Tuesday Poetics at dVerse
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For today’s Poetics prompt, I’d like you to read the lyrics.
Here are the lyrics to the song, “Folsom Prison Blues.”
I hear the train a-comin’, it’s rolling ‘round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when
I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on
But that train keeps a-rollin’ on down to San Antone
When I was just a baby, my mama told me, “Son
Always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns”
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
When I hear that whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry
I bet there’s rich folks eatin’ in a fancy dining car
They’re probably drinkin’ coffee and smoking big cigars
Well, I know I had it coming, I know I can’t be free
But those people keep a-movin’, and that’s what tortures me
Well, if they freed me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine
I bet I’d move it on a little farther down the line
Far from Folsom prison, that’s where I want to stay
And I’d let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away
When the Rails Were New
When the rails were new,
they cut the land like a prophecy,
iron laid over bones and prayers.
Ancestors stood in the dust,
watching the whistle split the sky,
naming what would be taken.
The train carried voices with it—
ghost-songs, drumbeats, last breaths—
westward, into forgetting.
Men chased distance, not knowing
the dead were riding too,
fingers wrapped around memory.
Prisons rose where spirits lingered,
steel cages humming with old grief,
time circling instead of passing.
Still the whistle cried at dusk,
a call no soul could outrun,
pulling the living toward reckoning.
💫Maggie
The Afterlove Voice 💫
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