Poems from the the Pen Poems from Death Row


WHAT IS MURDER?


The knowing and intentional killing

of another human being!

WHAT IS THE DEATH PENALTY?

The knowing and intentional killing

of another human being!

To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment

incomparably worse

than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more

terrible than murder by brigands.
-Fyodor Dostoyevski, The Idiot (1868)


THE CRIME OF BEING BORN BLACK

They tried to kill me in the womb
because of my blackness
but they did not succeed
Nor could they kill me during the Inquisition
the invasion of Afrika the Trans-Atlantic Passage
They could not kill me along with
Nat Turner

Gabriel Prosser

Denmark Vessey

Cinque

Martin

&
Malcolm
Nor could they kill me during the
Revolutions Insurrections Rebellions & Uprisings
They could not kill me on the ghetto streets
of amerikkka
Not even with their genocide
could they kill me
As i remember my brothers & sisters
Panthers

MOVE

&

all the others who

have gone before me
With all their attempts they
could not
kill me
then . .
.
. . . so they gave me
the death
penalty
instead.
by Ajamu M. Nassor, #4168 ( (greg resnover)
P.O. Box 41, Death Row Michigan City, IN 46360 Executed December 8, 1994

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