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  • Writer's pictureAndrea Levy

8. Haiku- Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

Red killed three people

Three innocent people dead

Fiery car crash


Three life sentences

One for each life extinguished

Penitentiary


Nineteen thirty eight

When Shawshank became Red's home

Ten years passed by now


Andy Dufresne came

It was nineteen forty eight

Convicted murder


Two lives were lost when

Illicit lovers they were

Shot dead in Glenn's bed


Drunk, no memory

No proof of his innocence

Suspect witnesses


Andy, a rock-hound

Red can get men needed things

What's a rock hammer?


Have you got ten bucks?

I snuck in five hundred bucks

Let's do business


Jail rape, the sisters

Prey on the weak looking fish

Andy suffered rape


Went through it alone

Andy decided to fight

Each time they raped him


Bogs was beaten hard

Did Andy make that happen?

The sisters still raped


Andy wants to get

A Rita Hayworth poster

Red says "no problem"


Andy befriends Red

Then he becomes a legend

Tarring the rooftop


Mister Hadley groans

Inheritance taxes bite

Andy's a tax whiz


Guard protection meant

The sisters stopped hurting him

Or they'd get beaten


Andy replaced Brooks

As prison librarian

Best in New England


Laundering money

For unscrupulous Wardens

A man has choices


Seven years later

Andy got a new poster

Rita Hayworth done


Marilyn Monroe

Before Jayne Mansfield poster

After Hazel Court


Raquel Welch went up

Linda Ronstadt was the last

Poster in his cell


What was the meaning?

Freedom, he said. You almost

could step right through them


Tommy Williams

Said Elwood Blatch killed Linda

And Glenn Quentin too


Andy dared to hope

That he could be acquitted

Warden said no way


Punishing Andy

Grain and drain. Time to think hard

Solitary sucks


His judgement cometh

And that right early he said

The wardens were friends


Know where I'm going?

To Zihuatanejo

After I get out


Andy planned for storms

Hurricane preparation

Before conviction


Peter Stevens lives

Under a rock in Buxford

Andy's a rich man


That's where I want to

Finish out my life in a

Little beach hotel


In a warmer place

With no memory at all

Pacific ocean


March twelfth, Andy's gone

Nineteen seventy and five

He's escaped from jail


A hole in his cell

Covered by Linda Ronstadt

To a sewage pipe


Norton hit the roof

Andy wasn't seen again

Probably Buxton


Mc Nary was where

He crossed into Mexico

Red got a post card


Red found the black glass

Right beside the Buxton wall

After he's paroled


Andy left money

Wanting Red to come join him

Man who can get things


"Get busy living,

Or get busy dying,

That's goddamn right"-Red


Hope the pacific

Is as blue as it has been

In my dreams. I hope


Citations for photographs

(Juggernaut)

(Juggernaut)

(Juggernaut)

(Juggernaut)

(Juggernaut)

(Michaels and Leventhal)

(Juggernaut)

(Juggernaut)

(Juggernaut)

(Destination: Zihuatanejo, Mexico, 12 pictures)

(Juggernaut)

(Destination: Zihuatanejo, Mexico, 12 pictures)



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