Don't Take My Mommy and Send Her to Jail

Poem 18

Don't Take My Mommy and Send Her To Jail

Don't take my mommy and send her to jail,
To sit in a small cell and pee in a pail.
You've taken my daddy for so many years,
And shattered my family, reduced us to tears.

This land as I see it was made for us all,
Not as the dominion of puts and of calls.
But as headlines of suffering ripple on by,
I wonder why people who're poor sit and cry.

Why people are turned out and left on the street,
To stare at the wealthy whose lives seem so neat.
Who break down their doorways to take them away,
To populate profits and a few of them say.

That brothers are lazy, incapable sons,
In a system that provides them with ungodly sums.
Of billions they make through acts they've restrained,
Prohibiting lives as though it's a game.

It tears through these families, and shatters their lives,
I watched it on Fox as young people cried.
Reduced to be runners while still just a child,
Their futures predicted to walking the mile.

Please don't take my mommy, what is it she done.
I want to be with her, my dad's on the run.
There once was a memory, he bounced on his knee,
A baby in diapers, a child that was me.

But he's on the paper and can't be around,
His life with us over, when prison went down.
When he was a youngster and he took a dime,
For keeping his mouth shut and doing his time.

Incarceration a matter of fact,
Replaced manufacture as small towns did act.
By building big prisons in exchange for new jobs,
And non-violent offenders that all got the nod.

You tell me it's racist, the system is rigged,
No shit my brother, it's gotten too big.
Their profits have spiraled beyond rights of man,
Imprisoning people whose leadership can.

Demand that the system be changed overnight,
That anything else is against all their rights.
That people of substance expect every day,
Not suspecting for moments that soon they will play.

An army of anger, resentment and hate,
Organized in our prisons, I fear it's too late.
Given the weapons and wanting to lead,
A change in the system that forced them to bleed.

The lives of young brothers, who're dead on the streets,
Their leaders resplendent while acting so neat.
A show for the media, indignant and strong,
But their time is coming, it can't be too long.

Before people get tired of suits, ties and smoke,
Of acting like brothers but spending like dope.
I have to believe that the streets will awake,
That youngsters will rise and the system they'll shake.

Two million gangsters released on the land,
Focused on those whose demise they have planned.
Ensconced in their houses believing immune,
To the misery caused by their rapacious swoon.

Beware all you people whose greed made this cause,
The focus of anger it's too late to pause.
They'll come for you swiftly, alone in the night,
When you suddenly feel the real meaning of fright.

You door it will shatter,
Your children will wail,
Please don't take my mommy,
And send her to jail.

8.02.2013

Charles F Berman Jr