DEATH PENALTY ISSUE - Voices from Death Row
Poetry from the Exonerated
 Poems By Kirk Bloodworth
Poems and Prose By Gary Drinkard
Poems and Prose By David Keaton
Poems By Jeremy Sheets
Poems and Prose By Delbert Tibbs
 Poems By Kirk Bloodworth
Halloween Night
by Kirk Bloodworth
Souls stir at night with bat-winged flight
Chilled children’s fright with a touch of delight
Orange skin pumpkins with full glowing grins
Enough to make your head spin
With all the shenanigans
Headstones with loud moans
Down in the dirt
White old bones
Caskets and baskets and coffins of candy
Apples and popcorn hands being handy
Costumes of bloody grooms witches brooms
Haunted houses with haunted rooms
Tombs of rooms
Brown leaves and gold leaves and branches of red leaves
Giggles and tickles maybe a few nickels
Vampires campfires bloody and bright
Werewolves in sheep’s wool oh what a sight!
Bag dumping children with mountains of candy
Screeching voices and hollers
That’s mine not Sandy’s!”
Young children old children
Boy or girl
Tonight is right for both and for thrills
Stay in the dark
Mind the light
Because anything can happen
On Halloween Night!
Women
by Kirk Bloodworth
Women, ladies, girls, gals, females
Wonder, dream, beauty and grace
Never they waste
For love of that maze
Inside all our hearts
True capturers of heat soul spirit
Our very shadow of humanity
Without them we would
Cease to exist fail to breath
Fail to achieve
We must embrace the embracer
Love the lover
Must care greater for no other
Equal until all put asunder
Beacons, stop signs, cross signs, billboard signs in our minds
So sublime at times
Friends, codepends
Never let you go to the deep end
We depend on curves and breasts
People do attest
Love you without reservation, We confess!
Thank you for being you wanting you needing you
Can’t live without you
For being cool the feminine way about you
So great we can’t break away from you
So I say without delay women are grand in everyway
Female of so much grace we love you all
Our heart does race to embrace
walk your pace
gaze at your face
Eyes to soul soul to mind you are truly divine
We love you need you will never be without you
Our hearts never doubt you
It’s true
So I say without delay
To grace and beauty dreams and wonder
To women all
thank you.
 Poems and Prose By Gary Drinkard
Execution Day
By Gary Drinkard
Cries and Screams all through the night
People all around going mad with fear and fright
Hustle and bustle with paintbrushes and brooms
Making things all pretty
So the public can view your doom
Death is alive and strong in the air
When it rubs you close it prickles you’re your hair
Life is sweet and no one can know
What awaits them wherever they go
Will you feel your brain and blood boil?
Will the people watching clap or recoil?
What ya gonna do when you’re strapped in and alone?
Big man stands by the wall with a phone
Waiting for a call to say yes or no
Will you live or die
Will you stay or go
Strapped in so tight you can hardly breathe
Will there be laughter or tears when they all leave?
Everything is so dark with the hood on your face
Ass packed full of cotton
Not a single piece of lace
No more warm kisses perfume or silk
Death is here and He ain’t got no milk
Who told it?
By Gary Drinkard
Growing old in a nowhere place
Got a voice but not a face
Lonely days turn into tear streaked nights
You’re an animal in a cage with no rights
Most hear you but few hang tough
To most friendship is only stuff
You have to be strong and smile a lot
All the while you mind skips to nothing
Or not
There must be a better place inside you
Where birds sing and the skies are blue
Are you sadistic to want to hang on
All hope lost
All your loved ones gone
Give up already
And go beyond
To twilight’s end almost at dawn
I can’t hug or kiss you goodbye
My heart breaks all because of a lie
Living Tomb
By Gary Drinkard
The tomb I am in
5’x88’ is its size
I live and breathe through vacant eyes
All hope is gone where joy once was
The system will do as it always does
Lie and cheat and sell out to bidders’ money
Puppets on a string
Their hands out for money
When oh when will our nation see
They are likely to be next sitting besides me
With broken dreams and heartaches too
Wondering what happened
Wondering “Whatever did I do?”
