Ramblings From a Tired and Broken Lifer
By William McCain
I say that I don’t write poems, ‘cause frankly I hate Poetry.
But now I sit and write: problem is, I don’t have a damn clue what I might say.
As I sit here on a bunk made of metal in a building not made of much more, just like an old warehouse, not much more than a big tin box.
This is where they send you when things go wrong and you break the law, not that you broke the law on purpose, but now you’re no longer fit to be a member of the public.
One very bad action; a very bad mistake, never been in trouble with the law before in your life, and that’s exactly what they give you: a life sentence in prison, forget the key, they won’t need that anymore. They don’t ever expect to let you leave.
Cram you like an overstocked chicken house in a big tin building sitting in wide open land and no kind of shade from the sweltering heat of the Mississippi Delta.
Locked down over every little thing, no canteen, no visits, then they turn off the phone: not being allowed to call home to talk to Mama, that’s just plain wrong. To punish us inmates for no good reason is bad enough; but why should our families have to suffer and be denied visits with their loved ones? You try so very hard not to get in any trouble by breaking any rules, but what’s the point when you can be punished and not had to do anything wrong.
I try to be good and keep my living area clean and I’ll be damned if I don’t get an R.V.R. while in my rack asleep.
Life in prison, there can’t be much worse; I wish I could turn time in reverse.
If I had a time machine, I’d go back in time to when I was 16. To when life was easy and times were fun. Just to be a kid again playing in the sun. No boundaries and no fences, steel bars or locked doors.
Life was so much easier when I was just a young boy, riding bikes all over the neighborhood or pushing Tonka trucks around in the dirt. Mom was happy as long as I didn’t get hurt.
I often sit and wonder where I went wrong, and I’m pretty sure it was the day I left home. My life from that point went badly off course and I caught a ride on a fast train straight to destruction.
Wind and rain may cause us a little pain, life in this jungle will surely make me go insane.
If my life were a movie it would be called a Nightmare on my Street.
Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, if it were Jason verses Freddie, Jason would probably get a beat down.
Michael Myer’s Jason, or Freddie Krueger, I’d hang out with Freddie ‘cause no one could be cooler. He might as well be called the dream ruler. He find’s you in your dreams and kills you in your sleep. I’d rather have him on my side than grabbing at my feet.
If I were a bird I’d be an eagle, soaring high above the clouds, dropping low to piss on a crowd.
Eye’s so strong and stallions so sharp, he can zoom in on a rat from 3000 feet then use his talons to tear apart the meat.
Grass on the ground, stars in the sky, if I were a bat, far away is where I’d fly.
If I could leave prison I’d never come back, I’ve spent enough nights on this hard ass rack.
Now if you can’t make sense out of all this chatter, it’s just to kill time and it doesn’t even matter.
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