I sit in the day room of
cell block one in the county jail at
4: 30 am.  It's quiet, almost serene.
All the other inmates are asleep.
I wait for breakfast: two hard-boiled eggs,
a doughnut, juice, and milk.  
Once a week we can order books.
They will deliver them today.
I'll get Bukowski, Steinbeck, and Cervantes.
The remaining six days will
fly by.
When I'm released, I'll go under
the bridge—steal wine and
stay drunk.
I'll eat every three or four days.
It's January with record-setting
frigid temperatures.
Survival will be a challenge.
There will be an ex-girlfriend to
contend with.
I'll try to get what little
clothes that I left at her place,
that is if she didn't throw them away;
she's somewhat of a **** like that.
My two best friends who stayed under
the bridge with me, died a day
apart two months ago,
so, nothing but
ghosts and memories there now.
I'm going to miss jail.

Though I'm not in jail it all just feels the same
Waking up depressed told just not to complain
A shotgun to my head i feel like Curt Cobain
Not a literal sense, but the context sustains
I don't want money, success, not even some fame
I just want to learn to play this game
Each day it gets hard i just keep  breathing
Wondering how the **** this happened, it feels like treason
From a comical skeptic to a reliable source
I question the water that was gave to the horse
Viewed as a sinner but always in doubt
"Read from the scripture and figure it out"
Nightmares keeping me awake like a proxy
SO many bad thoughts I wish I could get off me
Do your 12 steps Bob, everything is kosher
Yet I wake every night screaming still sober
A stranger does the same, and everyone wants to know her
A technicality set, a glimpse for closure
Different from most but related to some
I feel alone but second to none
Shaking again always be the **** up
"drinkings a sin" Always press my luck up
Some things I will never understand
But if it doesn't change I will be ******

Today my son
Is to be sentenced
To prison. He
Lives 23 hours a day
In a jail cell, he will move on
Steeling courage few of us
Ever have to experience.
Consider your luck.
His mental illness
never to be a crime.
Will there be light for a prism?
Where he can turn to
Other pathways
Less dark and Forge
Himself into the open
Blue sky and all the rainbows
From here on out.
On the outside we are blind
On the inside some
Are given true sight.
I cry for a rotten system
In mental health care
We own. You might
Want to pull up some buckets
For all mothers tears
Knowing the best we have
Is incarceration. How is that
America? Tired of blaming anyone but yourself?

Are you toxic or broken
Misunderstood or clearly spoken
Are you fragile, reckless or both
...Is there still hope?
I know I can't save you
Can't bail you out
I can't carry you a single step of the way
But can I perhaps
Support the change?
Can I be present for you
Can I show you grace
Could I perhaps just
See again, your smiling face?
If I stopped here, and waited a while
Would that be okay
Could you understand
My need to keep you at bay
Because I love you, I do
But I'm so afraid
To be hurt again
I'm scared to know you
But that's all I want, too.

He was in his cell
Twenty three hours a day
Never was he an animal
Yet treated as such

The echoes off the walls, bounce
The metal doors that clang, bang
Endless boredom after
All the books are read
He paces his eight feet

Gray dulls the senses
Lack of color, lack of life
He saw a bug inside
The other day, alive
Looking up at him
Another form of life, different,almost brand new
His voice filled with hope through the Pauses

It rained and the summer was hot
They were released for the hour
Choices that are made in that precious time
He went outside where there is only the cement
Laid on his back, spread his arms like an eagle, like an offering
Letting the rain Fall onto him,
just so He could feel Something

Tonight I will
Enjoy my bed
While you lay in yours
I wonder if you regret it all
After the first night when guards closed the doors
When you were on the inside
With absolutely nothing you could do
I still can’t believe the time has come
Punishment for the destruction that comes with you
I never thought it’d be real
You understanding what it feels like
To be a powerless prisoner
Giving everything you got- to still lose the fight

Do you lose sleep over me
Putting you where you belong
Do the voices in your head still tell you I’m in the wrong?

I wonder how many months
It will take to break your spirit

All you have is your thoughts
How many memories till you hear it

The muffled screams, my terrified eyes
Or are your memories filled with stories saying I’m the bad guy

Blaming your true colors on account of being high
While you looked down at me on the floor, beating me just enough not to die

Are you angry with me because I got away?

If you could see me tomorrow do you know what you would say?
I think you would walk right past me
Without even a look
Making me feel like I was nothing
It’s the biggest play from your book

I think about this often
If I had the chance, what would I say
I forgive you for making the biggest mistake of your life
Knowing I’m the one that got away

You can hear them scream at night,
the men, locked in,
over at the hate factory.

It's a kind of purgatory.
A winter time
for the mind.

No light gets in.
No love either.
But you can see it all below
through the bars
on the window.

I sit here in
county jail sporting the
orange jumpsuit and I
write more poems and  
memoirs in a week than
I’ve written in a year.
It feels ******* when
I’m pounding out the
word and the line.

When you’re homeless and
the temperature is minus ten,
jail isn’t a punishment,
it’s a reward.
I got busted for public intox two days in
a row, and again three
weeks ago.
The state remembered—they
recommended 30 days,
the judge gave me two weeks.

Every time I go to jail
I’m very drunk,
and by morning I’m
coming down hard.
I remind the guards of
my predicament—the danger of
withdrawal seizures.
They say, “We are aware of
your condition, Mr. Case.”
And within a couple of
hours
I’m on Librium,
making detox bearable.

Within a couple of days the
drunken haze dissipated
and the need to create returned.
I got their tiny safe
pen (impossible to stab someone with),
and I went to work.
I looked out my little
window in my cell and I
saw a male bald eagle gliding
lazily over downtown.
I felt as free as he was.

Three burly sheriffs showed
up at my neighbors
house yesterday.
Scowls on scarred faces.
Tattered lives, tarnished
brains.
Five minutes later,
they were walking my
friend out in handcuffs.
He shuffled, head down.
Autumn frowned and the
leaves scuttled away in
disgust.

Today, the vultures swooped
in, picked the bones of all
his earthly possessions that
littered what was once his
front lawn.
Jackals, and hideous
hyena faced men and
women took the last of
his things.  

Even though he was
arrested, he still
grows.
and although they are
free, they die more
daily in their own
private evictions.
I've seen more
humanity at a
hanging.