Between Chains and Freedom

By Daniel Lee Wilt

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462884797

Daniel Lee Wilt

Always top of his class, though always in the most trouble. Daniel Lee Wilt was born in Baytown, Texas but spent most of his life drifting from one town to another in upstate New York and slipping through the cracks of the justice system after a turbulent youth. He notes that his fondest memories were in Saratoga Springs, New York, and after a long 7 years he is back there again, living with his fiance, Kallie Day, a local photographer, and son Dante.

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Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Lee Wilt.

Cover art by Kallie Day

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011909405

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-8478-0

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-8477-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-8479-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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www.Xlibris.com

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98071

Contents

Introduction

Dream #13

Fate

The Cell

The Apology

Prison Sunset

New Realms of Reality

Live Or Lie Down and Die

Façade

Cell

Without My Bow

Nothing

Sonnet of a Salesman in the Box

Seven Sources of Strength

Love Star

On Feeding Seagulls

From Where I Am I Often Wonder

Jail Song: Part I

Bell Song

Eyes of a Dream

Ashes, Rain, and Redemption

Unnecessary Questions

Take My Hand, Just Not Yet

Faded Hope

Tainted

Sonnet of Love After Death

Sorrow

System Kids

The Cost of Redemption

The Fading Child

The Last Day of Seventeen

Because I, Am I, Will I?

