"you lookin' so fine today," I said
as she sashayed passed me on 42 street

That got me sent up river for my first stint in the big house,
stuck with a bunch of ugly thugs
who happened to appreciate beauty the same way I did.
All I choose to remember is passing around an old calendar
with Bettie Page pics as a surrogate fix.
For what is life without beauty?

Immediately after release
I called a butch looking dyke a woman.
"I'm a man" she said.
I was flabbergasted, but the scary witch of a judge
wasn't buying my protestations.
That got me another couple of months

So, now I was considered a repeat offender.

It was hard finding work after that,
so I started selling plastic straws on the QT,
usually just singles, but I was set up by a snitch to sell
a full carton. He was trying to plea bargain
a charge of attempted manslaughter
for smoking eighteen feet from the front of a building
instead of the statutory twenty.
They fried him anyway.
I got five to ten.

I stayed clean for quite awhile when I got out,
but it was hard with cameras everywhere,
political correctness having run amuck
A.I. scanning every activity,
and children even ratting out their parents.

I sometimes thought it would be easier just going back inside,
but then I started hearing of some underground groups
who were getting as fed up as I was.

I'm going to try and find one.
I don't think my criminal history will matter much to them.