"mugshot" poems
i've been off the grid for some time now
even deleted my Facebook account
and all that's left when you search for me
is my mugshot from 2003
i guess i'm just a criminal
nothing to show to the eyes of the world
but I don't care about
proving myself to you
i look around me and all i see
are people looking down at cellphone screens
how many more deaths' by selfie will there be?
i guess i'm just too cynical
nothing to show to the eyes of the world
but i don't care about proving myself to you
Dec 2, 2018
Dec 2, 2018 at 12:52 AM UTC
Once, far away, Andalusia of time.
Was I, this dreamer, this student of crime.
Devouring textbooks with a gluttonous glee.
Of masters I conversed with, with lives like movies.
FBI-profilers, psychopathologists.
Faces carved from paleo-lithic stone.
The hearts of sailors betrayed by Triton.
Their ill-fitting suits an anarchists cry.
Oh blessed hearts long since buried in the plots,
of victims whose killers would never see man’s courts.
Who knew the world and hoped to teach I,
this fresh young prey with a predator’s eye.
This fresh young prey with a predator’s eye.
Sat I with the masters, in those secret little rooms
where the dead are shuffled to have chosen for them a grave.
And it’s never more real than when the beast sits still.
In the agonising ordinary glow of the halogen buzz
that shines on guilty and innocent alike.
To reduce us all to such pathetic things.
That if not for the debt, this creature’s crimes
one could pity being on such obscene display.
If it were not known to me, in great detail
the river of misery and depravity he had left in his wake.
As a mugshot robs the aura, so too the well lit room.
And I understood why it took a much colder mind.
As even though I possessed all the faculties which
could follow and track and trap the prey;
the predator must also ****
And being in those secret little rooms
I knew I could not see it through.
I left it to those stronger than I
and leave my mark through other designs.
Dec 26, 2015
Dec 26, 2015 at 9:17 PM UTC
I've seen cops
way too many times,
too many times
to go through my ****
ripping apart pillows
with switches
and against my better judgment
I did nothing
as I heard the glass of
my grandmother's picture
being tossed around
in the back.
Too many times
asking me questions
about this
and that?
Him or her?
If you help us out,
we'll help you out,
understand?
in their rooms
where no love is grown
and no help is on the way,
their eyes were filled with the fire,
they were finally
gonna get this ******
make him pay
for crimes he didn't commit.
Too many times
when i was asleep
in some old sewer,
and rolling up
asking me if i was on drugs
or drunk,
and if i didn't leave
they were gonna shove
a nightstick up my ***
get me used to it.
Too many times have they slowed down
at a light
and turned slowly,
keeping their eyes on me
like I was a wolf,
when they had blood in their eyes
and teeth
in their holsters.
"Where you going tonight?"
as they surrounded me,
another inmate
inside the bounded
bars of an external prison.
Cops never helped me,
never asked
how I was doing,
or why I was doing it,
or why I felt trapped
inside my own body;
all they saw
was another ******
making problems
for the civilized people.
God will remember them,
just as I can't forget.
And most of the time,
it was other black men,
some fruit bred strong in them,
to hate them bottom-rung *******
because they had escaped
and remade themselves,
apparently.
In truth,
I have killed many of them
in my sleep,
but when I step back,
I see that they are a product
of the same system
that says the guns, drugs, and violence
are part of the ****** condition,
that only shows a ****** on tv
when he's ***** or killed somebody,
another mugshot for you to put in your
scrapbook of fear.
So, no I don't hate them,
I hate seeing people that look like me
getting killed
before they come to fruition.
I hate that
:"black"
is used as a term
meant to engender
fear.
I hate that I walk down the street,
and a white girl
walks ahead
turning around
to
check for me.
I hate that when me
and some of the homies
walk down the street,
our hoodies pulled over our heads,
people look behind us
for the grim reaper.
There is hope,
but without
it being fostered,
The fruits
die on the vine,
noosed up
in a new way
as they drop.
Feb 11, 2012
Feb 11, 2012 at 6:36 PM UTC
I examine your mugshot
in the domestic abuse records
of Palm Beach County.
I find your eyes bloodshot,
red veins bulging with realization.
Your forehead branded with the lineage
of your rabid male ancestry,
now another criminal, wife beater,
another deadbeat drunk slithering
through the dialogue of strangers who now
know your name but will never see you
face to face, perhaps a potential employer
or candidate for your new wife.
The reputation you crafted
so rigidly, tarnished in your naked expression,
the cyanide of your psychosis
summoned with the smack
of a camera flash.
