Poetry by Anthony Gay

What does it mean to me a prisoner in America? It is equivalent to being trapped in a doghouse with little movement to move. It means that life is deep, complex, and complicated Life is not easy, and staying alive is just the initial challenge. Living with the consequences of our actions is a lifelong challenge. There is no refuge in prison. No happiness. No crisp, clear mornings or evenings, no brisk winds. No low roaming clouds, or gracious rains. No sugar maples or apple trees drooping with fruit. Each day is filled with anger and hate. Every time we get angry it cuts into the fabric of good will, care and appreciation that are vital to our relationships. Each day we hate we exclude goodness. We search for rehabilitation but can’t find it. There is no agenda for rehabilitation. I thought maybe the agenda was to warehouse us, that’s the common cliché I always hear.  But recently I looked in the Black Law Dictionary. This classic dictionary defines warehouse as a “building to store goods and other items”. There are no “goods” in prison. Therefore our condition is worse than a warehouse. American has forgotten about us. How could America forget about its own people? Does a fire forget to smoke? Does a jewelry store forget it has jewelry? No! Yet, America forgets us. America shows us her back and hides her face. 

Like cages full of birds, America is full of deceit. She has become rich and powerful, and has grown fat and sleek. She blushes, not with sadness, but with madness.  Not with shame, but with arrogance. Psychologically, prison negatively affects all prisoners, but at different rates. To me, being in prison is the equivalent to having a major surgery without anesthesia. There are no educational opportunities to advance or develop. It is like the place is designed to psychologically kill you. How could America be so cruel to its own people? I can understand that there needs to be order in society, and crime causes chaos. So there is a need for prisoners. But is there a need to psychologically kill prisoners? Are we terrorists? Am I a terrorist? No! So why is my treatment equivalent to an alternative set of procedures. Will the government consciously avoid the treatment of prisoners? Has the government forgotten that Justice White stated, “There is no curtain drawn between the constitution and the prisons of this country?”. Have the federal courts forgotten that when a prison regulation or practice offends a fundamental constitutional guarantee, federal courts are supposed to discharge their duty to protect constitutional rights? Or was Justice Powell just blowing hot air? I don’t think Justice Powell was blowing hot air. Why? Because the government invented the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act. This Act circumvents what Justices White and Powell stated. The Prison Litigation Reform Act is the modern day “hands off” doctrine. What was the theory of the hands-off doctrine? The management and control of prisons were generally viewed as executive and legislative functions. In essence, the courts refused to intervene. I remember reading in a court opinion that the term “cruel and unusual punishment” is relative rather than absolute. The conditions in which prisoners are housed, like the poverty line, is a function of a society’s standard of living. As that standard rises, the standard of minimum decency of prison conditions, like the poverty line, should rise too. What do we call minimum decency? I’m locked in a cell twenty-four hours a day. Is that minimum decency? I treated at best, like a child, at worst, like an animal. Lawsuits no longer serve a useful function. Ninety-nine percent of inmates’ lawsuits are deemed frivolous. Only some are knowingly filed frivolous, but what about the ones are not knowingly filed frivolous? The ones that are a result of being illiterate, uneducated, or unenlightened or suffering from series of mental illnesses? What about the ones that are circumvented? Why are the courts reluctant to appoint a prisoner a lawyer in a civil rights complaint? Because the courts know that it will level the playing field. This is what it means to be a prisoner in America. To be shoved aside like human debris.