Poem: "Peckerwood Hill"

You don't know much yet -
you don't know laws or judges, priests or rites
You don't even know the words to "Hey Jude"
But today, today is your birthday
Conceived by cousins and poorly sculpted
by the cosmos

The doctors -
Oppenheimer, Kevorkian, and a nurse from Buchenwald,
they've all taken the oath -
welcome you to the world
and do what love will never have a chance to do -
they stop your heart

They won't send you, what they can't use of you,
expendable outlaw,
to Peckerwood Hill -
that crowded concrete orchard in Texas
full of executed killers and three-strike scoundrels
who wasted away in the infirmary
Their brothers ceased to speak their names
the day the verdict came down,
the day the warrant was signed
So to Peckerwood Hill they went
unclaimed, unloved, unnamed,
to await the Resurrection and a brand new trial

But you, birthday boy,
Peckerwood Hill is not for you
That's for human beings,
forgotten, discarded as they were
You're less, so you'll be put somewhere less
Dissected, photographed
Maybe a jar of formaldehyde is the best they'll do for you

Today is your birthday and I cannot promise you a thing
No fairy tales, no fables, no lullabies
Not even a crowded garden of rocks called Peckerwood Hill -
that's only for us killers and thieves

-by Bud Sturguess