Breathing the Breath of the Breathless

Enduring the Inferno

Letters in the Wind

The Past is Gone

Stay with Me

The Song of Fall

Spring Goddess

The Girl On My Wall

Stitches Removed

Ghosts in Devastation

The Looking Glass

Raven’s Return

From the Pen of a Dreamer

From the Fire to the Sky

Place of Fading Beauty

Behind What I Don’t Know What to Say

Orphan

A Byproduct of the Fall

At Dawn I Shall Be No More

Cold Steel and Metal Warmth

Cognitive Carnage

By Myself

A Soul In Shackles

As I Pen This From Prison

Always Stay True

With Battered Sails

The Rarest Rose

Present

Alien’s Anarchy

Prison Storm

Greenhouse Laborer

The Underdog

Absurdity in Chains

Prison Watch

Rain Filled Night

Gothic Flower

Daniel the Prisoner

Water

Beyond The Window

Jacquelyn

Lackluster

Now Is Christmas

On The Passing of Time

Meditation

Ray of Light

Gothic Angel

Requests from the Fire

Reaper Street

Road of the Reaper

Memories

More Questions, And Visions, And Doubt

New Age Natives

Log On

London Night

The Tatted Cat

The Shoplifter

There Are Some

On Goodness and Redemption

Untitled

There Is No Shame in Dreaming

What Shakespeare Didn’t Say

On the Battlefield

Over the Intercom

Haiku of Prison Violence

In the Cemetery

In the Distance She Stood

Less Than Credit

Passion

A Knight’s Love

Gothic Litter

Cemetery Grass

Corner of the World

Scribble

Scratch

Spring Blizzard

The Crying Crow

End Days

As the Snow Falls

Always You

True Love

Fairgrounds

Looking Down

Night Church

Sneakers

Night Falls

Root of All Evil

Night Sonnet

Twenty Minutes Till Tomorrow

At Home

Winter Summer in a Dying World

What Lies Behind the Sunset

Waiting

Willing Forth the Sunrise

Traces of Life In Ashes

Yellow Car

Dark Truth

Fatal Cold

Insanity

Gated Community

Skylines

Vigilante

What I’ve Seen in Photographs

Why I Weep

To Taryn

To the Girl Who Cannot Hear Me

Winter Rain

Within the Circle of Life and Death

Escape

Demon Dwelling

Dimensions of Sex

Inferno

With Child

Inner Calling

The Dark Carnival

In a Game of Chess

Sadako

The Loveless Church

Against the Grain

Desolate

I Know What It Is

I Could Use

Holding A Photograph

Her Eyes Held Miracles

Lily by the Sea

In the Rain

I Missed Her

Little

Where There Is A Will

Five Years from the Incident

Brick Wall

She

Luminous Generosity

Trail in Dust

Her

In the Sacred Grove

It’s Raining

Love Sick

Winter in the Rose Garden

Shaw

Less Law

I Seek Her Eyes in Everything

Vampyre

Chess Player Waiting on Life

Time to Be

Ceremony

Child of the Wind

Butterfly

After It’s All Been Said and Done

Chapters

Deadly Angels

Personal Position

Decaying Heart

Abhor-tion

Beyond Eternity

On This Dark and Dreary Christmas Season

Sonnet of Darkness

Sleep

Rust in Raven Hair

Love’s Reflection

Love Without Chance

Enduring Love Within Cold Shadows

Crying Out Loud

Bobcat

Discouraged

Before We Ever Met

If You Should Fall Before Me

Darkness Lies

Beyond the Darkness

Micro-consumers of Oz

Pearl

Falling Down

Death Is Waiting

Three Short Blinks

Feverish

For But A Moment

Fresh and Alive

Forget it

For My Mother

Not Redeemable

Calendar and Clock

Dark Times

A Distortion of Time

Degenerate Wisdom

dEMon

By My Way

More Than Credit

A Measure by Eye

Life and Death

Personal Defense Weapons

Frigid

A Piece of Sky

Porsche

In the Theater After Midnight

Far Away from Home

Beholding the Naked Goddess

Worth Your Time

A Toast

Let Me Always Dwell with Music

Among the Demons

Canvas

The Need of New

Kallie Day

The Day’s Last Cigarette

Standing Alone

Sunset Tree

Succumbing to Darkness

Roses Upon the Grave

Forgotten Doll

Speaking Across Eternity

Calling to My Goddess

Entwined In Winds Of Freedom

Fragments

Haunted

Eve of Angel’s Ascension

Angel’s Ascension

Introduction

They say that the future lies within our children. I for one believe this to be an inherent truth. I also believe in the tenacity of youth, and the power of the human spirit, which is really what this book is all about.

Between Chains and Freedom is a collection of poetry spanning over the course of nine years. It is about a young man’s plight with the system and his indomitable spirit of hope and endurance. Picture a sixteen year old kid surrounded by thirteen others, completely outnumbered, and faced with being shot. He reacts instinctively—and in self defense stabs the person holding the pistol . . .

After a year in county jail, a mistrial, and finally a lost trial, he is sentenced to eighteen years in prison.

If you didn’t figure it out yet, that boy is me. And that is only the beginning. Between Chains and Freedom is a small sample of literature from a collection of work from thirty-nine poetry books that I wrote while in prison and since my release. I hand selected each piece in Between Chains and Freedom to assemble a new book that would best encapsulate the whole experience: the struggle of that 16 year old youth, life as a prisoner, and, after seven years served a ten year time cut I won in appeals, the life I have been able to piece together on the outside. Each poem is about my once broken wings as much as it is about new beginnings—and the open stretch between.

Dream #13

The Moon listens intently

To the story of my life

The faeries reading from my book

Fate reflecting from my knife

With dreamy eyes the moon looks on`

Tired of watching mortals fade

Only mildly interested in seeing

How the Phoenix is made

Little does the great Moon care

What shall happen after

What has him slightly mesmerized

Is the magic of the dream I’ve crafted

The stars shine all around him

Casting down their light

The clouds covering him like blankets

To cover him from the night

In the years that I have left

He’ll watch my life unfold

And because he hasn’t seen a being like me

He’ll hear the story ’til its told.

Fate

Two friends leave the woods

A dying fire a testimony to a meeting

From behind the tombstones

They come

As the gang surrounds the two friends

The wind ruffles the feathers

Of a dead turkey surrounded by stones

Propped up as if in life

By fragile sticks

The trees hide the stars

And the moon

The leader of the pack

Reaches under his shirt

The other boy is holding a knife . . .

. . . A Phoenix is born.

The Cell

The cell is warm

But underlying this deceitful warmth

Is a cold and constant sadness

The ache of memories spilling forth

But I am but one cell

One interchangeable part

One piece of the organ

One cell in this monster with no heart

I am one piece of one tier

Part of one gallery

One division

One block

I am one soul in a soulless place

One spirit

One man

One face

I am a host for sorrow

Among hosts of anger, fear, and ignorance

One poet for tomorrow

Among intelligence, artists, and other poets

Convicts

Criminals

Innocent men

Rapists

Scoundrels

Thugs

And corrupted policemen

One day I will leave

Flushed out of the system’s system

Able to walk on my own two feet

No longer a part of this prison.

The Apology

I’m so sorry

that I’m not better

That I fail so often

    And fall short

in my own weakness

I’m so sorry

that I cannot be there

to stave off your