Dear Mr. Correctional Officer

Dear Mr. Correctional Officer
Please come correct with the office you-hold
Please come correct with your officers, please come correct and get off of ya-
pedestal, I am not a pet on-a-stool
or a character spoof, that drools eating at your spoon!
I am not a fool! I am not your tool!
I am not slave to your preferences, I am only victim to your jaded perceptions
Un-phased by your subliminal messages!
You perceive me as a mammal but more of an animal
Your desired domain over my terrain, acts as if you are lion and I am antelope
As if I am virus and you are anecdote
As if I am nothing without nothing and you are my ante up
As if I am akin to Annie the orphan inside the attic of Amityville writhing with anxiety under the weight of your preferred society
To you, I am already cut out of that picture
But I am cut from a different cloth, less than 700 thread count-me-out in hand-me-downs
with Ramen and chicken noodle soup as broth
To heal the hoarse as I speak from ill-tongue between clenched jaws, at all cost!
With scars and far more flaws than a loss, though you can’t fathom what I’ve lost!
You can’t imagine my withdrawals and why I withdraw!
I am not your easy suburban picture, I am an urban jigsaw!
Dear Mr Correc-tion-al Off-i-cer!
I do not feel you are correct
I feel shunned and null
and you get off from me calling you sir!
You use, you abuse, and you usurp!
You overdo, the same way you use syrup!
As if this is your ranch, I am your beaten cow in a herd that you stir up
in your boots, spurs and stir-ups
Color me numb, I am not blind, deaf and dumb
I am likened to Hellen Keller, disabled, yet I displayed a way that I am more than able
I am more truth in this life than the way you use fables
Babied? Spoiled? I knew not of a cradle!
I seen more with less cable
I derived from the ghetto, from a people whom are this country’s true staple
free labor..
You have more, yet people like me need more, we buy less and have lesser…therefore you are fortunate!
Fortunate to be ignorant of this side of life…of my life Mr. Correctional Officer
to you, I am salary, I am hourly plus overtime and unfixable to you
My possible lack of recidivism is fictional to you
I am jurisdictional to you
The jurors were crude and prudent in their jaded delusions or jurisprudence, so therefore I am nothing more than a number, nothing more than a criminal to you!
I am a group, a stain, less of an individual to you
keeping me away from your society is critical to you
I am pitiful to you, this is the pit to which I fell and now my plummet is the favorite visual to you
Your opinions shoot like guns and I am bullet-riddled and ridiculed by you
I am not your personal axe to grind! I am not your payback from your own life
ghetto doesn’t mean stupid, black doesn’t mean ignorant!
Felon doesn’t mean crippled, lost, unredeemable, evil, sour good, hopeless, hell-bound, #78756 forever, No!
Prison is my body cast, I’ve been casted out but don’t count me out
I am apart your daily count but I am not counterfeit
If your job is to keep me safe and propel my change
before I go back to the community stuck in criminal ways…
Than you are more felon than I!
You help perpetuate a cycle, to where I am a necessary sacrifice
So you can goad and entice, me to get back in here for the rest of my life
in front of your eyes!…so you can keep tabs on me
despite your effort, I am the tab on your keyboard, and I’m on to the next
Correctional officer!