Have you heard
The news
So blue it’s black
So sad its not even tragic
These stories
Theses tales
From Virginia
From a Birmingham jail
This is America
This is right now
This is how it always has been
We just refused to listen
Just another victim
To a broken system
Sure it feels better to be numb
But it doesn't feel good
We all get tired from staying woke
but how can you sleep
With death at your backdoor
Holding a badge and a gun
No warrant
Warrants this kind of response
Where is the revolution
If its not being televised

Soul bounded by lust
prisoner in a red-hot cage
where every step burns
and there's no one to trust

How desperately you want
how pointless your battle
you're the fighter
you're the jailer
oh - what a taunt!

I had cried out for home    
In the midst of all out wreckage  
An onslaught of bad days  
Bad people    
Bad things to do    
To good people    
To feed a bad habit    
    
There lay my bad seed soul on the filthy carpet    
I had rolled on it    
I had taken a nap on it    
And the polyester fibers    
Had attached themselves to my brain    
The pseudo soft mesh of red *****    
twisted into grey matter    
    
And I cried out for home    
God I believe    
And no words for him    
Aside from that thing    
In my tummy    
Wrenching that I needed him    
    
And to the alleys again    
Once more in the morning after    
I pulled myself up    
Sticky faced    
And mouth curved an OG grin    
With hip walk down lick street    
My lean serious    
My intent Ill    
The illest    
    
Then behind me sirens spin    
‘‘Twas the cop    
From the night before    
Or, the night of    
Whenever    
Or the day I    
And I probably did    
I don’t remember    
    
But he was sure of it    
And my wrists were soon tight with steel    
Key lock    
And pale faced feeling    
Drained to my knees the rest of me    
Slid into seat    
Customary head tuck    
And to county jail    
    
Booked in    
****** up    
Off grin    
I had been too tired    
To argue much that stripes and numbers were not my color    
    
I was going to stay a while    
A little vaca a go go    
Hell no you can’t leave    
But    
At last a place to really sleep    
And eat    
(Insert here any form of gelatinous ooze)    
    
And just to break the serious monotonous    
Time......    
....................(you cannot imagine what whir lies between those kind of) ........ticks....    
    
I found my hustle    
  
For a beautifully    
Artfully    
Passionately rendered Madonna and child I did for a stud broad    
She traded me three e gig filters    
(I shoved up my *******)    
Aughhh...    
“nicotine baby, hadn’t seen you in a while.”    
    
And I considered this    
And I asked why    
She had fortuned my ****** with this wealth    
    
A big woman they called Squirrel    
Who had sported stripes on the daily    
And would be for 15 plus more years    
Said to me    
“Because I need to make these grey walls home.”    
She stuck up the Madonna    
With toothpaste and spit    
And sat down to pray    
    
And here’s the thing    
About God    
And    
About stud broads called Squirrel    
Both have quite the surprising answers    
To questions    
You ask    
Or prayers you did not know you’d cried out    
    
Prayers like    
I want to go home    
  
And big bad women    
With our lady of perpetual hope    
Lightening the dark of their eye    
Show you how to make it

The illusion of
option,
of freedom,
of choice—
the patronizing
call of the
jailer—
his insidious
hiss through
the cold steel
bars,
“Your time
is your own,
you may do
as you wish.”

This space
with four walls
one window
and many bars
left alone
to thoughts
in this jail
called a heart

Let the rusted shackles remain
all the tread-marks and the bruises
to remind me in this life,
that I was once a prisoner
of my own habits.

Show the bars were fashioned
from the idleness
of my own two hands,
which bestowed upon me the title
of lecherous warden.

I often think of you, the one that got away.
The nights staying up until 4am
I regret nothing.
I wish you would let me stay
I thought to you my humor would mean something
But alas.
It is you after all, Mark zuckerburg.

Stealthily,
dressed in black,
late at night,
wearing a mask,
I will steal
the guard keys
from the wall,
opening the cells
one by one,
letting out all
the hidden,
forgotten, and
wasted talent--
the painters,
the poets,
the rappers,
the cartoonists.
Together as an
unlikely union,
a mismatched clan,
we will show
the world
just how much
potential has
been unjustly
locked away.