And I cannot help
but break a smile.
Jun 29, 2010
Jun 29, 2010 at 11:26 AM UTC
freedom of speech until you tear off the Hijab of a Muslim woman
walking down the street
and leave her beaten in the blood from your knuckles
exclaiming how much you hate terrorists
freedom of speech until you pour gasoline all over the floor of
an LGBTQ center and set it to flames
because you say that is not love's way
freedom of speech until you're a police officer who beats a handcuffed man
to death while he is laying on the pavement you took him down on
with five other officers by your side
because you think your safety was more at risk
and his skin color only proves it
freedom of speech until you **** a woman you had already detained
and fake her mugshot to save your department
because "the crime rate is rising" on this side of town
freedom of speech until you light up a church
because you still believe you're superior
and want to show it
freedom of speech until you walk around in a white cloak
pretending to be so pure
yelling that anyone outside of your shade is a social parasite
although your color did not always touch the grass of this nation
until you stole it
freedom of speech until speech becomes hate
and hate becomes crime
and there's killing
and killing
and killing
freedom of "speech"
and this entire world will go blind
Jul 28, 2017
Jul 28, 2017 at 10:59 PM UTC
I'm not going to be a teenage wasteland forever
Someday I'm going to stop polluting my body and hating my mother
I have an addiction to those
toxic remedies
like hair dye
nutmeg
and bleach.
I'll be taking calcium supplements
for dwindling marow
and for once I'll actually care about politics.
Daddy had a habit of calling me a
super-feminist
just because I wouldn't bring him his slippers
when he got home
from retrieving the mail.
I've always hated dogs in the house
so I became vegetarian.
My subscription to Cosmopolitan has long
been expired.
Instead I stick my fingers inbetween the crevices
of the fan
There's a secret to resentment:
Hang it up in the closet
on the hanger
next to the apron.
It's wanting to pour wasabi down pants
so they feel the kick
so they can hear
Aug 11, 2013
Aug 11, 2013 at 4:10 PM UTC
One day I walked the long way home.
In the chill of October, all alone.
Tears had cooled, wind had blown.
Still, she knew something was wrong.
She asked, I answered. My hurt was known.
I saw his mugshot today, his soul was gone.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 11:27 PM UTC
I was twelve years old when I got arrested, they brought me to the cells and took my mugshot… reminding me that I will never be free.
I learned when to speak.
Only when you're asked,
never put your head up,
don't you dare share an opinion, even if it's in class.
I learned that my life…
Was never truly mine to begin with. Just something another person can use at their whim, then dispose of.
I was twelve years old the first time I got arrested. They put me in cold metal cuffs and threw the key into rivers of tears I have yet to shed, but will come.
I was twelve years old the first time that I was arrested. My life looked bleak and I could no longer speak because my mind was not my own.
The took a permanent felt tip marker and wrote their names on me.
I was twelve years old the first time I was forced to be something I'm not. I was tortured until they found what they wanted. They proceed to shackle me with trends to follow, cover me in my prison uniform of tight skirts and crop tops, and read me my rights. Though it's clear to me now that i have none
I was twelve years old the first time I got arrested.
Change the laws and let us free. Let me once again know what sunlight feels like upon my shoulders without the restraints of people trying to diminish difference in the world, when all I wish to do is preserve it.
I was twelve the first time I was arrested….
I was charged with the act of being myself, and sentenced to life without parole.
Feb 10, 2018
Feb 10, 2018 at 9:39 PM UTC
He stands like William Stanley Moore
a mugshot of an old gangster I saw once
in sepia, stony, strangely clarified, endowed
immortalized in caramel marble
glassy eyes and all--
he plowed ahead that night
fingers twitching, only to turn
around outside of the light
once we'd gone through
the doors and I'd fled down
the stairs in his wake
to clip his heels
I've been chasing his shadow
tying my lead to his bow
far away from my own
dock, a sailboat piping
behind a cottonclad warship
I am small and timid
soft and malleable, unwild
unwoven, strips of silk in the foyer
running through his fingers
sheets sliding down his back
I cannot give what other girls
have given, the way they
dive and plead and swarm
I can only coat, can only
rinse, only lather, I can only
run over--
I am standing at his bookshelf
running a finger over the spines
gingerly closing the cabinet or
slipping into his bed, tucked
away like a porcelain doll
I try
i try
i try
Dec 18, 2016
Dec 18, 2016 at 10:13 PM UTC
After I dumped the filthy pain inside
the dank gutters, slimy and dry
double negatives, flat and hard
vowels breaking at the core. I thought
the loneliness inside of me would
vanish away into sore and drowning
corridors. But I could still feel the
dripping paint running down my
stained skin, joyless diction rolling
around and upturned. I heard the
breaking of bones and browning
nouns, whiskey flamed adjectives
pouring out scraped and abandoned
metaphors. The thoughts were
destroying my beauty, the mugshot
memories stuck in jagged alleyways,
ragged mazes, craggy chambers,
smashed maggots, a darkened dwelling
drumming inside my depiction in the
cloudy drained sky.