Lady Justice isn’t blind
She sees so well
All the green and gold paid for our trips to hell
I’ll haunt your dreams and turn them into nightmares
Because you are the ones who said nobody cares
Innocent or not you want to kill us all
Know this
When you bow your head
You won’t hear Him call
Lost Dream
By Gary Drinkard
Been gone for the last seven years
So much lost
Too many tears
Death staring me hard in the face
My babies growing at such a fast pace
How did this happen to me
Lost sight of reality and didn’t see
The evil that was headed my way
So I sit so lonely today
In this hellhole of concrete and steel
Wondering if things will ever seem real
Dreams all stripped of tomorrow’s huue
Fearing this life will remain forever blue
Please tell me know of love’s embrace
Never again to know her taste
She flirts with me at arm’s length
Doesn’t really know her own full strength
To leave me lonely and shattered
Like nothing else in the world mattered
Untitled Poem
By Gary Drinkard
You know when you’re going to die
The exact date and time
Death is a fearsome creature but these people are slime
They test their little death machine each day
And into the night
They fill you full of sedatives
So you won’t put up a fight
They stand around in little groups and bicker
Fighting over which one stuffs cotton up your rear
What could be sicker?
They come to your for a last meal request
You say fish and chips
Inwardly they smile
Knowing these prison made punks are fixing a special dip
They send their very own preacher
Who will later say you confessed
Just to try to ease the minds of those who are hate obsessed
For the last 48 hours you are watched every minute
And notes written down
You are only allowed one match at time for your smokes
For fear you will burn yourself like a clown
Eight big men come to get you and chain you for the last time
Proud to get each dollar the state will allow
Right down to the last dime
None of them will look you in the yea
Why, I don’t know
But be sure
Each one will be smiling the next morning
When the rooster crows
Another day, another dollar, another life to be had
If I lived their life
I know I’d go mad
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE POLITICS OF THE DEATH PENALTY
By Gary Drinkard
If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
Politicians aren’t leaders for the people. Only power and money hungry draconian puppets that allow bloodthirsty and vengence seeking mobs to rule their opinions in order to further their careers.
UNTITLE PROSE
By Gary Drinkard
The anticipation of again beholding your beauty, of holding you tight, if only for a short while makes me feel like a child on Christmas morning – anxious, insides a flutter, longing with sheer joy!
As I walk into the room the very sight of you sitting there throws my heart into overdrive. I want to speed up my steps but dare not. Your first smile in my direction after four long years warms me all over, making desire burn in the pit of my stomach. My love, it’s been so long even though I think of you each day. Your smile, your smell, your sound, all remains the same.
The terrible loneliness each night without you hurts like someone tearing my chest open with a sharp stone. Knowing that you are probably with someone else creates an emptiness inside me the size of a whale.
Each time I try to fill it, it only becomes emptier until I wonder if my entire essense will be consumed. At your whim I have suffered enough pain to drive most people insane. Yet still I love you and want you.
You are the only person who can fill this lonely emptiness. Without you I am only a broken thing. You play with my love like one of the rich elite toying with a trinket. Yet still I love you.
Maybe I am insane. This sure sounds crazy as hell to me.
I will never tell you any of this because I don’t think you would care. And seeing that you didn’t care would surely drive me over that edge. So I tell my mother – “the moon” – and she listens and consoles me. She has admiration only for children and no pain.
Here I’ll be My Love, if ever you decide to love me.
 Poems and Prose By David Keaton
Untitled
By David Keaton
Reaching out into space, from space
to touch your radiant face I was seized
by an inward terror
twas error, on error
Sadness a malady of heart
strikes even from dark to dark
strikes even to dark
“We do not want a thing because we
have found reasons for it, but we find
reasons for it, because we want it
To you who praise the happy
medium, to me as they way
of life and love”
I reply:
“Who wants to be lukewarm
between cold and hot, or tremble
between life and death,
or be jelly,
neither fluid nor
solid?”
 Poems and Prose By Jeremy Sheets
Spiraling Down
By Jeremy Sheets
Depression settles over me
Like a thick fog.
It sucks me in
Like quicksand.
The more I struggle to escape it
The faster it pulls me in.
It’s hard not to be depressed
Sitting on Death Row.
My life is to be discarded like trash.
Nobody cares I am innocent.
They only want to kill me.
How can I not be depressed about that?
Man….
I wonder if I can make it.
I am getting weaker
But this fight is getting harder.
I imagine it is similar
To being in the middle of the ocean.
After trying to stay afloat a few hours
You arms and legs start to tire.
