem written with a set meter (a few lines broken for emphasis) and rhyme.

The Cripple’s Dance


When my belov’d brother lay colder than Pluto in endless rest
A dragon claw shredded my anvil hermit heart
Of venomous Despair swelling inside my chest.
I daily yearned that Death at me would hurl his dreadful dart.

Carnivore fangs of Fate sawed off his trunks of bone,
His flesh bark stumps were sorely stuffed in wooden pegs.
Alone he kicked his stick cymbals together’n’sang low moans
While drowning his pleading liver with tipp’d bottles’n’dregs.

Returned, clear-chained to his chair, he longed the lovely lasses
And from a distance watched them kiss his former-friends.
At home he scolded his wood-legs with ‘jack’ slashes
Scorning the Lord– rejoiced his knees to Him could ne’er ‘gain bend.

In furious tears sometimes would attempt to walk around,
The blood from his bashed broken nose still stains the floor.
He forgot the feel of naked feet ‘pon green-ground;
Yearned to forget the soldier’s eyes who died on him in War.

His purple heart quickly turned black.
Mounds of broken bottle bits still infest his floor more numerous then sand.
“Brother, I’ve Failed!” I shout shackl’d to Guilt’s twisting rack...
My brother stole his own life with his own untrembling hands.

The Crucifixion from the eyes of a pagan enjoying the event like a parade or circus.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to You– “The Bloody Baptism!”


Upon each sin I flail the hammer down,
I craft barbed-wire-branches into a crown,
And ring that blood-soaked-skin until its dry.

I would have: Prayed to let my own kind from his kennel free,
Danced in the strawberry-sweat-stained robes,
Laughed at that shameful sign,

Called that clown down from his trapeze-less platform,
Mocked and gawked at that “Naked Body,”
Flogged with tongue’n’foot all those who with faith cried.

Angered when the skies spit lightning
And drooled much drops of rain
Ruining my foul circus.

A poem written in free verse. Semi-autobiographical except for the suicide by drowning part. The end alludes to Dante's Canto XIII.

The Black-Glass Sea


Birthed on this earth I could not properly breathe.
Though gill-less I should have stayed a silent shell
Inside that Sea.

In youthful years, alone, I visited salt-less liquid
On the shores on my own fleshy vambrace with pores for grains–
With silver tools cracking the ice, crushing blue stagnant snakes–
I swam in vital pools hued blind-bard’s dawn
That ran as vermillion veins.

In older years I mocked my cord that hooked my stomach
And stole me from that Sea:
I hooked my head inside a precious-pit
That swallowed me to sleep–
I dreamed I saw that Sea!
In dread I emerged from the mouth
And picked myself like strange-fruit from absent branches
As though I were like a tree.

In my last years, still young, I had wept enough
To drown the sea.
With stone-pockets and cannonball-ankles
I swam some depths
In hopes to find the Black-Glass Sea...

Then I awoke a talking tree.
Wicked birds like women with putrid plumes
Perched on my lacerated limbs
And pecked my bark that clung as new flesh
Draining my sanguine-sap.
Bitches barked, talons tore,
And still I groaned
For the Black-Glass Sea.

A poem written in meter with no rhyme, Its first title was "The Transformation of Love." I chnaged the tilte because the poem concerns more nostalgia

He Saw a Boy...He Saw Himself


He saw a Boy, green-stained, kicking a cat.
Running from giggling girls, feigning disgust.
Rubbing the fox hole dirt from his swollen
Knuckles. Swinging stick sword late for supper.

With sinking heart, though smile, he saw himself:

His smooth lamb hands giving a green-grass ring
With sun shaped diamond weed, they both blushing.
The children’s wedding in the woods,
Carving two sloppy names into a trunk.

He remembered her smooth red rose silk lips
The sweet youth taste of ten thousand kisses.
Both running from their sleeping homes at night
To meet in their green-bed of sleepless love.

