OK.
That was a warm up.
[LAUGHTER]
"The Chained Man's Apprentice".
In the flats of Vacaville gray razor wired prison,
I met a man.
Welcome to the fucking joint, he says, flint eyes blooming,
black stories wound like a rope around my smoke-filled fingers.
We chisel each other's granite hearts,
prospectors picks praying for gems,
going just so far into rigid ground.
Hit boulders find only microchips.
Fool's rock fake shaking fossil bones our twin rage.
He shows me thick skin, making leather fingers freckled doubt.
Exercise yard son, muscles pumped
from millions of repetitions, epithets, derisions.
His Trojan soul closed to all but conquering
a world he never wanted.
I see a boy dandelion yard, leather harness in place,
cloth diaper, naked face, chain hook to clothesline,
twilight trailer dust, cop murder,
bruised body grand theft auto.
Now he growls at whoever happens by.
White trash guards, dark skinned brothers,
his teeth yellow loyalty.
Starve coyote eyes never exposed to daylight.
Years in solitary boxed inside like unrequited love.
Chains and cement shit-holes symbols of unbroken
will to survive.
He shows me seashell soul, new ways to bury ghosts.
Gives us old skeleton names.
Bay Area fog is our sad breath.
Horror stories his great escape.
Guns he made inside machinist hands greased with hate.
Well invented shivs exquisite proof of journeyman status
earned rep no use at all outside.
I give him virgin skin, closed eyes, old assaults
like magnets to his new moves.
Hard blue Earth to stand on.
We try to gash each other to marrow,
conjure failed promises.
Surfaces too fucking tough grow nothing but more spines.
Our wet eyes when I leave the only open sores
we've ever shown.