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Poems by
Reginald S. Lewis Navigate
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Introduction
- For Ameenah
- Wanna go home
- The way I see him
- Who knows?
- Yesterday
- Certificate of love
- Paradise
- Inside my head
- The midnight traveler Introduction
- The Poet Laureate of Death Row Reginald Sinclair Lewis is an African-American poet, essayist, and a playwright on Pennsylvania’s DEATH ROW. His work has appeared in countless publications in several other countries as well in the US. He has garnered numerous awards for his work, including three PEN American Center Writing Awards for Prisoners. Two of his children's plays were professionally produced. He has been on Death Row for twenty long years.
In November 1982 he was in San Diego, California, when a 250 lb pimp was stabbed to death (allegedly over an argument about a ridiculously small debt), inside a seedy drug bar in Philadelphia,. On the day Reggie was arrested, the Philadelphia Police seized his black brief case without a warrant. It contained jewelry, bus tickets stubs, and other papers proving he had been in California but his papers disappeared. His incompetent Court Appointed Attorney failed to call six witnesses to testify Reggie wasn't even in the state when the crime occurred. The lawyer who had a hearing impairment and slept during the trial pocketed the money allocated to house the California witnesses. The trial commenced before an illegal all-white jury, presided over by the notoriously racist Philadelphia hanging Judge Albert F. Sabo. In the ensuing years since Reggie’s conviction his trial lawyer has been disbarred.
One of the deciding factors that sent Reggie to death row was a 1977 conviction for the murder of a New Jersey drug dealer. But a compassionate judge recently allowed him to reopen his case. What was buried in the files was shocking to the sense of justice. The prosecution hid the confession of the ‘Actual Triggerman’- the State's ‘Star Witness’. The same lawyer who represented the confessed killer who was let out of prison represented Reggie. What does this mean? This is a ‘Conflict of Interest’ which means Reggie Lewis is being held illegally on Pennsylvania's Death Row. He has filed a civil rights lawsuit against New Jersey officials for a wrongful conviction.
One of the most brilliant voices on death row, he has self-published two books of poetry - LEAVING DEATH ROW and his new book, entitled, INSIDE MY HEAD which was voted among the ‘Top 15 Books of 2002.’
top For Ameenah
Death row took me so far out,
Far, far away –
And I never got to see you blossom.
Jennifer claims you’re mine, my daughter.
My baby girl, my beautiful little princess.
And I would never deny it. You are.
Tommy and Fats and Charlie and the
Rest of my old gang say the same thing –
“Boy, she looks just like you!” Proud and regal
With your shiny curly hair and plum-colored
Lips – the DNA wouldn’t even matter – because
I’ll leave the world to you.
top Wanna go home
Heading on across the border
Past dead cities fading in the hazy
Dawn, the brown dust swirls, high like ghosts.
Been so long ago since I sat at Momma’s
Kitchen table.
Sizzling with hot buttered biscuits, deep
Fried chicken, and slippery chocolate cake.
Oh, I want to go back. Back,
Big and strong now, yet
Still a sweet little boy in
Momma’s weary melancholy eyes.
And now that I think about her…
I wanna go home.
Last time I saw the fellas
We were hanging out on the corner.
It was summertime and we were talking
Load about nothin’,
Passing round the smudged, long-necked
Bottle of cold wine,
And watchin’ the girls float by.
They’re long gone now, most of them,
My cool gang, and now that I think
About them…
I wanna go home.
Back to Philly, my hometown.
The tall tenements swaying dreamy under
The dark urban sky,
Where fat Italian mothers
Lean on the sill of bedroom windows,
Seeing nothing.
Voices cutting across the grit
Of the day – it’s the impossible
Noise from the city - super sundays
And Eagle games. Homeboy Grover Washington’s
Horn blowing down the long cool alleys
At jazz concerts in Fairmount Park.
Where vendors shrill crazy – getting
Rich selling hot dogs and sodas and
Soft pretzels – coins jiggling joyously
As slick sugar daddies cruise along
Kelly Drive in big shiny Cadillacs
Under the twinkling stars.
The top down,
Passing pretty rainbow girls, blowing kisses, and
Singing wild passionate songs
top The way I see him
Across the endless coils of shark-teethed razor wire –
over the high wall of Babylonia.
and on down the frigid dark corridors
of death row –
Bright orange fingers of the sun
caress the cold, blue steel bars, and in its
crucible a warmth slowly reveals
the mystery of the Creator
That’s the way I see him.
