I think it'd be righteous thing to start with the good things that came out of this messy knot. Unfortunately it aint but one that I can think of. Most likely you'd think I'd mention some beautiful poetry on freedom, and maybe how it tastes, how my heart got fluttery upon gettin out-- but im a man who needs no comparison in order to hold the full appreciation of the matter in mind, so that aint to be mentioned. What I can say was a good thing is commercials hold no weight in the place. Zero calories like your old lady's crystal lite. Like, we were able to watch tv at certain times, such like the Ravens game Sunday evenin, and some wackadoodle ad comes on like the good-for-nothin movie Inception comin out on BluRay next week. You gotta use everything in your human powers not to cause a ruckus rollin on the floor with your laughin tears cryin out BOY NO ONE GIVE A GOOD GODDAM ABOUT BLURAY UP HERE!! Spite of near turnin myself inside out, I kept quiet, but the thought was enough to make me real happy for a few hours. So it's sure nice knowing the so-called "business world" comes to a halt once you in them concrete blocks.
Save that though, there's more problems than you can count on hands and feet. Firstly, you gotta be alert enough to take notes from the get-go, so as not to look like a fresh-baked rookie in the ol game. Hell, I was workin hard as a hammer scribblin in my mind's memo pad with all the goings-on. Primarily this means not bein a goddam slowpoke on the payphones when you're punchin in them numbers to set her up for a call. They spot that from miles. I even drawn up a fake dial pad on my cell wall with a golf pencil I snagged when fillin out a visitor request slip. It got denied cuz I put down 11 as the month by mistake, and theres no time machines I don't suppose. Anyways, I got real quick on the dialin and felt satisfied to bring it to the public eye of fellow inmates. 1535495995 came outta my fingers faster than you could say "lockdown," and I was in the clear.
Now they say bein a prisoner, you're part of a system, and I say you're part of a systematic fuckin ass-backward mess of a system. Two outta the five COs, all which ain't a carryin a little extra weight on the belly, will strut down the aisles during face-count and not pay no mind to the cats scratchin at em with their "Where you goin baby"s. In fact, those two will come back at em with a smile and a wink right at em! I understand the why, since they not gettin a catcall from anyone else but inmates, but certainly that's not gonna right a wrong such as that. They not supposed to be doin that.
And things get even more scandalous when ya get to the meals. The kitchen workers from Pod 4 double dish every singular one of their homeboys that comes along with extra slices of white bread or an extra milk, goin so far as to swipe it from your tray right as you're takin it. I'll be damned if I were to say a word about it to anyone in the place. Plus I didn't mind so much cos I was gettin in good with the maintenance guy who dealt coffee on the side. The white dudes are the only ones who drink the stuff, while the blacks just deal with the other maintenance guy who has access to the loading docks and gets the weed. Keefe is the brand of coffee, so they call it Keefy Krack. The weed is weed, so they call it weed. And I don't suppose doin business like that's so right neither.
I realize at this point I forget to tell you what charge I caught to get in here in the first place. When pushin gets to shovin, it's my wife's fault, cos she's the one who called it in on me. And dog my cats I still wanna cut the bitch to pieces. We got to fightin, I drive off, and next thing I know a county brownie's flashin up behind me. So she called me in drunk, and I'm settin in front of my PO two days later, and he's settin there with a little bit of power, and alrite okay, but he ends up sayin he's gonna go ahead and lock me up til he decides what's what. It's a fact he already knew what's gonna happen, but he just wants to flex a bit, albeit was my sixth D-dub. Fuck em. That's all.
I'll finish with the worst of it. Now I was born out in the country, and if everybody keeps their feet in line, I'm fixin to die in the country where it's proper. What I mean is that's how it's supposed to go. And along with that comes what I've been raised on, morally and otherwise, potatoes and gravy included. So back to the food there. With every meal you got next to nothing, except when it comes to the iceberg lettuce mix. You get a heapin pile of that BS. I say "mix" here real loose-like, because what it is is for every 17 chunks of lettuce you get a bit of purple cabbage and a carrot sliver. Then two pieces white bread (so long as the son-of-a-bitch worker don't make a grab at it), maybe gravy, groundbeef plain, and a salt and pepper packet depending on the day of the week. Now I aint complainin about this in herself. I do remember in school how the scientists say humans adapt to different environments, and the stomach shrinks, and all is well. But what grabbed my goddam goat is when, well, I'll tell you. So few days back we get a strange-lookin sauce in one of the tray cups. Upon closer inspection, it's brown corn syrup with a peach slice in the middle, kinda like those dinosaur mosquito rocks they pass around in biology class in high school. So I ask the brother to my right, what's this, you know? He says What? The cobbler? And I don't say nothin, but just sit there real silent like, but what I'm sayin really is You can't be fuckin for real can you? in my mind you know. Because not a devil in hell would even call that muck a cobbler. I'm lookin at it again, and now I see there's two goddam crumbs on top of it, but it aint like that's gonna give it any salvation.
I'm left sittin there on my bunk a little bit later, just layin, pissed off I'm there, thinkin about Gram's (God bless her soul) cobblers she used to spend all day on, puttin em on the sill of the window and everything, and here they have the freakin balls to slander her name like this. It's plain ignorant! And among that, I'm left with a love letter I been workin on that's just too goddam honest to send out. I'm not tryin to touch on that though.
Basically that's it. My name is James Rifle, and I know real peach cobbler when I see it, and I'm just here to warn the folks that maybe sometime will end up in St. Louis County Jail, you aint gonna see real peach cobbler there, so don't get hopeful that you will. That's all.
No comments:
Post a Comment