Someone Else’s Crime

I will grow tomatoes
When you’ve set me free.
I will live at home in peace
Where all will let me be.

I will wake up cheerful
In the morning to the sun.
I will feel at peace at last,
Once my Freedom’s won.

I have been imprisoned here
For someone else’s crime.
I have lived my life in fear,
And I have done my time.

All I want, is to feel safe -
Relaxed and calm and free.
I have been good, to fellow men.
Why aren’t they good to me?

I try to keep my head up high,
Imagining the day
When I will be allowed to fly,
When I will go away,

And wrap myself in someone’s arms
Who knows me as I am.
I try to think about that day,
As hard as try I can …

I will wake up smiling,
In the morning sun.
I will kiss the one I love, and
Once this battle’s done …

I will grow tomatoes in
My garden in the grass,
And tie my hair behind my head …
And when this storm has passed,

I will sit up late at night
With cats and cups of tea,
I will live no more in fright
Once I have been set free.

I only want this misery
And fear and pain to end.
I only want a life at peace
Surrounded by my friends.

But that will be another day.
Today I must remain
Within the madness of this place
In fear, and hope, and pain.

But always, I hold up my head,
Imagining the day
When I will be allowed to go,
When I will fly away …

Not now. It isn’t over yet
I must sit out my time,
As I have done, for all these years,
For someone else’s crime.

- Written by Anna Vera Williams at Age 33

I’m breaking glass
Inside my head.

If I bang my head
Hard enough
And long enough
Into the wall,

If I throw enough jars
Around my room
And crash them into
Shards and hell,

Would you make
This be a dream.
Wake me up.

And then I’ll say
“I had a dream,
You had to go.”

And let me curl
And hold you.
Warm, protecting, safe, and strong.
“I had a dream but I was wrong.”

- Written by Anna V. Williams

Yield no whisper
Of remorse,
Give no sign
That you endorse

The fables of
The ancient wives,
Who kept their men
And lived their lives ..

The crossing bears
No one-way bar.
But shut your eyes,
And touch your scar,

Remember what
The madman said.
You just live once,
And then you’re dead,

And happiness
Is all a myth,
The road ahead
Is clouded with

Monstrosities
Who can’t be changed.
So label them.
They can be named.

The madman said
You can’t repair
Your love or life …
But you’re aware

Deep down below
The cloud of cries,
That life holds hope
That these are lies …

The choice is yours,
To live or burn,
To hear the lies
Or to return.

- Written by Anna Williams at age 32

This free poem is a Found Poem, written per the prompt at stoney moss: Found Poetry.

The item used to “find” this poem was the DMV Driver’s Manual.

P.S. No marriages were harmed in the making of this poem. I have no idea where I came up with the idea for the poem to be about a divorce. Maybe it was the DMV manual’s idea.

I imagined you’d say
That you’d got off the plane,
You’d decided to stay.

Or that maybe, you’d say
That you’d had to return;
Or that someone had learned
That you shouldn’t have gone.
But my image was wrong.

It was only the sheets.
It wasn’t your feet.

- Written by Anna Williams at age 32

Do you ever walk the street
And half-imagine you might meet,
Some half-forgotten face from long ago
Although inside you really know,
You’re walking where they’d never go …

Do you ever sit and look
At ancient photos you once took,
Long-lost faces in a book,
And examine them a million times
As if to read between the lines,
As if you might see something more,
That wasn’t ever there before …
Something new, that might resolve
The mystery you never solved.

Do you ever wonder why
Faces wilt and flowers die,
People change and time goes by,
Leaving you to stand and sigh
At night beneath the starry sky
Watching comets fall and fly …

― Written by Anna Vera Williams at Age 26

Rider of the raging sea
Roamer where the rivers roll,
Weaver of eternity -
Guardian of my own soul;

Wrapped within the wings of time,
Captured by a quiet curse,
Bounded by the ruthless rhyme
Of a cruel universe;

Lone upon a mountain slope,
Or barefoot in the valley streams …
I am the holder of my hopes,
I am creator of my dreams.

- Written by Anna Williams at Age 26

Written by Anna Williams at age 22

― Written by Anna Vera Williams at Age 23

It had been hated. Degraded.
Hardly heart-defying. Shaded.
Hard warmth. For a moment’s pleasure.
Mindless. Careless. Lady’s leisure.
And yet the strongest of the weak
Can break in sobs and fade grow meek.
None can tell you your belief.
None may soothe you in your grief.
None can tell you where to go.
None but you can ever know.
When you learn that, when you see,
It may break your heart in three.
Yet ’tis not bad to dance alone.
May your eyes remain your own.

- Written by Anna Williams at age 17
in Prague, Czechoslovakia

Time goes, numbed in drink and dawn.
The winter people lived the song.
We danced like beetles under fire,
Drawn to beauty and desire.
We followed laughter where it led,
Into smoke, and sin, and bed.

We were children. Actors. Fools.
Playing by our coldest rules.
How heartless were our childish trials
Steeped in dances and denials.
We yearned to break away and roam,
We who have or love no home.
Here to destroy ourselves. Here to alloy ourselves.
Only to tear and to teach and annoy ourselves.

The children of the shadows flew,
Knew not what we loved, but loved what we knew.
Shadows of alleys. Shadows of smiles.
The sounds of the shadows fade over miles.
We had been beaten, been married, been robbed.
We came to sing in the streets for the mob.
To forget, to forsake, to invent our own past,
We came with the wind, the cold dry blast.
By blue skies we parted, in shadows of spring.
Escaping the pain that the painlessness brings.

Written by Anna Williams at Age 17
Monday after Easter
in Prague, Czechoslovakia