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Home > Walker

Gene Walker: Longevity

Gene Walker was awarded First Place in poetry in the 2011 Prison Writing Contest.



Longevity

I cannot sustain your voyages,
these corrosive minglings of
hydrogen and oxygen,
seeking the green rivers of your blooms.

The ants in your throat,
the carvings on your body,
your graphitied limbs …

it is the air that I breathe
that is now stalking your longevity,
this vessel for my mind’s plagues

Your waterless spheres are now collapsed,
sunken in the enormous pressure
that now threatens your capillaries.

They too conspire against us,
as we abandon our skins
to count our ribs,

with them, you shall perish,
without them, I shall.

And as we jettison our empty and entangled nets,
the last silver fish is blue again,
searching the underwater winds
to tell his tale
to the gravity of silence
between us.


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