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Capital Punishment

Poem [1]
August 14, 2006 [2]
Philip Horner [3]
The blood cried out. The evidence was plain.
The perpetrator was in custody.
And, to deter the rest from raising Cain,
He was exiled in perpetuity.
But that did not prevent the rise of crime.
(These criminals resist all reformation
by flogging, maiming, fines or doing time.)
At last the Judge decreed in His frustration,
You shed a man’s blood, your own blood will be shed!
Recidivists would not escape this plan.
Not even seeing all the killers dead
Reduced man’s inhumanity to man.
Oh, I give up! His Honor loudly cried,
Resigned His post, stretched out His arms, and died.


Philip Horner is an inmate at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord, N.H. He received an honorable mention for poetry in the 2002 PEN Prison Writing Awards. This poem was one of three runners-up in America’s 2006 Foley Poetry Cont
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Source URL: http://americamagazine.org/issue/580/poem/capital-punishment

Links:
[1] http://americamagazine.org/sections/poem
[2] http://americamagazine.org/toc-past/2006-08-14
[3] http://americamagazine.org/users/philip-horner