Hello everybody. It’s Steve Nicholson again. I’m here in Jackson, Michigan. I got three or four poems for you guys. These poems for my Prisoner Creative Arts Program, University of Michigan, Michigan poetry class, writing class. This poem is called “Lame.” The title comes from a word that was given to me. All these poems were written at the time, right at the spur of the moment. So, this one is called “Lame.”
I’ve been lame.
I left some lame.
I’ve been a lame brain and got lame brain.
Let me pause for effect and effort to entertain.
See selfishness is so lame,
And selfishness used to control my domain.
See, I had to lose the foundation of what kept me sustained,
Because I was trained to inflame society’s problems by running game,
Having things, by slanging cane and causing lame brains.
But I was not trained to suffer pain
To self by denying self.
Fasting helps to lift others up.
I was so damn lame,
but I’d be damned if I fall again for the world’s plan.
It’s a selfish scam.
Deny yourself.
Don’t deny to help,
And be an answer to God’s plan,
And be a damn man,
Mot a damned man,
Incorporate game that expounds brains and saves the lane.
Dude, don’t be lame, bro.
Normally people snap their fingers after the phone, but I don’t got a live audience so….
Second poem is called “The Giving Tree.”
Sustenance.
The root system is so complex.
If one tree is rotten, is it the fault of the whole substance?
External nuisances persist despite linkages.
Break the link.
Take a break from breakneck speed and think.
Re-engage.
Pump the carbon from a close friend,
Give the dying world oxygen.
Die to live on.
What an oxymoron.
Poem number three is called “My love is Like.”
Saturday afternoon,
Cut it up with the Boo Boo Berry cereal,
Maybe my Boo too.
For real though, outside there’s a lot of snow,
And sunshine, that warm light to warm your skin,
Until we dive back into the fleece blanket
Watching cheesy movies on basic cable.
That can get boring,
So sometimes we get back to the basics.
Nearing the dinner hour calls for a steaming hot shower
As we ponder going out to Red Lobster or Olive Garden,
And a bit of Christmas shopping before the midnight hour.
To return home and curl up in our familiar place
And embrace for a race to start this over again on the day of grace.
Sunday.
Comfortable waves like comfortable sweats.
To me, that’s the best bet for love at its best.
And this last poem is called, “I Want You to Know.” This is a poem that sort of encapsulates a lot of what I went through right when I got incarcerated and not to I want anyone to feel bad for me, but it’s just some of what I went through.
I want you to know.
I cried for forty-eight hours straight.
Book of Psalms 56, verse eight.
It states that God keeps all our tears in a bottle.
My bottle must be huge,
Yet, after my immediate arrest,
I suffered a deluge of stress.
Three days and three nights
Entombed with no water,
Forced to go darker,
The toilet was the only source of water.
What would you do to survive,
Even if you didn’t care to be alive?
Stress-induced sweat is real.
Google it.
I was close to it.
Repeat this.
My fate was three hundred and twenty-eight hours with no shower.
Wayne County’s way to abuse their power.
But I want you to know that, due to what Jesus has given,
I’m forgiven for all sin, past, future and present,
I too forgive them.
And that, my friend, is freeing.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
