"I Pay and I Pray"

(I am sure that this poem may cause a certain amount of resentment having been written by one who has never experienced prison; except through the eyes of a friend.)


    “I Pay & I Pray”

How gray these dreary walls,
these hallways of despair,
allowing nothing to be lead,
towards hope,
how long these weary years,
years that brings me nearer
to what I wish for daily,
the future is dead, as dead as the
foul deeds with which I sealed my fate,
the walls are gray, but, they are just a
part of the completeness of
the misery, we the convicts,
this cursed company, the guilty ones
(for the most part),
have doomed themselves to,
how lifeless this lonesome existence,
how perfect the justice taken out on us,
payback for the violations we burdened
the innocents with,
how fitting this pitiless penitence,
we pay, and we should,
how proper the punishment,
for each happiness we have stolen,
we pay, for each day of fear they live,
we pay,
forever haunted by the dreams
our victims must now live with,
they pay, but they
shouldn’t,
they are, or were just
as the rest of normal society,
(a society I am unfit to live in,)
until someone like me stole their life,
murdered and raped their dreams away.
How gray are the walls,
how slowly the dreary years drag on,
Why did I decide that the right of
privacy was no longer theirs?
Why did I ruin so many lives?
how proper it is that I pay,
how wrong it is that my victims
must also pay,
the victims pay, their children pay,
entire families aflame, burning with payment,
including mine, how wrong that they
pay, how wrong that our mothers must pay,
how sorry I finally and truly am,
how I pay,
once I grew a conscience, I began
to pay, and pay, and pay.
As to my victims all,
I pray for their peace,
for their forgetfulness
for hopefully, their forgiveness,
for The Good Lord to give them
peace and comfort, for my crimes,
I pay,
for my victims, I continuously
pray.
They have paid enough.

© Sam Hyde
    06-27-09