Poetry by Jeremy Mulligan

I Am….
By Jeremy Mulligan

I am a dog. Not in the sense of my bark, my bite, my breed, my instinct or characteristics. But in the sense that my hands are cuffed behind my back with a black leash hanging from the chain. Two white correctional officers hold the leash as they lead me outside to another cage about the size of a bathroom in a mini mansion. It’s 2021 and I wonder what my ancestors are saying, what they are thinking, how they feel about what they are witnessing, from above and from below. I wonder what Thurgood Marshall’s thoughts are on the 18th Amendment. Legalized slavery, under the guise of criminal punishment. 

I am a costar in the documentary on the justice system gone wrong. A victim of an aggregated sentence sanctioned by a hypocritical judge who only saw what he assumed my face represented, not what my soul represented. A distant memory, buried in the cemetery of his clouded judgment. Carelessly wiping away my life, like sweat from his brow, or dust off of his shoulder. Legality thrown out the window. The only evidence weighed was my creed, color, culture, age, dialect, and tax bracket, the latter of which I never considered myself because it was too low to acknowledge. 

The master, I mean the correctional officer, unlocks my cage, it’s time for me to go inside. Whatever I am, he has a job to do, and my job in his eyes is to make his job easy. As I’m being led to a smaller cage, my cell, the size of your bathroom if you live on Section 8, other prisoners stand at the cell gates, looking on longingly. I can’t stand the sight, but I accept it nonetheless. My cell door shuts and the CO gives me that look. It’s smug; if superiority had an expression, that would be it. I am locked up on top of being locked up, for having the audacity to buck against the system, and exude pride in a way that they view as a bad influence. Like the runaway slave who dared to protest, I have to be disgraced and dismantled publicly, in order to keep their train moving. 

I am a prosecutor’s dream. Not the prosecutor with mixed feelings, but the one with no integrity, hungry for advancement. Maybe it’s an election year and he’s newly wed, with a chip on his shoulder and a hefty mortgage. Who do you think he’s willing to sacrifice? If Justice ever had a blindfold on, this is the time for her to take it off, if there was ever a time for him to do more than bend the rules, why not now? He’s up against me: young, black, and society’s foot stool, their doormat to the back door. And yes, I said “back door” because of their devious methods. Some planted evidence here, a lie or two there by men of uniform and men of the cloth. A false statement reiterated by an officer of the court shouldn’t hurt too bad right? Why not; what’s another life as long as the pieces fit into the prosecutor’s makeshift puzzle. As long as he can prove that you were already on the wrong path anyway, and as long as your face is on most of the news reels.. 

I am too high-spirited, in a cell that’s meant to diminish it, in a system that says I should lower my pitch. I am casual and calm when I need something, from the CO’s, the counselor, the unit manager, or the parole board, because that’s the only way I have a slight chance of getting it. To be alert, proud, outspoken, or prideful will leave me helpless, deprived of necessities as bare as toilet paper. My body is not enough. They want my self-esteem, self-respect, dignity, and my soul. They wanna make me eat humble pie until my thoughts turn to mush, until my fire flickers out and my voice is non-existent. They want to wear me down until I’m nothing but a mannequin for the storefront of CCX. 

I am a nasty taste in a juror’s mouth, the caucasian one who looks good on paper and represents everything bad. The one who’s never known a black man personally unless he was a standout: Obama-esque, the football star at his 90 percent whte high-school, or the bi-racial guy that he used to work with that spoke so proper who ended up becoming CEO. How the hell am I supposed to live up to that? These other men his proof that he’s not racist. They justify his thoughts and actions against me and I justify his thoughts and actions against them. I have to convince 11 more people like him for better or worse that I’m innocent of a crime that fits my stereotype, all under the guise of them being my peers. All under a system with a hidden fix of voter suppression, unjust laws on targeted communities, along with a job market that bleeds discriminatory practices which leads to the ineligibility of being a juror. So what the hell was I thinking? 

I am a firecracker that’s borderline legal depending on the setting, in need of a drone to take me away, if only mentally. I am in prison, in the hick town of all hick towns with a kind I never meet, a kind that benefits off of my presence but hates it at the same time. I am on-call, but for who I don’t know. I feel like I’m waiting on some type of ignition, some super conscious valid reason to blow and go kamikaze. I am off beat. I am constantly trying to align myself, as they consistently switch the alignment. I am a patient in this mythical hospice known as the penitentiary, and only reality, the same thing that’s trying to kill me, will set me free.  

If I…
By Jeremy Mulligan

If I could rearrange the space in my heart. Wait a minute–if I could enlarge it, clone it and literally put it in your palm… If I could open it up, just look inside and bear witness once again to how you got in there. If I could rewind its beats to relive the day that you stole it. If I…. 

If I could bottle up our moments and melt down our passion just to stir up our emotions, there’d never be a need for another elixir. If I could recycle your taste over and over. I’d never need replenishing. If I… 

If I could maximize our potential, I’d stall it out completely. If I could speed up our process, hesitancy would a get a hold of me. And if our days were ever numbered, I’d fight time to the death. If I… 

Could put you in writing, our book would never end. If I could put you in perspective I’d need another lifetime. If I could put you in a category, it’d be the classics. But if I, wait a minute, if I… 

If I knew I could love like this. And entrust everything in me to you, then life surely would have been different. But if I knew half of what I knew now, then this journey would have never existed, so I’d rather not know at all….. 

The Process
By Jeremy Mulligan

I need a personal strobe light. I need to shadow box with my goals, because steel sharpens steel, right? Because success is what I make and the recipes may vary. Because amateur night provides a learning curve that you can never tire of. Because I might just step my game up, as the game steps up itself. If I may, can I progress? And let my actions be just as rhetorical as the question.

Let my mind build a wall against all these immigrant thoughts. Let innocence die in the name of growth, and adversity inspire my muscles on in this marathon ahead of me. Let the song stop if I fall out of rhythm with what the universe produces. And let nature take its course for every seed that threatens to sprout. 

I need a game time decision before the schedule even comes out. I need a caption before the camera flashes, a canoe before the river feeds into the sea of opportunity. I need my mileage before the road is paved, ahead of the curve so much, I couldn’t help but fly straight. 

Let the routine take its toll. That labor of love that work ethic inspires. That exhale that’s well deserved. That inner push that intuition sets off. That exhaustion that exfoliates advancement. The sweat, the tears, the anger, the joy is all a part of the process we need to stay in bed with, in order to give birth to everything we desire.