The Corrupt Judicial System (Hillsborough County, Florida) Poem by James McLain

the air reeks of stale coffee and ink-stamped lies,
judges sit like smug kings,
smirking over lives they'll never live,
dismissing truth with a gavel's cough.

innocent men shuffle like cattle,
faces drawn, hands calloused from the grind—
plead guilty or rot waiting.
'justice, ' they call it,
while the lawyers get fat off their despair.

the court stenographer types it all up,
the lies, the twisted logic,
and the perjury sworn like gospel
under a fluorescent crucifix.

if you or I did what they do,
we'd be cuffed and carted off,
but they wear robes like armor,
cloaked in immunity,
proud in their manipulation,
gods of small, dirty kingdoms.

good men shrink in fear,
their courage ground down
by the grinding stone of this machine—
truth doesn't pay,
honor doesn't sell,
and doing the right thing
is the fastest way to lose.

Hillsborough,
where the guilty are freed
and the innocent are crushed,
where justice is just another game
rigged from the start,
Callused, without a true heart.