It was too dark to see what time it was
on the clock above Union Station
from our cell window, a slit in one of
the Twin Towers of Los Angeles County Jail
in a pod for mentally ill men who had run
afoul of the law. My first time in trouble,
but my father’s lifetime of stories told to me
about his experiences in the jails & prisons
he continues to call home, useful tips
which came in handy the two weeks
I was locked up. I saw how large the pencils
were that my father wrote the many letters
to me from inside, tiny little golf pencils
that left blisters against my fingers as I tried
to record my racing thoughts. It made me
appreciate the long letters he wrote me
over so many years apart. In the late evenings
we were subjected to the gross & horrific
pageantry of the night lieutenant,
a woman caked in Maybe it’s Maybelline
or Maybe it’s Mad Max warpaint.
Her boots cut the air almost as much as
her screams at us, threats of lockdown
if we did not cooperate to her motherfucking
satisfaction—loss of privileges, television shutoff,
don’t even leave our fucking bunks or it’s our ass.
She sneered & spit in the faces of each inmate
they counted with the smile of a James Bond villain,
her menace coming closer down the cell block
to us, huffing and puffing, she was going to blow
all our houses down, we shouted out our numbers
when called & only for a split second did
her sinful grin & pinned eyes burn into mine.
Keep cool, homie, my frail, helmet-clad,
epileptic cellmate said to me in a high pitched
voice that scratched the chalkboard in my mind,
where my bad ideas were still waiting to be erased.