Changing the Way that Charity Changes the World.
Why are you still, my brother?
The lights go out in an hour, the guard is waiting;
why have you stopped here to gaze at the stars?
“Did you know they burn in silence?”
The whistle blows. Feet shuffle. The guard’s eyes rise.
What good is a flame that gives no heat?
What use is a blaze that cannot roar?
The guard draws near. The path grows clear.
Lights out,
Via CC license
May the brokenness in me
fit the brokenness in you
so both are made whole.
self portrait as a shadow on a prison parking lot
The paths down which we walk within our dreams
have led us to this place we dare not sleep:
this place where waking is not what it seems.
Our words have traveled down the narrow streams
of halting conversation from the deep
chasms carved by weeping in our dreams.
What scribes have caught our thoughts within the reams
of parchment buried deep beneath the keep
that slumbers here where waking shows no seams
against the teaming cauldron of our schemes,
across the patchworked calculus we heap
to bind the paths down which we walk our dreams
like dogs that bark at every light that gleams
within the shadows cast around the sheep
whose dim-eyed waking is not what it seems?
None but these, who prowl upon the lams
to gauge the ripeness of the time to sweep
along the paths down which we walk in dreams
towards a waking state not what it seems.
licensed via creative commons
A place from which you can’t escape is prison.
A place to which you must return is prison.
The space between the place where you were born
and everywhere you fear to go is prison.
Your shame has strapped a saddle on your back
and whipped your ass to ride you back to prison.
Their faces — all the ones you can’t forgive —
become the guards who lock you in your prison.
Pull back the shades; reveal the fragile glass
that forms the razor fence around your prison.
What taste now aches within your bitter palate?
What sweetness haunts your memory in this prison?
You see your lover standing at the gate.
You wave to her — but turn into your prison.
Click to learn more about my first children's book, which explains incarceration to children with a parent in prison. You can also buy the book on Amazon here.
Click to learn more about the children's book I created for the North Texas Food Bank, which explains food insecurity to children who want to help others. Rather than emphasizing charity, the book integrates a participatory model that demonstrates how to engage those who suffer from hunger in co-creating an equitable community solution to it.
© 2024 Jeremy Gregg
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