Poetry by Jeff Freeman

A few times I thought
I found life for myself
In somebody else.
That was the times
I knew life as fleeting
Moments of simple joy,
As gems of elusive
Happiness I dreamed
I would find
To complete myself.
Yet, I was empty;
I spent my all
On the false dreams,
Pretentions and assumptions
Of somebody else.
Even still, I know now
All cannot be lost
Because yesterday I saw
the prettiest rainbow
meant especially for me.
It was bright and right
And made my heart alight
And smile within.
That same day, I also
Spoke to God’s angel
Who told me
I was somebody special,
Who told me
Life was more than a cloudy day,
More than what other’s may
Say
About me on those days,
More than what I
Can do to enrich others
To show them who I am,
Even more than what I myself
May think I am
On days when I am not
Feeling so well,
And more than the life
I sometimes can’t seem
To see because of me.
Life, they say, is more
Than us,
Is more than today,
And more about tomorrow.
Life is beyond.
We should keep on living for that.

Inspiration After Death
By Jeff H. Freeman

Being that there’s limitation,
I find her life in a picture.
I often remove it from my album,
Look at it on difficult days.
I often recall the best of times
And try to move on in my life.
Once I feel our connection,
That she is near,
I am then inspired
To keep on living.

Chow Line
Jeff H. Freeman

They line up
At the dorm door, fifteenMinutes before “chow call.”

An apparent anxiousness moves
across their faces
when the other side is called.

I sat upstairs,
A second-tier vantage point
And watch it all play out.

They gave up,
Front to back,
Waiting for the pavlovian call.

To cue their charge.
Wild how it all stages–
Programmed, on point.

They hear the call
And charge the doors,
Heel to heel, they move
Out as if going someplace
They’ve never been before,
A place that will offer

Them a permanent escape
From the absxxx isolation they know,
The meaningless they feel.

One by one they return,
One by one, conversing,

Bemoaning the ensuing night.

Another Line
By Jeff H. Freeman

I can’t stand the wait
It’s wait for this, wait
For that, with hurry-up in between.
I stand in the flux of lines
Every day to see my life unwind –
In the canteen line, clothes line,
Chow line, medical line, every line.

Last night I saw the headline –
Trump reapproves Keystone Pipeline.
Surely a line has to be drawn somewhere.
Now I know how it is
When distressed people call out
To reach their local hotline,

Though sometimes these lines get crossed.

Nobody Will Tell You
By Jeff H. Freeman

This is what it is like
To be locked away in prison
Behind fences, bars and walls,
All bound up for over a generation.
At first, you don’t know
What to expect from the experience,
It’s affects and subtle soul-shattering impact.

People cringe when I tell them
The rawness of my experience,
The real life-altering events I witness
And contend with almost daily.
I mean, nobody will tell you
I saw Noland get assaulted
With a No.5 padlock, watched
Nike and Doughboy get shanked
And bleed and bleed and bleed.
Oh, the blood from fights, too.
Coming about over trivial things –
A debt, a TV program, or somebody’s
“Boy” or “state lover” –
Just to name a few

Nobody will tell you
This is what you would come to prison
To see all play out in living color,
With regularity and indifference
And out of the public eye.

Oh, the trauma, I will tell you.
Nobody will tell you this much
It wouldn’t be right for rightness.
It wouldn’t be just for justice.

Nobody will tell you about the threats,
The intimidations and bullying, the mental
Wrangling one must endure to overcome.
The struggle and avoid further pain,
Heartache and crushing oppression.
Oh – the depression.
Nobody will tell you these things.

Society would die to know
The truths of these things.
Still, I will tell you –
They are real, they are real
And I fight against them,
I struggle against them,
I contend with them mightily,
Because they are trying to steal
My life away from me.
Nobody hasn’t told you this much –
The struggle.
For this is what prison
Is like for me, for Damon,
For the Mikes and likes.

This is where we go to prison,
Nobody could dare tell you
The truths of these things.
It just wouldn’t be right for rightness.
It wouldn’t be just for justice.

Nobody will tell you these things.


Afterlife
By Jeff H. Freeman

Day after day the condition plays on.
Plays on in monotonous meter, leaving
Nothing except more of the same.  When night comes,
Even my sleep seems deprived of its pulse,
Passing on from dream to dream,
It’s hard to settle on what has struck me more,
That I am still here, and you are there,

Or that there’s still a meaningful rhythm somewhere else.

Life, Unlived 
By Jeff H. Freeman

A generation went away today,
Gone with the time it robbed
From the young dreamer’s life,
Now caught in the madness of emotion
Swirling round in his now old head.

Folks say it’s not so bad – I don’t know,
As bad is all I’ve known, you know.
Can’t you see how time can change you,
How good folks fade away, go away
To leave another generation behind.

