Incorrigible

Disclosure:
These poems are based on observations by the poet. 
The subject of this poem was being sent to the Ohio Department of Corrections.

Incorrigible
He told them to take their rules and shove them..

For it was too late to start obeying them now

He was past the point of no return

He was heading south, to criminal grad school

A three year assistantship on the state

To get that PhD in Criminal Justice from the inside

He acted out, yelled, cussed and ridiculed the power

Any chance he got, yelling and talking all night long

Lecturing to his audience in the pod from behind his cell door

While screaming at the Turn Keys, he was at home

With his homeboys, the other felons

Playing cards during his one hour out and the other 23 in

He was home and happy with the other prisoners

Was he incorrigible, or at home?

At 39, he had spend more than half behind bars

An Incorrigible criminal….an institutionalized human being?

A man of the system, at home inside

And out of the norm outside, incorrigible

By

Patrick R. Saunders, 10.12.2010