Prison?
Yeah I've spent some time there;
just like most people that look and talk like me.
It's not the kind that you're thinking about,
but it's prison nonetheless.
Rather than doing hard time
it was hard finding time to study.
Those restricting steel bars and gates
were replaces with bars of limitation on your fate
if you didn't succeed in this particular institution.
Yeah, it was prison alright.
We called them professors rather than guards;
but they were just the same.
If you didn't give them what they wanted,
you were punished.
Now, they didn't send you to solitary confinement or anything,
but you better believe that their reports would serve
to increase your sentence.
Are you feeling me yet?
On my incarceration date I was told
that this institution would mold
me into a functional member of society.
Where is all this knowledge they were supposed to bestow upon me?
They didn't teach me the things that I needed to succeed.
They didn't teach me how to be a good husband,
a good father
or even how to be an entrepreneur.
No they were too busy blindsiding me with pictures
of the American Dream
while teaching me how to build someone else's.
Do you still think there is a difference?
Because I was a good, hardworking, inmate,
I got out on good behavior.
On a term that usually lasts four to six years,
I did my time in three.
What did that buy me?
Well, I get to spend eight hours a day,
five days a week,
fifty weeks a year
with my probation officer until I'm 65.
Freedom?
I don't know what that is anymore.