April 19, 2021: I've Done My Time

I’ve Done My Time

Waiting at the station; feeling so alone!
I see old friends in the faces of folks I’ve never known,
I think I’d know just where to go if I wanted to get stoned,
But that ain’t what I’m looking for – from the jail house, going home!
 
Riding in the subway, seems like everything’s in tact,
When all at once I’m mystified by a girl in checkered slacks.
I think she threw a smile at me, but how would someone ask?
So I look out the back window to the darkness of the tracks.
 
Chorus:
I’m gonna make it.  
I know I can take it
If I have to fake it,
‘Cause I’ve got my pride.
Wake up in the morning and meet the day;
Find me a job so I can earn my pay.
Somebody make this pain go away
That I’m always feeling inside.
 
My loneliness confuses me about what I stand to gain.
Ten years in a prison cell.  I have no cause to feel ashamed.
But no one knows what I’m going through.  Nobody feels my pain.
Some day I'm going to write a book on how the world has gone insane!
 
Chorus
 
Walking from the subway - Someone’s  rocking to the blues.
I’m watching sanguine faces digest the daily news.
I ask someone what he’s looking for, but I’m silently excused.
Does he think that I’m a criminal?  I thought I’d paid my dues!
 
Chorus

April 19, 2021: To Althea from Prison by Richard Lovelace in Harvard Classics, Vol. 41, pg. 355

 To Althea from Prison

When Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses crown'd,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free --
Fishes that tipple in the deep
Know no such liberty.

When, linnet-like confin-ed I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty
And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarg-ed winds, that curl the flood,
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.