Within the Previous
Administration Segregation—
I as soon as believed there was
          NO WAY
I might see the millennium come
          and go from
contained in the penitentiary.
That may be heresy,
against the law towards humanity.
          It was.
The date got here and went, left me
in a cloud of correctional mud, speechless,
disgruntled, sick of being hopeful when
hope solely mocked me.

i.
          Three a long time,
a desk within the regulation library, jail counsel,
massive canine to a mess of yippers
          whose choices ran out years in the past:
my drop is Closed Cell Restriction,
the violators, escapists, killers
of different prisoners, ex-cops, cop-
killers, locked up 23/7, left
to introspection and petty video games
undermining the man within the subsequent cell,
or the following tier, or the inmate preacher
who makes rounds twice every week, or
the officer who watches the tier, or
the girl who passes out remedy.

Players with time to dream up video games.

The brothers three: Frank, Jess,
Sonny “Bones” James.
I imply, how will you not be a gangster,
named after gangsters?

Previous man Lee, C-Tier, cell 1,
stabs somebody each time the screws
switch him to inhabitants. So that they don’t.
What are you doing, Lee? I ask

once I make rounds. Oh, simply ready to
die. He smiles however means it.

Brumfield weighs a ton and takes a ton
of drugs to assist him reside. He doesn’t need
to reside down the stroll: too many disrespectful
         loudmouth children. In the event that they ship me down
the stroll I’ll educate them punks respect, then
they’ll ship me again right here the place I belong,
          he swears
he’ll do it, if he has to.
Some are harmful, some are all mouth.
I’m a counsel. I do know their circumstances. I do know
who to bullshit, who to avoid.

Silent Miguel has ties to the cartel
I all the time cease as a result of he’s all the time
awake and one hell of an artist,
his sheets and chalks splayed throughout
the bunk, by no means too into it to interrupt
for a fast go to that quantities to reward
for his colourful creations and little else.
I heap it on as a result of he’s masterful
and perhaps, I hope, beneficiant to followers.
He’s not, it seems, however I like Miguel.
I like most of my block-bound kids
even when a few of them demand I file
one thing, something, that may rescue them.
Ain’t no saving the godless, y’all.
Ain’t no saving the goddam godless.

Harold thinks he was within the Dixie Mafia.
I examine him. Talked to an actual DM.
Harold was a peripheral ache in nuts.
He’s a hypochondriac, power plaintiff.

Enigmatic Jon, bonafide serial rapist,
extra time than any Louisiana prisoner.
Once they caught him he admitted all of it,
unwilling to traumatize the 80+ victims with
a trial, he mentioned. Mighty thoughtful of him.
          Pled responsible, waived
appeals, landed in a six-by-nine
on CCR at Angola.
Can’t allow you to out, Jon. Not by no means.
You’re a career-killer. I allow you to out,
I’m carried out. This manner, you’re carried out.
          He’s no idiot.
Fascinating man, even good.
I lengthy to select his mind however
it appears inappropriate. You’d by no means
recognized he did what he did however he did
and admits it with no pleasure. He didn’t kill
anybody, simply invaded their souls.
          I’m wondering, who’s extra harmful,
the person who rapes, or the killer subsequent door?

George waits by the bars.
He has one arm however the nub doesn’t comprehend it.
George paints flowers with coloured markers,
white handkerchiefs his canvas, guests
to the tier his critics. You bought one other pink
marker? My pink marker’s runnin outta ink.
George was a child when the previous con conned
him right into a fateful escape; the warden himself
blew the child’s arm off, laid the previous con
within the dust. Twenty years George has been
in a cell. All he desires is a pink marker.

Oh they reside
and breathe
and play their
video games and loudcap and paint
and stir the shit, however the place is the life right here?
This place is a zoo and the animals
discuss and hold within the bars and watch tv
whereas time ticks away and their cells are
their tombs, tombs hidden within the jail’s
rusty intestine, rusting the flesh proper off their bones.

