(A DVerse writing prompt asked for poems inspired by the song "Folsom Prison Blues."
Los Anglos generally think that Johnny Cash owned that song, and he certainly did sing it well, but a fun fact (that I actually learned later, in college) was that it was written for and recorded by Freddy Fender, who had been in the Folsom Prison for longer than it took to do a concert. I wanted to give this post a link to the Fender version, which los Mexicanos y los Indigenes in California consider the classic version. I did not find such a link. Here is a version by Los Hermanos Mendoza that comes closer to Fender's version than to Cash's.
The town called Folsom, California, has more attractive features than the prison. It has Folsom Lake and various parks and trails, not all of which lead to the lake. It has a library, schools, stores, hotels and all. It has a business district, now considered historic, where my mother once leased a shop. It has residential streets like this one, where we didn't live, but our street looked more like this than like any other public-access photo on Google; the street had four lanes, and the house we rented for almost two years was made of red bricks. My brother was born in Folsom.
All images came from Google.)
Folsom, California, is a pretty place.
If you are a child, it's best that you not show your face.
Gravel's all lots of people have even in front yards.
Play in the back where you're safe and fenced and barred.
Playing with the gravel, look up at the fence.
Ten square feet on either side is all the land she rents.
The fence is made of redwood like trees that touch the sky.
Somewhere trees are still living; you might get there by and by.
Grass in front of this house will raise welts on your skin.
Sun will make your nose bleed. You might as well stay in.
Worst thing in the front yard is the traffic roaring through.
Drink and drive, smash people's cars just like they might smash you.
(One way to tell that that's not Mother's car is that she never parked hers across a cul-de-sac like that. It was sitting inside our driveway when the drunk driver ran out of the road and smashed it.)
The haze of all those cars' exhaust hangs in the morning air,
Corrodes the brains of people who had not one cell to spare.
Oh I want to get out of Folsom while I am still alive.
If we stay here any longer I might never see the age of five.
Well, the baby is behind bars just so that he doesn't fall.
Even baby likes to smash his bottles on the wall.
(That's why babies' bottles are made out of plastic today.)
Oh get us out of Folsom town, and take us far away.
(To be fair, a lot of people liked living in Folsom, and still do. But I don't think those people were four years old. If they were, they hadn't lived on a farm when they were three years old.)
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