In the fathoms of a blue sky,
In the helixes of a green earth, and in the
shimmers of pink and burst
of a magenta moon – He is not a painting
splayed across the sweat-stained canvas
of the wall –
nor a mirage, visible or invisible,
seen or unseen, wavering in and out of my cold reality.
He’s my Homeboy, a Presence beyond my shoulder,
when the wicked convict plots,
when the guard’s evil glare cuts through stone,
and when death’s infinite hand looms,
he is there, yeah, over there.
In the twinkle of a child’s sweet angelic eyes,
on the swift wings of pleasant dreams
carried in the night –
and even in the kind and compassionate
words of the Christians who write
to me – a castaway, the wretched, and
the condemned –
That’s the way I see him.
top Who
knows?
Maybe I’ll write a movie in Hollywood.
Perhaps a classic American novel.
Lyrics for a song.
Maybe even a Broadway play.
Or a book of price-winning poems.
Maybe I’ll even write about me.
Maybe I’ll get around to doing
All those things. You’ll see
Maybe I’ll die before I do anything.
Who knows?
top Yesterday
An old leg wound from Vietnam
Gave treetop a noticeable limp
But before they took him to snapped,
“Get your filthy hands off me! I can walk!”
Yeah. Like Cagney.
All day they did test runs.
A nurse told us they hooked I.V.
Tubes to a pig they put to sleep.
We wonder if Tree would struggle
Against the shackles and chains
Or glide gracefully into
The ethereal light.
Before the final darkness,
Descended.
This much we knew about him:
They gave him a Bronze Star and
A Purple heart for heroism.
He despised his traitorous lawyers.
Loved his mother. His old, blind German sheperd-
Who’d terrorized a beautiful
Girl named Candy, Who he was still crazy about.
Before he left-
He finally showed us pictures.
top Certificate of love
I toss ligth into deep dark graves.
I reshape tragic realities
Into a million beautiful dreams,
One said my pen deftly stroked
Her tortured feminine psyche
And that’s why she loves me.
This is what I told the one
With the abusive husband:
It could be that he could
Only see ugliness in
Something exquisitly beautiful.
“He stays gone,” one lamented.
“Much too long,” I replied.
And I know this much to be true:
The rich ones fall in love
With poor struggling poets.
Buy 10000 of my books, I told her.
Shred the pages, and feed
Them to the carrier birds.
Who’ll spread our message of
Love, for thousand years.
top Paradise
She hears wild applause every time She walks into a room.
She is beautiful without even trying.
She wants fame, Yeah, She do.
I want that, She knows that.
Sassy, Feisty, She cut like that
I dig dat.
In case I’m not around too much longer,
I’ll see you in the Hereafter.
You’ll come riding up on your winged Chariot.
I’ll be a beautiful little brown boy again.
Just like when we were ten -
Even then –
You were my girl.
top Inside my head
You’ll know I’m losing it if gorgeous psychedelic
Sunsets start to float across the paint-chipped walls.
You’ll know it’s true when mutants in
White jackets whisper, “It’s that time, Homie.”
Disjointing my reality and flies like birds
Right of postcards from Paris.
I live among the wolves.
Locked down hard, in a cage,
Like a beast.
Amid tree jumpers and sword swallowers and smut kings.
“But what’s wrong with you?
Why you be actin’ like that?”
But next timeyou ask those dumb ass questions
Think of humiliating shakedowns and Gay Gestappo guards counting my body
Ten times a day.
Of soft ass cowards masquerading as
Tough guys, of shyster lawyers and politicians
And hitmen stalking my dreams.
And I ain’t had a woman in a long damn time.
"AND YOU WANNA KNOW WHY I GOT AN ATTITUDE?
I live inside my head.
The most beautiful place in the world."
top The midnight traveler
Sometimes it makes you wonder what he is doing in a
Dreary place like this.
Drifting from door to door, tier to tier, mingling,
He makes sharp U-turns, goes straight-
A strange smooth glide along the dark seedy corridors
Of Death Row.
He moves past tough guys and sinners
Drinking jailhouse wine.
He clamps shackles around the wrist of the abused,
Tormented young inmate contemplating suicide.
And during one private visit,
His spirit strenghtens Jo-Jo’s faith,
Calms him down, because
Three hours away from his scheduled execution-
He reminds him of a dark, wooly-headed Jesus,
Eating his last meal.
‘Round midnight the screams grow louder in this
Concrete hell. With all the chaos inside-
You’ll need prayer and angels to carry you
Through the madness
By Reginald S. Lewis top For
information on where to buy Reginalds books see the reviews on the
booksection for Leaving
death row and Inside
my head. |