“In my mind, there’s a boy who exist in chains,. inside a cold dark room of painful solitude, is where he’ll remain. Behind these walls the sorrow is inevitable, as relentless as the passage of time. Mentalities corrupt in dark, brainwashed and hopelessly blind. Prisons are packed with crowded spaces, lifers, and guards with hallow faces. Shackled hearts afraid of changes and weaken wills are complacence, yet, I maintain the patience. Time can limit but not shatter my will, strength blazed across my chest as solid as penitentiary steel. But the silence speaks, it tells me all I need to hear. It conforms my beliefs and it’s promises I have to fear, it reminds me that without freedom, I’m alone. And these white washed walls don’t make up for blacken souls. I’ve given 95% of my boys a hand shake and a pound, before they where either locked down or buried off in cemetery grounds. What I’ve done is who I am but what I am is what I do now. I won’t let up or sees to fight, just this time, I plan on doing it right. And what’s right, lies within me. I’m learning to appreciate my struggle, for it would be hard to find the joy of accomplishment without it. We live and we learn, we rise and we fall, like the heart beat of a sleeping giant with bitter sweet dreams. Stay up, not down.”
— James Burns
