Once I read a closed case
This: Just an idea in some convicts head
Forty years ago, a model of asbestos and lead
A thirty foot red ochre granite stone wall
Under, a twenty foot subterranean base
For sentences given to enclose all
Designed
Without possibility of tunnels to haul
Oneself through
No foot-holds to rest, no shelf
Inverted top to retain, the small prisoners
Within
Anselm Keifer chalk white
Pigeon guano covers the surface, sprawl
Gray slate roof, conical guard tower
Of seemingly untouchable height
Cast iron spiral stair case rusting out over time
Twin gun racks hung from the ceiling
[All assembled for crime]
Institutional green paint peeling
Electric wires on no more
Ages of coal in furnace, polished bright
Lore
Guard house glass block floor, an architecturally odd sight
Projecting with a huge steel mariner’s light
To luminate the room within at night?
Seventeen men one day wishing
That this the last day in prison spent
In lock up on shoulders three, climbing
In Holtsville maximum security
Up through an unprotected skylight went
Today: Bars block this way to go
Into razor ribbons grasp five now spent
Agonizing time
Done day by day
Another does a hanging jump: thus ankles forever bent
Then said
Locking the barn door
After horse is stolen
Pay with forty days in shackles
Ankles swollen
