Santonio D. Murff

Issue No. 21 • Spring 2020

I am a prisoner. 
I am dead to the world. 
I am nothing. 
A nobody. 
I have neither a name, 
nor a voice. 
I am 773394. 
That's it. 
That's all. 
To me, there is no more…. 
Until, that is, I pick up a pen. 
Then, I am alive! 
I am freer than I've ever been! 
My voice is restored! 
My passion ignites! 
EXPLODES! 
FLOWS like hot lava across the globe!. 
My fantasies are fulfilled! 
Dreams become real! 
The walls fall! 
I shed my shackles and chains! 
Forget my problems and pains! 
I travel far and wide! 
The world laughs with me! 
Together we cry! 
Adorned in the whole armor of God, 
sinners near and far, 
tackle and take on: 
inequities, injustices, evils that be! 
To bring about justice, manifest peace!

"LIGHTS OUT!" 

As I die once more, return to the dark, 
I sing no songs of sorrow, have no heavy heart. 
I put away my righteous sword, 
slip into slumber, that little death, 
satiated and spent, with the tiniest of grins. 
Tomorrow, I know, 
The writer will be reborn again.... 


Santonio Murff is a multi-award winner in the PEN America Prison Writing Awards from Shreveport, Louisiana. His first novel, The San-Man: 7 Days of Hell, will be published by Righteous Publications, and his movie script "Cobra's Cross" has received multiple awards.