Execution Poem by Michael Arnold

Leather straps old and worn
From long past lives
Who sat and scratched oak arms
While in your last embrace.
Ending life in blackness
Without warning.
 
A tear might fall
Or a cry unheard never leave
A parched, burnt throat
As current courses through a body
Dancing in silence.
 
The smell of burning flesh;
Life lingering in moments
Before death reaches out
To those who sit and watch
Another mother’s son die