The Lifer's Life Poem by michael Smajda

Behind cold bars of steel they stay
Only to die, alone, someday,
Bad men who did commit, at times,
The ghastliest of all cruel crimes.

So, now they sit in locked despair
Because they dared not think or care
To live the way all men were meant,
Abiding laws with good intent.

For them, they know it is too late
To live outside the prison's gate.
But if they could, they would, my friends,
Think twice about crime and where it ends.