Champion

Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.

09/01/2021

Life can be Heaven

Life can be hell

A mixture of the seeds you sow

And the cards life gives you

It takes some next level

Misfortune and mismanagement

To find the sort of pain and misery

That you can only find

In the jails of the world

Even the soft jails

Are no picnic

So it takes next level

Hard work and resilience

To undo the horror

To set yourself free

From the revolving door

Of re-offending, parole breaches and drug addiction

A lengthy stretch

Say 6 years

For a necessary deed

Can make or break you

And even end your life

If you don’t stay vigilant

So if you ever find yourself thinking

‘Is this the real thing? Is this just fantasy?”

Pray you have what it takes

To get free better than you were

To never acquiesce

To the temptations that destroy

And like they all say and I’ve said before

“Suffer now and live the rest of your life like a champion”

—

Once you’ve been to jail for anything more than a few months it becomes a full time job for some just trying to stay out. The problem is partly that drug use and violence are so rife in most jails that some inmates who have never even touched drugs before get out with a habit.

When I first got locked up a psych told me that a lot of convicts actually prefer life in jail to the outside. It blew my mind but after 6 years I understand it. If I had stayed any longer I might have been the same.

It’s a common saying in jail and a lot of inmates have the poster on the wall of Muhammad Ali with the quote “Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion”. Wise words indeed.