Slowly
You start to sink
And you know you are going to die.
You ask God
Why is this happening to me?”
And the only answer you get
Is a push under the next wave.
The Day to Day
By Jeremy Sheets
Heavy steel doors to keep me in
Life in prison
Can’t have friends
Bars on the window of my little cell
I’ve hit rock bottom
of a bottomless well
Lumpy cot, constant back pain
Stainless steel sink with water stains
Sitting here remembering how it used to be
The good, the bad and the in-between
Tell me how am I supposed to feel today?
Now it all seems so far away
Is this real or just a dream?
Days melt by, I want to scream
Trying to remember who I am
I’m alive, I exist, I am
I am
Withering
By Jeremy Sheets
Wasting away
a little more each day
I can tell what day it is by
how many tears I cry
The people I meet always go their own way
Lately it’s been in a pine box
I wonder why I even try
Wanted...
More dead than alive
They chase me in my dreams
Falling to pieces as I fall behind
in this twisted game of life
Shriveling up to nothingness
Soon I won’t be anything more than a pile of dust
These stone cold faces stare back at my each day
Do you feel like I do?
Are you wasting away
Untitled
By Jeremy Sheets
When you conscience is clear
And it is your last day on earth
When your body is buried and your soul is begins its search
Is there anyone around?
How do you treat the person next to you
are you nice or are you mean
are you polite or rude or
Do you just try be unseen?
What have you done in life to make a better world?
Are you stuck in a routine or
Do your dreams get built?
Will they talk about your evil or
Sing your praise in song?
Will anyone remember you
when you are finally gone?
Has a single rose been laid down as you go into the ground
Is there anyone around?
 Poems and Prose By Delbert Tibbs
Learn more about Delbert Tibbbs >
It is the season, again
By Delbert Tibbs
The trees are green with leaves and flowers bloom
Ole man Sun shines strong
The dark sleep of winter is fleeing away and
Something awakens in me
FOR GARY GRAHAM, AKA SHAKA SANKOFA
By Delbert Tibbs
Gary, this is written some hours before your scheduled execution; you say murder and you know best. Well, Brother, I say these words to your spirit, which obviously is not on lockdown. A locked spirit could not have touched these thousands of hearts as you have and we have fought for you. I too have been near to where you are but our kinship is greater than what the Death machine can make. And those who know not the sacred thing called life may break and destroy the physical body but your warrior spirit will never Die. You are a part of the One who made the Sun and the Stars and the laughter of children and love – I don’t tell you to be strong. Because I know you are – nor do I say don’t cry or fret because at times even strong men do that. But I do believe that what is, is and what ain’t is not. Likewise I believe that the Judge will be Judged, the Governor will be governed, and the executioner will be executed. And I believe that One who is totally righteous will Come and judge and restore all things and I believe you, Gary, will be a witness.
Peace and Love – Peace and Love.
A BIRTHDAY NOTE TO MY DAUGHTER AFRIKA
By Delbert Tibbs
Nourish what Philistines call impractical
& be not sane in the face of foolishness
Listen to the music heard in running water &
the sounds of weeping waves & laughter
Salute sunbeams with humility & happiness
And happily greet the day & pray a good evening to the moon
Serve little children and old people
Be a Friend with the wind
Let your feet tread lightly
but firm
See the seldom discerned
Be joyful in living
Light the world
I NEED A POEM
By Delbert Tibbs
I need a poem, need a poem, a master poem, once and for all
I need a poem to destroy poetry
And break those iron bars
A poem to make the stars weep
I need a poem to trouble the sleep of the chained, some words
and strikes of magic to be heard through all the worlds
Power sounds to hurl all wrong to appropriate places, a poem to
make spaces for feeling and being
An easy but invincible poem
For the sick and the lame and the maimed in mind, for the blind
with eyes, for the deaf with ears, a poem of peace in war years.
