Visiting Hours

Stand back . . . Keep your body and hands away from the bars . . . The bars, the frets; of the instruments that played with the dark . . . Stand back . . . Keep your body and hands away from the bars . . . Bars that chime, forever echo the futility of shadows that move between them, contact with the living prohibited . . . Out of mind, out of sight . . . Shadows whose names will never be cleansed of stain from conviction . . . And the victims' names soon lost in the incarceration of public memory . . . Stand back . . . Keep your body and hands away from the bars; the frets of the instruments that played with the dark . . . The lost band who once strummed a chord, and maybe towed a line of innocence . . . Out of mind, out of sight . . . Stand back . . . You have to leave . . . Visiting hours are over.