Who I am; a lonely voice surrounded by steel bars and stone walls. I’m not special because of the deeds I’ve done or the status I might hold among my peers. There are hundreds of men and women who have had harder times, spent more years, seen and done things I’ve only dreamed of. It’s true I’ve been incarcerated since I was twelve, in and out of prisons and institutions thereafter until now.

Sitting down looking at my iron toilet and sink, the precious metal bins that hold the few garments and articles I hold dear, pictures and cards are a reminder of a life lost, left behind. Phantoms, ghosts of yesterday that seem to possess their own life. A time lost to me.

I have long since become accustomed to the thud and clang of iron doors opening and closing. The hum of electricity and the power it contains. I don’t even notice the red night lights that glow every hour the cops do their walks. I look out my window and listen to the hum of the electrical fences and the few hundred rounds of ammunition let off by semi-automatic machine guns every day. The bars in my window divide the sky into a grid, while the gun towers and barbed fences silhouette the blue sky. I listen to the birds and watch them soar the skies, riding the wind, twisting and twirling above the structure that holds me captive.

This is who I am, a fragment of a person I once was. Beaten, lost in an alien system that separates me from the things I hold dear. Yet there is a light in all my darkness, a stranger who has healed me. Having someone who cares and loves you more than you love yourself is a struggle, yet I’m willing to face today stronger. My wife, Empress, inspires me to write masterpieces -- this coming from a man who has no high school credits -- yet I manipulate words that swirl into your subconscious like a lost art. This poem is dedicated to my wife, and my daughter Empress, “Em’N’Em.” It’s about trying to live inside and out of the stone walls and steel bars. It’s called “Intoxicated.”

Jermaine Oshane Wilson writes about himself and describes his feelings in One of Many. Using the words that he used to begin each paragraph, write about yourself: