There I was
trying to plead out my guy
after more than a year
of him screwing around
and the prosecutors screwing around
and probably even a little bit
of me screwing around.

He's already serving
a quarter century in prison
for something pretty bad
from before,
and this case gives him
another 25
lined up
front to back,

so he had every reason
to trade a plea
for a deuce
with no minimum
to go.

Thing is, though,
it's not easy admitting sex
in prison at all,
much less the non-consensual kind,
because it makes you
a rapist and a fag
in exactly the worst possible place
for such states of affairs.

So when we finally got
to the moment of truth,
where you either do the deal
or go to trial,
even then it took a bit of work
to make what needed to happen happen.

Which is why,
after that
when the State tried to balk
on their own damn offer,
I about came unglued.

__________

There's a certain kind of insanity
that comes to those whose job it is
putting people in prison;

It sucks the blood from their hearts,
woefully undernourished already,
leaving only bitterness
and bile
where the compassion
ought to go.

But I'm biased,
having spent a very long time
with the very folks
whom you revile,
and judge,
and lock away
or kill.

I know how they smell
and taste
and feel
and think.

I been to their homes
and ate their food,
listened to their stories,
cried with their children.

And I know
how they
ain't no different
than you
or me.

So now,
where we've gotten
to the part,
when you jump out of your chair
in arrogant contemptuous indignation
as to how you would never
do this or that,
or any such awful thing

well, I just nod my head
and remember
how it's only the lucky
that don't know
what true
unvarnished
desperation
does to the souls
of mere humans.

_________

Sometimes I get where
the complaining
by my clients
merges with the complaining
of the States' attorneys,
so that you can't tell
when one voice ends and the other starts,

proving yet again
that hurting others
never makes you not
a victim.

And while usually
it's water off the duck,
this time there's something sticky
in the way it's going down.

But then I remember,
no matter how good or bad a deal it was,
the guy in orange
ultimately invariably shows
a certain grace,

leaving the courtroom,
legs chained,
down the elevator,
out to the van,
off to hell,

while the State's lawyers,
well they wallow
in their smugness
and rant and rave about justice
and though forgetting
about their police
and investigators
and crime lab
and statutes
and jails
and prisons,

never ever
let go
of the few times
they don't get their way
with the entitled retribution
they somehow just know
they deserve.

___


In the end
it all went through easy enough,
and I headed back to the office.

The prosecutor went back
to tell her colleagues
how awful I am, and he is,
and judges are,
and everything.

And my guy
very quietly
went back to prison
to finish
his 27 year
sentence.