Looking out: No less than 599 million

No less than 599 million

By Brandon Astor Jones

Like silent precious gems harnessed tightly to a speeding stallion
Each second's passage is shouldered as a yoke of eternal weight
Strapping down the wretched's limbs, condemned before hell's gate
Time gallops dimly towards me yet brighter, the nearer it comes
Bringing Truths's bittersweet irony, out of darkness, like a noonday sun
Asking what number of Hopes have endured death's villainous battalion?
No less than five hundred and ninety-nine million

On death row the condemned die at least once per second. That is eighty-six thousand and four hundred times per day: after 19 years on Georgia's death row, I have died no less than 599,184,000 times.

[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]

From GLW issue 337