Poem: Light Pole

[realnesspoet (former member)]

I

What is this place
I am in?
One foot in darkness
one foot in light?

What is this place?
Where dark buzzards circle
morning, noon and night ?

What is this place
I am in?
Where Amtrak trains whistle by
unseen tracks
on the other side of the mountains?

II

I sit at the base of the light pole
All around me there are people
on the basketball court
Three Mexican-Americans are doing burpies
listening to soft rock music on the radio.

Across the basketball court
multi-colored Christians come together
to pray to their God.

While African-Americans slap
dominoes on the concrete tables
behind me
I sit at the light pole
reading Shakespeare.

RealnessPoet

[theones]

`Okay, if I'm wrong, I'm sorry. But it kind of sounds like you're in prison. Do you refer to it as a place of light because it has given you some good, a way to improve yourself? Is it also dark because of the atrocities and horrors that go on in there? If I'm wrong, I really am sorry, I may just be too used to hearing of prisons (I'm a criminal justice major hoping to be a prison guard).