One man keeps screaming “Fixed!”
reacting to a stimulus only he can hear,
his brain charged with the same buzz
of electricity that opens the jail’s heavy doors.
The tunnels sweat through cracks
in the system hidden under
the thick rhetoric of debt to society
as if communities were a loan shark.
Another man flavors his urine with KoolAid,
trying to keep as much of himself
to himself, not wanting to give anything
away to cages and custodians.
Things here run on quick fixes
that fix nothing; the broken man
keeps screaming “Fixed!” which
may mean “rigged” or “unchanging” or both.
