JUKE
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JOINT
yesterday,
i was an element of art...
a line that was curved
and perturbed as i swerved
on the canvas;
yesterday,
i was the painted pessimistic part
of the colors of
purple, brown, red, black and orange...
death, sorrow, worthlessness, anger,
wounds, darkness, depression, loss,
aggression, misfortune and alienation;
i was an unappealing,
peeling painting
whose sole purpose was to be seen
by the brown recluses and black widows
who appreciated naught...
even a depreciating and morbid
painting of dying art
who was decaying in the basement
of a broken dwelling;
today,
i am an element of art...
a straight line drawn daily
that ascends skyward
toward greater heights
by my free will
that conforms to reform…
reborn on the canvas;
today,
i’m the painted optimistic part
of the colors of
red, orange, yellow, green, blue
purple and brown...
warmth, passion, birth, love, life,
harvest, sun, wisdom, light, hope,
expectation, energy, riches, growth,
cycles of renewal, creativity, sky, water,
sea, heaven, spirituality, cleansing,
calm, loyalty, wealth, authority,
resurrection, imagination,
and new beginnings;
today,
i am in reality
an element of art...
a line both straight and curved;
today,
i’m a new man
with a new heart,
and a new piece of
appreciated art.
appreciated art
time walks past the "liberated"
as he stands still for the incarcerated;
unseen shackles hold the captured
who await zealously to be raptured,
god, free my soul!
chances given were plentiful
as sentences spoken seem too bountiful;
lawlessness now births wisdom
as sickness locked the portal to "freedom".
god, free my soul!
pay to the world their penalty
as day-to-night is this reality;
creator, the cost is being paid
and so, pardon your child who has betrayed;
god, free my soul!
flesh is constantly motionless
as a soul is sustaining without hopelessness;
clouded years with a struggling haze,
but in new pastures this soul may graze.
god, feed my soul!
transforming by the sun of day
and reforming are the potter's hands with clay
once stained and drained by the winter,
but renewed and rescued by the summer.
god freed my soul!
my soul
oxana malaya
a fragile vessel was broken
and her tender pieces
were thrown onto the dirt...
crushed by those atrocious feet
of her own blood
to whom it never mattered;
she was found
on the ground splattered
in her cold loneliness
and it seemed god nor mortals
never even cared
as this angelic soul
was deserted there,
but in the midst
of her dark, despairing fog
her “saviors" came...
the dogs.
when the conflicting, chaotic, cataclysmic,
catastrophic circumstances
of life are hurricanic and volcanic,
i let it fall like rain
down my back…
i laugh to keep from crying
and i live to keep from dying...
i'm not lying.
rain
Michael Lone Wolf Orrell is an Irish, Cherokee, and Jewish hybrid who was born in Grenada, Mississippi, but lived most of his life in Amory, Mississippi. He's a humanitarian who does not condone violent behavior against the vulnerable such as the elderly, children, and the LGBTQ community. His work was first published in a book (Mississippi Prison Writing) from VOX Press in Oxford, Mississippi. Michael is presently the facilitator for The Prison Writes Initiative Art Program. Michael is presently an ABE Language Arts Writing Tutor, Literacy Math Tutor, and an Assistant Tutor in Social Studies at Unit 30 in Parchman, Mississippi. He and other residents at Unit 30 made history by being the first men in the Mississippi Prison System to be a part of a fraternity: PHI THETA KAPPA. Michael has no expectations of the future nor any visions or dreams. He wasn’t seeking to find them, but they sought and found him.