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 6:05 PM UTC
Start slow, deep breaths, shallow steps towards an end, means wrapped in chains and gasoline, the smell of fire itching its way up your nose, the taste of blood tickling the back of your throat, take off running, the forever kind of running, the dead set straight ahead hell bent full body immersion in a fever, pray for your wake, pray for the ones left behind and not for the ones ahead, the journey is holy and nothing, nothing is sacred, let the wind tear holes in your jeans let the cold slice your chest into portions, you are born whole and spend the rest of your life in grieving for that feeling, you search for it everywhere that veins ache and hearts bleed and spirits wait and debts go unpaid and lights stay on, all the time, to ward off ghosts, you cry for it, you write for it, you scream and you pound your fists and you take up arms and you become, in this way, enemy of everything - other, mirror self, target in crosshairs, mugshot, ******* and you fill your days of rage with buckshot and sawdust, while your nights of lust kiss prophecy onto window panes and cheeks and alley ways, read this, understand this: The fury is the only language you have that can't be used against you, no one will ever correct the grammar of your fists, no one will ever tell the barrel of a gun it has misspoken, and when it speaks there can be no mistranslation:
**** you, understand me
When I leave I will take this sky with me and never return,
When this burns down I will never think about it again,
I might be full of hatred, but I ain't no god of war
I will throw this feeling away and I will forget where I buried it,
I will make a home in the ruins of something greater than myself,
I will make better from worse or die trying,
Mar 30, 2017
Mar 30, 2017 at 4:25 AM UTC
I'll play your music all day and I'll watch your documentaries. I'll do anything I can to pretend it's ok.
you're always in the spotlight and sometimes it's not pretty, you smile in your mugshot but you're not really happy
you've had it rough these past years but you've always got your beliebers
we don't want to see you go down the wrong ally.
it will all be alright In the end,just Believe(that's what you taught me)
it's the best we can do,we love you
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC
I’ll never forget that cold winter
night when we left your high
school dance, paradise beats
rising in your bright blue eyes,
heavenly bells ringing in dazzling
destinies, dancing vibrations rocking
the jazzy scene, as we skipped across
the sidewalk to the sensual sounds of
Whitney Houston’s song I Will Always
Love You. And as we breathed in the
soft soothing vocals, moments of desire
intensifying across the horizon, gentle
gleaming breezes whirling upon the wisps
of our hair and suntanned bodies,
we were as one like the waves curled
up next to the sea. I pressed my hands
up against your smooth sparkling cheeks
and kissed you on your peachy lips,
a beautiful scenery lighting up the sky.
And as I bid you farewell, my heart was
in a place it had never been before.
I could see the rings of passionate Saturn
brightening the flames inside my soul,
the scintillating galaxies reaching out
to my world, while I watched you from
my vehicle strut down the glossy pavement
singing in divine delight. But out of
the distance, a dark shadow came running
towards your view, a tall malicious man
dressed in all black holding a firearm in
his hands. I screamed out your name
and tried to come to your aid, but I could
hear the blazing gunshots pounding the
city streets, the late-night murderer fleeing
the scene. And as I ran to your scarlet
mugshot kingdom, a world bleeding grey
and darkened death, split open and ripped
into jagged pieces, my life was never
the same.
Nov 17, 2018
Nov 17, 2018 at 4:25 PM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
When first he practiced to deceive
He thought for surel he’d be believed
Which only shows you how naïve
He had to be just to conceive
Being mugged at 2am
In cold Chicago by two men
Who put a rope around his neck
Which made his tale a tad suspect
After launching homophobic slurs
And for good measure it then occurs
To say they wore a MAGA hat
After throwing bleach on him like that
Turns out they were Nigerian
Both of whom had worked with him
Hired just to play that role
But they would not be his *******
Controversy often pays
Turns out he wanted a salary raise
When disparaging remarks about gays
Didn’t grab their attention, no one was phased
He thought it’s time to launch Plan B
Which he hoped would get their sympathy
But at the time, little did he know
To what length the Chicago Police would go
So now the mystery has unraveled
It was a bumpy road the actor travelled
Which often happens to those who dabble
In deceit and psychobabble
Now look at him see what he got
His eight-by-ten is a mugshot
And now I think he can plainly see
How hard it is to fool TMZ
Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved.