And a poem of war when war is Holy
For the unborn and the dead, a poem to be read when all books
are blank pages, a poem for judgment day and
A poem for the ages and epochs and eras
My poem, your poem, our poem
For all and it is
On The Streets of NYC
By Delbert Tibbs
On the streets of NY, anything goes
Flows like the Hudson where Whitman sat, Baraka spat
And the Bridge where they say Rollins found his horn
Some say here is where Be Bop was born
Where the World Trade Center stood
and stands still in the memory of the World
NYC, like ancient Babylon, all things sweet are here
The bitter, too
And here I am on 29th and Park Avenue, sitting on the blue
NYPD saw horses, watching the people go by
It should be the Capital, the $$$ is here and some of the
Loveliest women on the planet – everybody knows they flock
Together
Breakfast in the Village
Lunch in Harlem and tonight
Dinner in Queens, NYC
MY LIFE
By Delbert Tibbs
MY LIFE ALMOST RUINED
BY THE MACHINATIONS
AND MANIPULATIONS
BY THE TECHNICIANS
AND MAGICIANS
BY THE MAKERS OF LIFE-PLANS AND
BY THE SLIGHT OF HAND DEALERS
IN LIES
BY TRIBULATIONS
BY GOD I AM
SUSTAINED
I
WILL
AND
AM
NEVER CONSTRAINED BY ARCANE
CONUNDRUMS
ETERNITY IS MIND AND THE MIND THAT
KNOWS AND THE MIND THAT SHOWS
THAT I AM EVER AND ALWAYS
BLESSED,
BLESSED, BLESSED.
A WORD OF PRAYER
Overheard in a Jail
By Delbert Tibbs
Have no faith, I mean the Bible.
I use to, before this Jail.
But this cell, God, you know
I mean church. I used to go
Almost every Sunday. But I got
grown, you know. I like to drink
Drink too much. I don’t know
But I think, I don’t know
But I think, I don’t know
Maybe if I get outta this Jail
I believe if I get bail
I might go. Sunday, I might go, Sunday. I might go to church
You know. I might go. But you know. I know the Church ain’t
God
The Lord is everwhere, at least
That is what I believe
You know?
The Compassion of George Ryan
By Delbert Tibbs
I think of this Man
the former governor of the great state of Illinois
that was his job back then
when the new millennium began
Just about two thousand years since Jesus came
And before this Man was caught up in the net
that some claim is justice
Now he sits behind the armed walls of prison
For alleged crimes that others
Would have just gotten a slap on the hands for
but we who have been
Hosted on Death Row think we know
the real deal is otherwise
His was the pragmatic politics and he
understood the art of compromise
Said he believed in the death penalty all of his life
And that “The punishment should fit the crime”
And he was the State’s Chief of yea or nay
Having the final say
of who lived and who died
Indeed, was required to sign a paper
called a death warrant for those the State
Deemed not worthy of life
This in a society rife with inequality and contradiction
and sometimes Confusion about ultimate things
like life and death
As all human societies are
Maybe because men and women are not as Gods
Although this delusion is prevelant
The Governor was mere hours from calling it a day
and signing the death warrant of one Anthony Porter
When young truth-seeking journalists made the discovery
the state had somehow missed
Another person was guilty
for the crime for which this innocent man was about to die
And as it is not uncommon
the Governor had a conversion experience and he wondered
How many more languished there
On the Row
in the House of Death
Awaiting that final striking of the clock
and were innocent
And he wondered
Would he cavalierly sign his name to the paper
that would give the state
We the People
the right to snatch their lives away
For divine guidance he prayed and thought
deeply
As he never had before
And he rose up and said
No
He would not go with the prevailing wind
He saw, he said
That the system was broken
He tried to fix it with expert help
but their testimony was that
It could not be done
by any human one or even many
Couldn’t make it error proof
like a mathematical certainty
So he dropped for a moment
the politics of pragmatism
and did the hard thing knowing that
vitriol and blame would assail him from many quartersz
He obeyed conscience and The Christ
Who is said to dwell in the human heart
And he commuted and pardoned
Pardoned those who had been dealt unfair blows
by the system he represented
Commuted those who may or may not have been
guilty of the sin that Cain was
Some said it was conscience
Buddha says
Right thought and right action
Cynic says
No good deed goes unpunished
And the Poet says
he don’t know
Maybe so
But this compassionate Man sits now behind
those armed walls
that he never expected to see from the inside
Crucified for daring to stand
as a just Man
For what men ought to stand for
Even when standing brings pain
(My Man, Ray Krone*, says even if you can’t stand tall
you still got to stand)
I suspect and I would bet
In the end
He will be glad
I salute his courage
*Ray Krone, fellow exoneree, the 100th person to be exonerated from death row in the U.S.
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