The poem below is the first I ever wrote, 15 years ago. But it wasn’t initially titled “When Time Passed Away.” I don’t think I gave it a title at all. It was written around 2010-2011, when I was in prison in Lehigh County (Pennsylvania) on a different case. Originally, the poem was about the mother of my oldest two children (my youngest two wouldn’t exist for another six to eight years.) I must have mailed it, then forgotten about it. But my oldest daughter found it recently and emailed it back to me. The only lines I remembered from it were those I ended up including in a later essay, because they haunted me throughout my prison years, no matter what the year.
Since my writing ability has improved so much in the past few years, I decided to revise/update it. I broadened it to not only reflect my long-lost relationship, but also lost time—hence the new title. First, I share the poem, without commentary. Then I share the poem again, with the back story explained, stanza by stanza.
Helpless, I wait for her to notice me.
I wonder if she has forgotten our bond was eternal.
She has, I know, because she’s been gone for so many years.
A deception unimaginable was always my greatest fear.
Incessant thoughts of betrayal, knowing I’ve been forgotten.
Everyone witness to my passing,
Do they even care?
Another dress rehearsal for death
holding me captive somewhere.
Years gone by, that’s all I have today.
But, my God, how the time has flown.
Estranged from the familiar,
When my life passed away.
Day after day, one after the next,
I waited here just staying the same.
I’m still waiting for her to notice me.
I’m still waiting for the change that never came.
I waited to be saved while my pride muted my tongue,
Pain excited my mind,
Chaos trapped inside me,
No comfort I could find.
So, I write these years away.
Dissolving my thoughts into every moment wasted.
Strangled by regrets, I will be sooner or later,
Another dress rehearsal for death,
time-lapsed and hastened.
When time passed away.
The poem, explained
Helpless, I wait for her to notice me.
I wonder if she has forgotten our bond was eternal.
She has, I know, because she’s been gone for so many years.
A deception unimaginable was always my greatest fear.
Here, I talk about the ending of a 12-year relationship. Shortly after coming to prison, my ex visited me and said, “Tony, I didn’t ask to be alone.” That was when I knew what was coming. And it came quickly. I did not talk to her again for five years after that visit. Hence the line, “A deception unimaginable.”
Incessant thoughts of betrayal, knowing I’ve been forgotten.
Everyone witness to my passing,
Do they even care?
Another dress rehearsal for death
holding me captive somewhere.
I begin by talking about that gut-wrenching feeling of sitting in your prison cell thinking about who she’s with. What’s she doing? Is this forever? It’s all pain, all bad. When I write, “Everyone witness to my passing” I refer to the spectacle made out of my downfall. My star had been rising for a while before the hammer fell. “Another dress rehearsal for death holding me captive somewhere” is prison stasis. I have always called prison sentences dress rehearsals for death. That metaphor came from how I imagined people who had died previously looking down on me from heaven. But in this case, I am looking out at people from behind the wall, and I was tortured by it. And I wonder, “do they even care?”
Years gone by, that’s all I have today.
But, my God, how the time has flown.
Estranged from the familiar,
When my life passed away.
This stanza is a flash forward to today. Still locked up. But now a great amount of time has passed: “How the time has flown.” Estranged from the familiar – that’s prison. My old life certainly has passed away, dead and gone.
Day after day, one after the next,
I waited here just staying the same.
I’m still waiting for her to notice me.
I’m still waiting for the change that never came.
In this stanza, I’m still speaking from the standpoint of today. I switch to present tense with the use of the words “waiting” to signal the jump in time. It sounds like I am talking about the same girl, but I now I refer to time, not a person. I’m talking about waiting. I’m talking about change. I’m talking about me staying the same and nothing I’ve waited for has ever happened.
I waited to be saved while my pride muted my tongue,
Pain excited my mind,
Chaos trapped inside me,
No comfort I could find.
Now I’m talking about the past again because these lines were the four original powerhouse-lines that haunted me all these years. I am thinking of feelings I had in the past and I show it by quoting the original poem from 2010, which also appeared in the other essay (“chaos trapped inside me”). I was waiting to be saved back then. I wanted to be worth waiting for. But I never said a word to my ex or anyone because pride muted my tongue. Pain excites the mind into chaos, where no comfort can be found. Hence the five years that went by without speaking to my ex.
So, I write these years away.
Dissolving my thoughts into every moment wasted.
Strangled by regrets, I will be sooner or later,
Another dress rehearsal for death, time-lapsed and hastened.
Now I’m talking about writing, because that’s my life now. It’s all I do. My thoughts dissolve into every moment wasted. “Strangled by regrets, I will be sooner or later.” It’s fatalistic and the meaning is obvious, but it also means I’m not strangled yet. So it’s not a completely fatalistic line. “Another dress rehearsal for death, lapsed and hastened” means that I’m still in prison, but now so much more time has passed and it’s passing by faster and faster.
When time passed away.
Tony was recently released into a halfway house in Pennsylvania. He says that his mood has improved “infinitely,” but now he must deal with decades of neglected health conditions in prison.
