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.