Feb 21, 2019
Feb 21, 2019 at 3:52 PM UTC
I'm too blessed
And too favored right now
To be in my bed
And not in a jail cell
The Lord heard my plea
He heard my cry
It was remarkable
It could've been more than a ticket
It could've been a mugshot
All over the internet
I could've been in handcuffs
But The Lord saved me
They said they wouldn't tell my job
Cause The Lord saved me
The Lord said that this night will not hender my chances to be someone
And my job on this earth is not over yet
And that I need to cleanse
I need to be clean for a while
I need to be careful for a while
I have to be sensible for a while
Open up my mind to a new found sobriety
I am lost and now I'm starting to see
That everything starts with a dream
Don't ever stop believing
In Jesus name I pray
Amen
Mar 20, 2015
Mar 20, 2015 at 10:14 PM UTC
my mother texted the other day
apparently
my brother was arrested
after an altercation at the dollar store
it sounds very kentucky
i know
i thought it has nothing
to do with me
i mean in all reality
i contact him once
every five to seven years
to see if he is capable
of an adult relationship
and we're not due
for another try until 2017 or after.
but then i looked at the mugshot
and i looked at the charges
and i remembered
all the times
he threatened to harm me
and maybe
i have a little yet
to process
Jan 31, 2016
Jan 31, 2016 at 11:30 PM UTC
Yup, you red correctly,
this noggin must go
perhaps donated
to the Salvation Army, or Good Will
cuz, said atrophied cranial
horridly styled comfortably numb skull,
the source of immeasurable
beg hot ten woe, from dawn to dusk
nothing boot eve ville
hollow cavity mainly comprised
of wooly webbed weaving waste,
uber sawdust, sans Schuylkill
River effluvium and runoff rotten rill
hence, e'en a think tank
designated as Abby Normal
formerly atop a body named Phil
lip, or Wright winged Orville
one half brotherly duo,
the other sibling Wilbur,
whom both made a mill
yen legends getting airborne their lil
mechanical contraption
atop Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina with bi sic ****
mechanical aptitude,
when born aloft **** Devil Hill
synonymous making fin hushed
blue prints emulating
flying fish, whose grill
like cartilage backbone
precursor to Evil
Knievel, who soared
on his motorcycle a devil
lush daring stuntman,
whose helmeted crown
full pursestrings muted cavil
ling critics with legitimate enterprise
earning gobs of legal tender,
whence aye aver
his mugshot ought to appear
on common denomination bill
and/or honoring throughout
the entire month of April.
Jun 7, 2018
Jun 7, 2018 at 2:50 AM UTC
Firsts of the night:
Handcuffs
Backsass scruff
Back of a paddywagon
Band of boys
But before
All this
4 outfit tries
Opinions of three
Butterfly pre potion
Then
Long hair and ripped jeans
House party
Warm smiles with new faces
Tittering across a stage
Teasing a held gaze
Before
Judgement in blue
Drunk remembrance
A Mugshot sentence
Social network presence
New name infamy
Self loathing
Backtrack scruff
Pins and needles
Sleeping pill sequel
Leads up
To a new year repeal
At the altar I kneel
For a self forgiven
A better year to live in
Feb 1, 2018
Feb 1, 2018 at 9:19 PM UTC
The coldness had swallowed my soul,
slow rolling verbs cracking and choking,
a stripped bladed brick jaw jammed
and slammed, super high rising screams
steamed and stung, blazing and bleeding,
banging and ringing, a saw slashed mugshot
over crashed beats exploding inside my domain.
Nov 29, 2018
Nov 29, 2018 at 8:22 PM UTC
Number 19 Corona Row
is where Covid Con lives.
He is a retired bank robber
still wears a mask because
there is a wanted poster in
the local Police Station with
his mugshot, so if you see
anyone acting suspiciously
such as social distancing or
washing hands excessively
this could be Con trying to
erase his finger prints from
his right hand, the one he
used on the safe door dials.
Con, originally from a place
in Ireland called Connemara
is a fluent Irish speaker, so
he may occasionally slip in
an Irish focal in a sentence.
Dec 17, 2020
Dec 17, 2020 at 10:33 AM UTC