Somewhere
in the 90’s
a judge bearing gift
of federal court decree
cuts convict crowding
interpreted
Louisi-ana loosely
incentivized
re-establishment
of private property

The sheriff swore fealty
to fill his pocketbook
bayou born vassals
leeching
upon the prison lease
keeping local coffers
fat, swine greasy
long as there be
a head to every bed

We be eating sweet
from a honey hole
diabetes sick
off cane sugar
harvested from the
reconstituted bones
of antebellum America

In a subtropical
sarcophagus
a latent racism
lurches its Lazarus
figure like living dead
in search of
a new carcass
but we exist in
a civilized society

Ain’t no bodies
upon our plate
that’s parsley
decorative garnish
to global imperialism
distending the belly
of the dragon
Incarceration
until it belches forth
an undigested
gaseous flame
which slays
the mythical unicorn
Education

We are tasting
the putrid spew
reeling from
the intoxication
of pot liquor
boiling of a human stew

Is this the sort of
justice humans do?

Maladjusted
men and women
moving through
darkened chambers
like fumes exhausted
and carbon burning
a nation founded
upon physical exploitation
which cannibalised black bodies
is a combustion engine
pushing the limit
of its pistons
and still churning.

So down with the King.

I don’t work the land
for his legacy no more.

This moment of found poetry was inspired by the article “Plantations, Prisons and Profits” by Charles M. Blow