Forgiveness Takes a Lifetime to Master

If 60 convicts can save a puppy from a sewage drain
In the rain
In chains
The DA breathing down their necks,
And you can find a reason to break cake
In a TV funhouse where cheese mutates to bread
And you can remember 11 years later
Feeding lemons to your daughter
To negotiate the slaughter of whatever protests she might have made

And it doesn’t make the ground beneath you shake
And it doesn’t make you die a thousand times
For every smile you might have missed
For every cheek that wasn’t pinched

If you can warn the clerks about Muslims with shaved arms and chests
Or stand like Gandolf at the security gate screaming,
You shall not pass,
If you can deliver a clemency sentence 10 seconds
Before the poison gas
To a man who deserves to burn
Then surely you can escape the internal death row
You call home and condemned yourself