On the Yard

After lockdown, tier by tier undresses to sleep: Each skull nestles in its mattress-hollow. Wall facing wall inside of wall shrinks to a keyhole: A fly creeps through and starts to buzz, reeling through bars Down steel corridors. A dreamer’s eye follows the fly, And wherever the fly lands, the eye touches down With an airier Midas touch that turns all to glass: The eye wakes to Bentham’s panopticon, glazed cage Of an inspection house where only the Warden sees all. —I am asleep and not asleep, I stare up into faces swarming: Cellblocks of memory focus face by face, Mine flitting in and out of theirs: In prison issue They come, footsteps mingling over mine in a child’s game Of chase from yard to cell, only we’re all grown men, Meatier, less and more malign than A boy’s imagining himself grown... —I was asleep and not asleep, Faces came and went. Frank the Joker, the West Virginia biker, who composed “A rhyme to fit the crime”: “There was a young fellow named Frank Who gave his girlfriend a spank; She fell in a heap In front of Frank’s jeep And old Frank ran her down for a prank.” Or the white-haired lifer, densley oracular: “Sometimes, after lockdown, your thoughts Just don’t have the energy to climb the wall.” The Giggler who bolted His brother in a barn and burned it down, Eyes challenging, sly: “They killed this guy and see, I think this is funny, hilarious In fact, but you, you won’t think so—they cut off his dick And shoved it in his mouth.” Or the child molester who said about flowers At funerals: “They’re there, aren’t they, To hide the stink off the corpse?” Or Pat, armed robber Who held aloof: Rolled shirtsleeves, forearms Carved from basalt, smoke rings Lazily effusing: “The johns here, they got no doors: You ever try to take a shit while someone’s watching? It took six months to get used to that— But here, man, the bars feed on Time, they nibble It to nothing.” —I wanted to sleep and couldn’t sleep, I stared up into faces swarming. Three o’clock dark dissolves The walls, faces start to drift, their atoms Mix with concrete’s Atomic swirl, bodies get stuck Floating halfway through, heartbeats Booming as through a stethoscope: Like Michaelangelo’s slaves, if a fly Landed on their noses, They couldn’t lift a hand to brush it off. Dark velleities buzz in this hive of steel Where power handshakes Flower in forests Of interlocking fingers: In red prison uniform, a man On death row, convicted 1984, exonerated and pardoned October 2000 (New York Times, Dec. 10): “You could hear the humming of the chair Every time they cut it on, like an air-conditioner Cutting on. My daddy came to see me, he said, ‘What's that?’ I said, ‘The chair.’ The way they put it, they got to test the chair.” —I was asleep And couldn’t wake up. Inside my skull, glass Keeps shattering: Dream-beings Unsubscribed to the will, with insect bodies And human heads, dash against walls, mammal softness Of cheeks and lips join with stingers Pulsing...my eyes awake and not awake, where is the chamber As in the horror movie Return of the Fly that, circuitry and test-tubes Sparking, would unscramble these divided Natures? (They called me “Teach” As in “Hey, Teach, how do you spell...” When I confessed I’d been in jail, they looked disappointed in me: Their side of the wall was theirs, not mine.) —I tried to turn over, to look away, But couldn’t wake up, couldn’t not wake. Chemicals drip into a man’s veins, one each For heart, lungs, brain. Strapped to a table, he stares Impassive, eyes flickering shut, body A meat wall, IV tubes Almost empty... —I was asleep and not asleep, I couldn’t move to wake. I hear shrill wings—that fly inspecting bread crumbs Under dining hall tables while the Warden blares Descartes over the Intercom: “If a man’s head were lopped off His mouth would keep on moving, faultlessly Justifying his crimes.” But that fly, that speck against Steel, its wings steered in ways that seem crazy To eyes awake, not awake, Not seeing, all-seeing, the head unmoving Moving to turn away...oh seely fly I can’t not see, can’t move to brush away From my unsleeping eyes, you veer In spirals unflattened into pathos Of careening chaos, your eccentric Flight path darts Through bars, oh alas, hairy Vibrant fly!