Some males have been caged for many years
(the Angola 3), others have a long time
to go (Jon), all are animals within the zoo.
I do know your futures. I do know the day and
hour of your liberation, or dying. Like God.

ii.
          And Then There Is
the final of the previous breed, the dying dinosaur:
unhealthy liver, unhealthy again, left eye uninteresting and blind,
bone-thin, tall as an undertaker,
inked from one finish to the opposite—White Energy,
dagger, swastika, R.I.P., bare-breasted barfly
whose boobs loll barely off-kilter—nonetheless
combing grey hair too sparse to comb:
    one loopy mom, excessive when he might be, pissed
when he can’t, the implausible terminus
untamed after 40 in and pleased with it.

Cons purchase moods from Slim. Rubbish medicine,
generic anti-seizure and relaxers, nothing
to brag about however they soften the temper and
they want that. The drugs make them sociable,

assist them chortle, a buck apiece,
payable in canteen or contraband
smokes. They don’t present up on piss exams.

(Eight drugs for breakfast and the day flows:
awake within the wee hours, breathless, counting
right down to the following handful of rectangular peace.)

Slim’s the orderly. He sways glassy-eyed
in a nonexistent breeze in the midst of the dorm,
death-grip on his broom deal with, loaded to the gills.
His life is jails & prisons, a juvenile offender,
escape artist, repeat f-up. He has no tales
that aren’t crime-rooted,

no life past losing life
however it’s his life and who else can choose
(besides the choose)? He schemes to go residence
however secretly, I feel, he is aware of he’s already there
and the individuals of the world won’t ever let him out.

He lower a person’s throat. Says he didn’t. However he did.

Slim whispers his plot to revolt towards
Angola’s excessive indignity, legislative
indifference; drive within the feds to shake this mutha
up. He’ll slice his arms. His pals will slice theirs.
In rush the media, it’s an enormous scandal, what

the hell is occurring in Angola? He gained’t
work, his pals gained’t work, they’ll shut
the place down and the individuals will beg them to please
inform us what’s fallacious! That’s the out, Slim says.

Issues will change, Slim says. Besides,
they gained’t. Give him 10 minutes and the plot
is forgotten. He sways on his broom deal with, the final
dinosaur, ready for the cataclysmic finish.

iii.
          Just like the Shut of a Silent Flick
my reminiscence clock-click-click STOPs at 1989.
Nobody has aged, not Dad nor Mother nor
my siblings; my grandmother died wanting
the identical as she did once I fell and went away.
          Besides
showing in my brother’s barely tight road
garments and leg irons, I didn’t acknowledge the corpse
within the casket, and everybody had grown so grey,
bald and fats with outstretched fingers and silent
for 30 years, a surreality unable to beat that
filmstrip constantly clacking by means of my thoughts,
recollections now idealized, stylized, idolized however
in all probability as a lot manufacturing as actuality.

Even the blue-eyed lady has been with me on daily basis:
I liked her earlier than I knew her title, the guffawing twig
who colours my youth, the offended ex from whose
consternation I melted abruptly a long time in the past.
She’s nonetheless gorgeous, her spirit nonetheless glows, she is the
gauge by which I reside inside my head.
          Besides
we’re not what we have been, nothing stays the identical.
My recollections cease at 1989. I preserve them alive so
I gained’t disappear.

iv.
          Then Got here the Bug:
We snagged a bittersweet
rumination, a conflagration of clearer skies,
extra intelligent lies to bedevil offended maskwearers.

Each time we coughed we fell lifeless.
The virus was in every single place, creating
snotnosed zombies lounging within the apocalypse.

They locked the doorways, the gates, their minds
earlier than we might catch a breath—don’t breathe
they ordered otherwise you’ll morph right into a grave.

