Inside

People,…
Peeeeople, I was once knew as warriors, are now dead…dead inside, and dead outside, they don’t look the same, bodies fattened, cheeks blotted, eyes glazed, or darkened and dull as if the vessel is empty of anything, giving visual to the decrepitude of their once strong lean and life/prisoned hardened stature

However the world may see these men, they were warriors, now they are zombies. The “Pill Line” as long and trafficked as San Francisco’s rush hour on the freeway, or they mumble around looking for the drugs, and when the drugs are barren, the void gets filled with aggression, because the escape is no longer possible, and the depth of their reality hits them

These were my friends, these were men I looked up to, these were boys I grew up with, all inside of this jungle, but the jungle has eaten them whole. And the world outside of here, is but a myth, am urban legend, once made real and manifest, but now as far away as the dreams spoken of from childhood

All that exists here is the constant ominous nightmare of reality, the ever-reaching fingers of demons, the latching shadows that hide as the sun snoozes, and the ghosts of regret of yesterdays too far away to believe as real

Or a figment of an imagined life so long ago that fairy tales persist as desperation that turned into criminality, per societies perception, then unforgiving plea deals, guilty verdicts, and sentencing structures that would hold John Starks from “demolition man” in cryostasis

But the only thing frozen is their hoping hearts, and nothing…NOTHING is preserved, because the light has flickered, and is all but gone

Where have I gone, where did I go, where have I been, because this isn’t where I left. This is what it looks like when love, freedom, and the world leaves you, but this is where my purpose left off, and this is where I continue on from

Because there is no place like home
but this is no place like home
because there is no place
and this is no home
this is a morbid apocalyptic limbo,
where fog clouds your footsteps
mist dampens your mood
accompanied by a nefarious gloomy glow
with hollow moans and howls in the distance
this is the lonely in between,
where the soul has left,
and the body hasn’t learned how to let go…yet
this isn’t a creative work
this is the reality here, and it hurts
society has clearly determined worth
and c.o.’s are just mortician assistants at work
oh, and to compound, and somehow make this sound worst
a man just spent 23yrs behind these walls
and right before he could get out
he had a heart attack,
dying that very night on the operator’s table
he was state property
Nebraskan State Property
Product of Structuralized and Systemic Injustice
an Item of the Industrial Prison Complex
a Victim of Mass Incarceration within a state that refuses to alleviate
audaciously proposing another prison built
so they won’t lose a penny to be collected
maximizing their money’s worth
and they stripped him bear
maybe deciding he wasn’t worth
the extra care of medical work
and so like a slave that died in the heat of the unforgiving sun
he collapsed in the field
giving all he had
right before his walk to his earned freedom
breathing his last breath
succumbing to a premature death
so you can imagine the heavy swallows
and hurting hearts
stroking the mood of this yard
and fear and pain resonating on faces and in voices
with only one of two ways to cope
to deal
to decompress
and that’s head to the freeway
or decide to walk that far lonely painful walk away
and deal with this reality man to man
knowing that loss and losing
is just as realistic-
as it being them breathing their last breath
because he wasn’t the first comrade fallen
and he won’t be the last
because we are worth more alive than dead
and so the sentence holds onto us for as long as it can
but when the cost of staying exceeds the projected worth
death, is much cheaper!
I can’t be my brother’s keeper
when there’s nothing and no one left to keep
and death seems to only be
housekeeping