Lost Treasure Poem by john tiong chunghoo

poetry should
not be for sale
for it is beyond price
it's an art to free the heart
of limitations, restrictions
the ideal prescription
in a psychiatric ward

string all your answers
to the psychiatrist
and you would get
the greatest poem
you would ever write
truthful, raw, echoing
from a real heart

they could even
prescribe it to prisoners

just listen to
Afghan gem dealer poet
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost
- he soared to paradise in a cage cell
in Guantanamo Bay, he vowed

the innocently branded
al qeida terrorist wrote
verses at the bottom of his
Red Cross letters,
scratched them onto
styrofoam cups and
latter with rubbery pens
- some 25,000 lines of his
prison experience -
now in American hands.

'I would fly on the wings of my imagination, ' he recalled.
''Through my poems I would travel the world,
visiting different places. Although I was in a cage I was really free.'

those who write poetry
try to find themselves
in their own maze of words
to free their trapped soul

those who read them
need a heart of of patience
and a headful of knowledge
and inquisitive spirit
to track the poets down
his thoughts, personality

m eagerness to lay hands
on abdul's lost treasure.
Will the United States hand them back to him?
everyline of them?