His anxious hands sliding a gold-brown band.
Angel approaching altar, they both beaming,
Her glory veiled among gladdened silence.
Kissing like Death, feeling resurrection.

Time turned the green-grass brown and glory dim
Ploughing, pulling the skin, fading the rose.
Her silk frayed to prickly pines unplucked
And greyed enamel breath turned wine to vinegar.

Their bed was torn in two, haunting sep’rate
Havens. Her pixie pass– his heaven home–
Wore dry and desolate a shriveled pit
Where he refused to be buried.

Here's a poem concerning the guilt and self-mutilation of Oedipus Rex. Written in 4-2-4-2 meter.

I Am The King...


I had two eyes that wore a broach
Thirty times each
Until my greed for punishment
Made me black-blind.

My eyes were ripe seeing shame
So I plucked them
From their sour towers, eating
Them to their pits.

See my rotten sockets, like skull,
Living in Death.
Inside my empty holes, like graves,
I buried my shame.

Here's a poem of mine in free verse. Also about winter, though this time without snow.

Infernal Winter Without Snow

[Written from a third floor room with a large window that exposed nature clearly.]




I believe the time when nature looks most lurid
Is during the winter when the shriveled, starving leaves
Have all fallen.
It is afternoon. There hovers not one cloud in the sky.
The sky exhibits the ill-hue
Of an anorexic sallow blue.
The stripped palsy trees appear so sickly
Against the livid-murky background:
Their weathered trunks extending
Their aching arthritic branches
Upon the dimmest draft “creee-k”
Like an old dying man rocking
On his ancient whining chair.
Because the clouds are not present
The ‘blind’ sun’s rays are not blocked,
and because the temperature remains mild,
Generally cool and crisp– maybe numb cold–
The sun’s beams feel rather LUKEWARM,
Void of pleasant comfort and radiant delight.

Thus spoke the Angel of the Lord:
“I know thy works,
That thou are neither cold nor hot:
I would thou wert cold or hot!
So then because thou art LUKEWARM,
And neither cold nor hot,
I will spue thee out of my mouth.”

This poem of mine is written in blank verse (iambic pentameter with no rhyme scheme) sbout winter with snow.

Infernal Winter



“Cough, Cough” sounds the worn throat of the old man.
“Cough, Cough” sounds the fresh throat of the young child.
“Cough, Cough” sounds the quenched throat of the rich man.
“Cough, Cough” sounds the dry throat of the poor man.


O Winter, thou art the foulest season
Of all! With your pasty, dead-skin shaded
Showers that suffocate the verdant stalks
Of luscious grass so gay, so grandly green
So glad, with your pallid, blighting, bleak-drab;
Just as grey hairs suppress the youthful tint
Of shiny, sleek tresses august auburn
And hide the vernal hue that once flourished.
As though the whole heavens were filled with smog!
Grey-clouds, pollution-like, dense block all that is blue,
(Grey-days, grey-nights, grey-afternoons) swall’wing
The Gold-Sun’s radiant rays of basking warmth
And Pearl-Moon’s calm, bright beams serene
From ev’ryone. You savage strip the trees
Naked, leafless, make motionless, turning
Them to ghastly, gaunt skeletons–
Nature’s freakish scarecrows, for all the birds
Fast flee to thee Safe-South. Your stinging sleet
And snow does squelch all life, afflicting earth
As a wicked and harsh seas’nal Angel
Of Death, destroying crops, freezing water
Supply, sick-smothering ev’ry flower
That once stood proud in sheer vivid colour
Filling blissful gardens with heavenly perfumes.

Cold is weather in deepest tract of Hell.
Hell to the poor: homeless, heatless, helpless.
Unkind winter thou art the same climate
Of Death! The touch of Death feels just like thee!

This poem is written in iambic pentameter with a set rhyme scheme. If you'ver read or scene the play this poem would make a lot more sense.

"A varied version of scene from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
Involving the poor victim Lavinia."


