I put my uniform on and lace up my boots,
Hoping this shift there isn’t any big disputes.
As I enter and pass through each locking door,
Wondering if any inmate will choose tonight to become hardcore.
Alone I will stand at times out numbered sixty-three to one,
Lifeline is only a radio, I carry no stick or gun.
Sure there are days that go smooth and with ease,
Where the most action is counting the keys.
Then days come where you feel like your in hell,
Fighting and wrestling at times cell to cell.
The mace and hate that fills the air will choke you,
Making me wonder if I work at a jail or a zoo.
Days are good where a thank you is said,
Where the cells are cleaned and tidy a cell bed.
Shanks are sharpened, plots are made,
Commissary comes and goes a trade.
My life I would give to stop an escape,
Yet I wear no Super Hero cape.
I walk the nightmare you want to avoid,
This is what keeps me employed.
Our place runs twenty four-seven,
Far cry from anything imagined in Heaven.
Countless holidays and weekends spent,
All of us giving a hundred and ten percent.
When I leave my home today or tonight,
I enter into a array of a different light.
No one knows what is behind those brick walls,
Another society exists many wont enter and walk down the hall.
Does this poem make you feel really that alarmed?,
I must ask you would you walk my halls unarmed?
Written by
Corrections Officer Melissa Colaluca
Lawrence County Corrections
New Castle, PA
