Prison Poem by Thabani Khumalo

Prison life is too lazy
for the diligence needed for utter dynamical growth,
that is why men have time to queerly become
involved sexually with other men.

We should promptly take all the textbooks
(they goof around to avoid reading
at the comfort of any home)right into prison cells
into which they're endorsed by authoritative powers
to meditate on gruesome felonies to commit,
we turn it into a school by day
and a busy office work space by part of the night,
where they'll get to technically administer
the lives of other prisoners in ink on paper.

Men who refuse to be professional in the streets
have to find a profession readily awaiting them in prison
where every cell is treated with the respect of any administrative office.
No man must come out of lockup
without a successful certificate of completion
and none shall slack and drag their feet
at a study of any course of learning -
or he will be isolated and punished severely.

Soon the prisons will be empty of ignorant monsters,
there will be responsibly smart men on every street.
The budget would still be pouring in from the government's account;
because they can already manage to bare the fund -
feeding thieves who can not either work or count -
prisons do not produce any product of vitality:

then, we lock down our naughty children,
ones who can't be peaceful in the mainstream schools
and we decree that prison be
a commission of extremely higher learning -
it is refined education, everything that is done within the premise.
The government will feed our naughty children
when they serve their voracious learning sentence.