Alone she lay weeping bent o’er a well
Watching her tears as they rapidly fell.
Then a black bird perched soft on her shoulder
Speaking a language she couldn’t understand:
“You are the fairest creature in this land,
Your silk white dress is foul clad with black soil,
Please do tell me why you so sadly weep–
You must hurry for night begins to creep!
This dangerous wood is no place to sleep!”

But lo, she could not speak a single word ,
No sound from her sweet voice could clear be heard.
For when she opened forth her light pink lips
Her tongueless mouth released a flood of blood
That ran down her pale dress, turned dirt to mud.
Afraid the coward crow flew fast away.
Wailing she raised both arms robbed of her hands,
Virgin no more she cursed her unchaste brand,
Collapsed on the blood-dirt too weak to stand.

Soon her frail form receives a warm embrace
In her good uncle’s breast buries her face.
Wrapped he his woolen coat around her tight,
With gentle words he slowly bid her rise
Then wiped each tear shed from her inn’cent eyes.

A poem of mine entitled "The Gardener and The Flower." Written in free verse. What it symbolizes is pretty obvious.

The Gardener and The Flower


The drooling gardener, decrepit geezer on the inside,
Scurries from his hidden hermitage
And creeps, on all fours, into a glorious garden
Where Venus-Flowers are in full bloom.

Dangling his rotten, rusty shovel
He stoops over a delicate-blossom
Whose stalk is green and slender
Whose petals laugh golden-blonde beneath the smiling sun.

With feeble force he thrusts his feculent spade
Deep inside the fresh and sensitive soil,
Digging up the precious flower
Whose struggling roots are ripped from the pure soil.

He hobbles off into his Night
Appearing as a wounded dog.
The desecrated-flower is left naked in the dirt
An innocent outcast of her own kind.

And sprouting from the innocent-pit
Emerges a bastard-bud:
A bless’d burden to his verdant-mother
Abandoned by his bestial-father.

A poem of mine entitled "A Funeral Day." Each line is five feet with an occasional variation to enhance the meaning and feel of the line.

The first part is pretty standard and clear-cut and rather unambiguous. The second part is a little obscure (though I used more obscure imagery for a very particular purpose) and has traces of Dylan Thomas influence. The poem is about the emotions of specific individual people-groups upon hearing the funeral bell; how the perception of death changes with maturity; and resurrection. No one has ever read this poem before and I am actually quite pleased with it. Hopefully it is half-decent.

A Funeral Day


I

A meager flock of ink-black birds flutter
And screech as they scatter in messy form
From the shady belfry that bellows such
Low hollow tolls and dismal drones that sound
Like the echoing moans raving
From the belly-depths of some blind dungeon.
The old steel bell’s deep and delayed murmur
Resounds within the white-washed-church: smiting
The sulky sighs and incessant sniffs of the
Black-veiled women who nimbly dab their red,
Wet eyes and softly swipe the salty streams
That slowly slink down their flushed cheeks with spring
Hued handkerchiefs cotton or silk; haunting
The delicate ears of young girls who with
Their pearly glass-doll hands
Clasp fast their mother’s reassuring sleeve
And curl into a fragile ball; goading
The adventurous minds of the young boys
Brave and restless who shift impatient in
Stiff-pews, their fleeting eyes searching in vain
For ghastly ghosts or flying pirate ships;
Forcing the lab’ring men to tightly clench
Their callous’d hands, to grit their pipe-stained teeth,
Attempting to suppress tempestual tears
That weep and wail within– and no sign of
Sorrow is seen ‘pon their stern, statuesque
Faces(but the eyelids beneath their burning eyes
Serve as secret wells for their secret tears).

The teens in dark pleasure imagine the blank
Embalmed visage of the still corpse eaten
And gnawed and chewed by gluttonous-plump-worms.
Behind a subtle smile they deem themselves immortal.