I remember sad times, people striving
And dying and trying to find their way,
Wondering if time would be their friend,
If their break would come some day.

Can‘t you see the clock ticking, the hands
of time swing wildly against time?
Folks are pulling away, living lives
On the run, scared to face the day.

I can’t say no more how I feel –
That time has since passed us now,
A generation has wasted away, gone.
Now there is only a dying ember,

A hope that’s settled on sadness.

Over The Moon
by Jeff H. Freeman

I see her again, clearly;
though she is not here.
I am sitting in the corner
chair in my room.  It is Saturday.

Every thought becomes lucid: of her,
of our Saturdays together. The smiles.
The laughter. The carefree walks,
hands joined together, perfectly content.

For close to thirty years no
I’ve been chasing this past
picture of a life gone by, resurrecting
scenes of total bliss, dreaming

of happier times through sadness,
watching days turn into months,
years into frightful; realities
of seeing how life turned away.

I picture her now, at work, at play –
Everyday.  I see her smiles,  The slight
Dimples.  The sound of her laughter as
it sails across her unique voice.

She is an older woman now,
more vibrant, more fuller, uniquely richer
in the way she shares her time.
I see her yawn, and I yawn, too.

I look out my window and see
the moon passing above the roof’s edge.
I see it pass over the gabled end
and wonder if she sees it, too.

Sheets and Knots
by Jeff H. Freeman

I wake up with the grey shirt
still knotted around my eyes.  Somewhere
nearby I hear blather.  Prison talk.
I don’t say anything. I feel
numb, frustrated, spent.  I sit
up on the edge of my bunk-bed
stare out at the grey walls before me.
Below me a guy making his bed,
whipping his sheets around, tying knots.
When I look at him, he clutches
his left knew, rubs it, then says something.
He regathers the sheet, pulls it tight
and tucks it in the corners.  He winces.
Behind me, I hear a guy say, “Hey sheets!”
Then sheets says, “My knee, man, my knee!”
I say, “What did you do, Sheets?”
“I banged it against the rail,” he says.
“Hit it, eh?” I say, as he
shimmies his pillowcase over his stiff pillow

and hurls it upon his cold sheets

Discovery
by Jeff H. Freeman

It’s time to ride the river,
The New River above the house that runs
Through craggy mountains, then snakes
Across the open meadow and flows
Northward in divers country –
In defiance of earth’s gravity
To unwind and let go of everything
Bound up in my life’s narrative.

People come, and then people go,
When seasons and weather permit
Down the stretches where rapids run
Freely and favorably for all adventurers
Seeking to find their better selves
In eddies, in currents, in each other.

Welcome to The Rock
by Jeff H. Freeman

Is the loathed greeting 
By the guards at the prison
Where I have spent the past twenty-nine years of my life.

It could have been said,
Welcome to hell on earth
Or some other disdainful thing,
For it wouldn’t have changed the mood.

Here I was unmoored
With really no real rock around,
Fighting with sadness and madness
With truly no in-between ground.

They line you up, then strip you down,
Tear through your bags,
And make you feel like the clown,
All the while you stand to be a man,

Broken, dejected, and blue,
Sad at the state that becomes you.
They look at your neck
When they tell you what to do.

They say, stand here, not there,
Unlike anything you ever knew
Before any of this happened to you –
Long before this stone was unturned,
Way before this rock was revealed.

Looper
by Jeff H. Freeman

I come to bended knee
And turn over one leaf.  Then another,
Then another from this Capture
Cabbage that presents a rosette look.
Somewhere amongst the  pale green leaves
There’s a hungry pest residing incognito.
I peer down into the center
Sanctum of this future mission meal
And recognize the round chameleon
Sucker locked onto its gorgeous stem.
Moving now, it crawls sluggishly –
Perhaps drunken by the elixir from this plant’s heart.
Resolute, though, it clings delicately to the new
Growth that proposes to become its expected head –
Sucking, nibbling, and voraciously determined,
A cabbage looper inches its way
Across the middle, working vigorously
To save its life from the inside out.

Hummingbirds in April
By Jeff H. Freeman

One cannot help being stunned
By their especial grace

And Straw-like enamel beaks
Like ancient Roman dirks.

For they mostly fly solo,
As if some time ago

They were somehow left out
Of the wing-flight kingdom

The bright hues draw them.
Their tiny five-hour energy

Bodies dart in and out
In dizzying little spurts,

Furtively dashing around
The red-bottom feeder bowls,

Wings modulating at lightening speed
To help them stay afloat

When the soft winds buffet them,
Their yellow-green bodies hovering

Majestically above the pink flowers.
They come and go in spring,

Mostly when the bluejays are gone
And the shiny red sugar-water saucers

Are hanging so invitingly
From the pretty pink dogwoods.

THE ART OF LIFE