Prison Poetry

All I Know
By Martin Williams

I came into the world
knowing only three things:
I'm hungry,
I need to be held,
and something to cry about.

Forty-nine years later
nothing has changed.
There's something in me
frail and selfish,
something that only knows
that it's hungry
or that it's alone
or that life hurts
and if you don't fit in there somewhere,
I can't use you.

I heard the scream of a cat
being mauled by a dog,
a primal howling shriek
that raised all my hairs
and I knew exactly
what he wanted.
My dictionary has 6,000,000 words
that all mean
feed me, hold me, fix me.
The last seven words of Christ on the cross
were feed me, hold me, fix me
and all the ads
all the religions
promise to
feed me
hold me
fix me.

I'm hungry.
I'm alone.
Life hurts.

I knew it all along.