Moundsville Penitentiary, West Virginia — Cold Steel
by Dawg
Past the floodlights and razor wire, under a sky hammered flat and gray,
Moundsville rises, a monster built for punishment–swallowing hope by the day.
Iron gates groan like a warning, every bar hums with sin,
the air bites at your nerves–regret and rust and memory digging in.
These corridors never forget, lined with claw marks and names scraped raw,
the scent of sweat and violence sours every cinderblock law.
Cell doors clang a music only the broken understand,
cold steel holds the sorrow, hunger, and fury of the damned.
Here, agony is scripture, each night a new commandment in pain,
blood and remorse etched deeper than rain ever could stain.
You walk the range, boots echoing off walls that bred despair,
where men scratched prayers in plaster–begging for anyone to care.
Ghosts pace in shackles, their sentences never done,
they rise in the hours when the guards are gone, and freedom’s just a pun.
Feel the shiver in your marrow, hear the whispers on the block,
names of killers, thieves, and loners–legacies chiseled in rock.
Redemption’s a rumor the stones refuse to repeat,
every cell is a tomb for a promise, every hour incomplete.
Solitude grows monstrous, a fever in the blood,
men go mad in silence, drowning in the flood.
Walk slow in these blocks, let the past weigh your tread,
this is where innocence evaporates, replaced by dread.
Moundsville is a mausoleum with a heartbeat, a beast you cannot flee,
its hunger never sated, its history never free.
You enter as a stranger, you leave a piece behind,
some wounds aren’t visible, some chains are in the mind.
Cold steel keeps the ledger, ghosts remember every name.
In Moundsville’s frozen arteries, even the dead don’t die.