They live in 8x4 cell <br />One step next to hell <br />A closet size cage <br />To hold in the rage <br />With no human contact <br />How does one act? <br />Most are not innocent <br />Most won't repent <br />Now they hardly see the sun <br />No place left to hit and run <br />They grew up on the wrong side <br />Always ready to fight and hide <br />All face maximum degradation <br />On the road to lethal injection <br />Creating ways <br />Of counting days <br />There are no more rules to break <br />What's to dream when you won't wake? <br />How does it feel? <br />To order your last meal <br />Does it seem odd? <br />That now they turn to God <br />To free them from their sins <br />It's here where irony begins <br />Plenty of tattoos <br />Yet no clues <br />How to exercise the brain <br />And get off that runaway train <br />Muscles abound <br />Now all locked down <br />Wearing hand cuffs a way of life <br />Yet skilled in making a homemade knife <br />Lost all sense of wonder <br />Waiting to hear the thunder <br />They hardly see the sun <br />One hour with no place to run <br />Burying what is left to feel <br />In a corner surrounded by steel <br />The march of that last mile <br />Doesn't take but a short while <br />With each step a life flashes by <br />As chains jangle one last cry<br /><br />Alfred Ramos<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-death-row/