The primary one down, spherical, bearded, unhealthy
knees, wheelchair sure, caught the killer
within the wind, took a experience to the skin

the place he signed a DNR—did he understand
what it was? Was his dying want imminent?
Don’t resuscitate if issues go south:

They didn’t once they did. See ya,
gotta plant ya within the chilly cursed earth
beneath your state-issue quantity.

He wouldn’t be the final, they dropped fast
quick and in a rush we buried them deep
mentioned a number of muffled phrases and obtained the hell

out of the cemetery: Wouldn’t wanna be ya.
Laborious to evade the unseen pursuer.
Simple to think about our quantity in concrete.

v.
          Locked on this Metal Menagerie
grown males wallow
within the wrath of wicked society that
rejects our liberty and, mockingly, perceives
itself a great and simply god. How mocking,
the whims of gods.

Poor misguided folks, go the way in which of gods,
perish beneath the vigor of unnamed sins.

Harvests that fill your coffers at present blanket
your grave tomorrow. Quickly there can be none
left towards which to level the finger—the only real
survivor will pirouette a circle of self-defeat.

That’s what occurs to gods.
That’s what occurs to fools
who can’t see past their eminence.

What awaits within the refuge of saints?
What destiny can we assimilate that may carry us
to our beginnings? Meaningless phrases and thrills
fill our cups and rain like spilled blood on the bottom,
the freeway, the limitless freeway to nowhere.

No want to show up your nostril, fluff your face, disguise
your eyes: you constructed this horror, you and your sibling
sycophants so treasured and guarded:
what architects you’re! What artists!
What a bleak, black, baleful masterpiece
you’ve sculpted Wallow in your delight, my brothers.
Wallow the place the soul cries and dies, really feel the helplessness
of these you condemn as simply as watering the garden.
Simpler. Activate a sprinkler and doom a race. What delight
it’s essential to really feel.

Inside lives a most cancers, eating on the cloth of innocence
till solely thread stays. Most cancers. I’ve seen it tear out
the hearts of fine males, good girls. I’ve feared it however
solely the undeserving perish. Those that deserve the ache
reside till their poison infects the remainder of us and we die

second by second, we eat ourselves from inside.
Like parasites. Just like the illness we’re.

The place are you, noble trigger?
Within the shadows, within the pretense?
The place lies justice? Compassion has flown
and males throttle their wives for the mere sake
of watching evil roll throughout the land.

What pathetic instances these are. What puny petty individuals.
You ask why I’m bitter. Why the hell shouldn’t I be?
Rip me, tear me, solid me away, step on me, degrade me,
burn, beat, blacken me, steal from me, deny me, betray me,
then ask me why I’m bitter?

Tirades by means of the avenues and chambers above the ocean. 
Parallel swirls in octagon caverns summon from secret locations.
What smart soul ought to go? I see waves and mountains
and snow and Colorado skies, Texas toddlers, Louisiana ache.
I see futures and pasts and life speeding towards its shut however
nobody appears to note and I can do nothing.

Come see me, please. It’s been so lengthy.
Not that it notably issues.
I’ve grown too previous, chilly inside.
They gained’t let me go and I’m so chilly inside.

John Corley was born in Shreveport, moved to Florien at 14, graduated Florien Excessive in 1980. Went to work within the offshore drilling trade in 1981. Was arrested in 1989, finally convicted in 1996 as a primary felony offender by a nonunanimous jury of second diploma homicide, sentenced to obligatory life with out parole. “That is my thirty fifth yr of incarceration,” he instructed The Lens. “My jail report is spectacular, and contains an affiliate’s diploma, seven years as a paralegal, and 20 years as a journalist. My hope and perception continues to be robust that I’ll sometime rejoin society.” Corley is at present the editor of The Angolite, Louisiana State Penitentiary’s jail information journal.

Corley and Nick Chrastil from The Lens additionally traded e-mail on JPay, the jail’s e-mail system, for an extended interview about his work and life.

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