While all the elderly, senile and sane,
Subconsciously begin to select their most
Lavish and elegant attire– Sudd’nly
They’re brutally clubbed with the realization
Of their own impending breathless collapse!
In dire attempts they shun thoughts of
The dead’s decay, and failing to convince
Themselves they are not ripe for the coming
Harvest, recoil in dread and disbelief.

A greying man with few wrinkles looks down.
Sitting by him quite close, their hands woven,
His well-aged wife whose cheery, lengthy locks
Still gleam golden even without the sun.
And she appears distraught. Her whole throat burns,
Her stomach churns, her bright blue orbs, in fear,
Release sad saline drops that chill her blush’d,
Hot cheeks– as though a spring-day sky, bereft
Of cotton clouds that smiled light blue, sprinkled
The gay and grassy fields with rain, ruining
The fresh-faced-youths after school baseball game.
Without a word or glance the solemn spouses clench
Their thread fingers with hopes to bring comfort.
For in mutual fear they are struck sick
Reminded of their only son entrenched
In foreign depths of precarious war.

II

All those with life in this False Light were pierced
With breathing glimpse of Night so dreadful and deformed.
The bellowing bell calls with its hollow gloom:
“Cl‘OHHH’se the casket g‘OHHH’ kill the wake pr‘OHHH’ceed!”
Inside all bid farewell and pray the blind
Would see this light, stretch his stiff limbs, drain his chemical veins,
Open his mouth and say: “Behold!”—
— But “CLUNK” cries the coffin drowning all dreams
As trembling hands raise the dead– that black bed
Shivering cold consumed, descending down
Past the strange stares, down to rest warm under
The soil quilt, maimed by mud manacles,
Down in the dirt dungeon with no apparent key.

Though the children felt nothing they should fear:
They saw wood crate and black clothes treading to the green field.

The trembling hands plant this dead-man-seed back
In the dust (the seemingly sterile dust),
The destined dust that groans to chew decay.
This dormant seed that sleeps with blind bright hope
Awaiting the final blissful blossom,
The final Judgement Spring where he will bloom:
His argent stalk, ever-vernal, shall shoot
Through clouds and rise inside Luminous Night.
His grave displays his final breathless words
That he proclaimed gasping in fierce vigour:
“And Death Shall Have No Dominion!”

A poem of mine entitled "Red Rose Petal Wife." The prosody of this poem consists of descending meter from 5 feet to 1 foot lines per stanza.

Red Rose Petal Wife


In soft descent I see the thin petal
(Sweeping graceful through the spring-air)
From the rose flower fall;
And I do weep
In Gloom.

For it cruel drags me to that day in March
(The luscious grass was freshly mowed)
When our children frolicked
Celebrating
The sun–

Then in quick plunge I saw my fairest dear
(Screaming in her red silken dress)
From our stone tower fall;
And she did leap
To Doom.

An Excercise in Alliteration that After the First Sentence Turned into a Strange Unfinshed Narrative

He bore his battered teeth bashed from blunt clubs in many a boorish and barbaric bar brawl. His teeth hung from his roach-shell-hued gums like damp leaves about to fall from a dying tree in bitter autumn. I swear I saw them sway with the slightest breeze! Whenever we talked he would push and prod his loose, rotting teeth with his hairy tongue. If you were to put a magnifying glass up to his rank mouth and molasses-tongue-- both neglected by a toothbrush for many decades-- you would see myriads of mounds of insect-like-bacteria scurrying chaotically all around. He would most definitely be an arduous and infuriating task for any dentist. When I found out he was not now nor ever had been married I was sadly not in the least bit surprised. From the very first time I looked upon him I did not really see a human but an ogre, a troll,... a horrid beast. Oh how he always sniffs! He sniffs as much as he blinks. "BLOW YOUR NOSE!" I perpetually scream to my agitated and distracted self. Even in the summer both of his gaping, hair-infested nostrils run and drip like two leaking faucets. However, what bothers me the most about him is that I am obsessed with him-- he has consumed my mind and thoughts like a plague. I do not what I shall do next...