New book

A new book with Spoon's poems has just been released in Germany! It's number 11 in a poem series called "Versensporn", published by "Edition Poesie Schmeckt Gut, Jena". It contains both material that has not been published before and poems from "Longer Ago".
Each copy includes a DVD with Michel Wenzer's short film "Three Poems by Spoon Jackson".
It can be ordered here: www.poesieschmecktgut.de

Inspiration wanes

I have been playing long spring tunes on my flute and the deep signs have brought the Gosling Five, red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, sparrows and people by to listen. My heart longing for a spring hug.

For over three weeks maybe more my inspiration, like a fading rainbow or fading light in the sky, had waned. Although I have endless pools of realness inside to bring forth. I needed a push to open the gates of that realness.

Today it happened, three youngsters approached me as I walked up the hill to the cell block and one said; “Are you Spoon Jackson?”

I said; “You don't know that.”

“I heard you play the flute.”

“How do you know that is me?”

“I read it in an article in the Bayviews.”

Before I could answer another youngster pointed to my flute that I was carrying in my folder.

“You have the flute with you.”

We all laughed and I had to confess. The young folks' interest and questions were real.

A student in my poetry class approached me at our last blues/rock country concert and said an older poet he is in contact with on the streets, who used to come into San Quentin in the late 1980's said he knew me and knows my work, and that I was a master at what I do. That bubbled my inspiration up even more.

Finally my geese family, The Gosling Five helped open the pools of realness, and I'm writing again. I am never without poems songs articles or stories to tell. Sometimes I feel so low and I must go deeper inside to tap into that realness, and bring forth the text. The manuscripts inside my poet's heart and writer's soul. It is like a rainforest full of undiscovered creatures and plants in tune and in flow with Mother Earth. Sometimes a long journey must occur.

Important campaign message from TODPP

The Other Death Penalty Project's anthology, "Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough," (an anthology of writings by life without parole prisoners and others) will raise awareness nationwide that life without parole sentences are the death penalty and must be abolished. They need to raise $10,000 by May 25, 2013.

Read more and contribute...

"Funds raised through this campaign will allow us to print copies of this remarkable book to be placed on the desks of at least 1,000 death penalty abolitionist groups (who support LWOP as a “reasonable alternative” to lethal injection), policymakers, thought leaders, and others of influence nationwide. 

A sentence of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is a death sentence.  Worse, it is a long, slow, dissipating death sentence without any of the legal or administrative safeguards rightly awarded to those condemned to traditional forms of execution.  It exposes and caters to that segment of our society that believes redemption and personal transformation are not possible for all human beings, and that it is reasonable and just to forever define an individual by his or her worst act.  LWOP is wrong and should be abolished.

The Other Death Penalty Project (TODPP) is a true grassroots organizing campaign comprised wholly of men and women sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, the purpose of which is to end this practice of sentencing tens of thousands to a slow and painful execution in this nation’s maximum-security prisons through a peaceful, well-orchestrated and thought-out plan to change hearts and minds. TODPP’s ultimate goal is to see the permanent end to the use of this form of state-sanctioned execution (along with all other forms), resulting in all life term prisoners having, at least, the possibility of earning parole.


We need $10,000 to pay for printing, postage, and mailing costs for 1,000 books, as well as for targeted advertisements and book contest entry fees.  It costs $4 to print each book ($4,000), an average of $3 per book in postage ($3,000), and approximately $800 in office supply costs (mailing envelopes, paper, tape, etc.).  The remaining $2,200 will be used to place targeted ads in print and other media and enter “Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough” in writing contests which will garner additional publicity for our cause..." Read more and contribute...

Morning Parade

Just before dawn, light barely trickling in over the ridge, I saw on the prisondirt road, three jack rabbits hopping and circling, and doing their spring dance. There is something sweet and robust in the air that brings hidden and sleeping spirits to light and life.

Walking down the outer razor fence line, in the boulder field near the prison road are about twenty turkey hens. Displaying their spring prance on the sides and behind them are about ten gobblers.

Right in the middle of the turkey parade is buck deer with horns. The gobblers are all decked out, candy-apple read heads, dipped in powder blue, their tails brownish, red, tan and orange.

Their long feather breeds dangling from their upper chests, as the gobblers spread their tail feathers like peacocks. Like courting knights or native tribal dancers, embellishing the chase beauty and life spring brings. The hens seemingly not paying attention to any of the gobblers. They continue to peck the ground.

Suddenly all the gobblers run off down the fence line leaving the hens, necks stretched gazing over at the prison. One hen turns and strolls back up the fence line, followed by three gobblers who had chased off two other male turkeys. Just as I was about to put my pen to rest three geese families with goslings of various ages appeared behind the cell block, all healthy, vibrant and fat from the sweet grasses and weeds.

A jack rabbit late for the spring dance bolts up the fence line. My window is a natural theatre.

A red winged blackbird, fluffs out the red little feathers on it's wings and it looks like little poppy flowers, dancing and fluffing. I did not know the bird had that kind of red feathers. Surely like all other beings they are bringing in new life each in their own way. Each being including humans have their spring dance, though long forgotten due to side walks, screens and tall buildings that don't lend themselves to any aboriginal flow. I feel my heart, soul and spirit lonely for a spring hug and Earth Mother kiss.

To Watch TV or Not

Long lockdowns, and the lack of programs and activities for prisoners, have steered even the most prolific readers to watch TV. But, after hours of reading, I feel productive, like I have planted some seeds, while after hours of television, I feel wasted, as if I have no spirit or life inside, as if I have wasted time I don’t have to lose.
I must admit I like watching sports, nature, Discovery, some PBS, and not-made-in-USA shows. Also some cooking programs if I have some real food to eat myself. But even PBS has turned bland and succumbed to some Government and big-business pressure.

The shows nowadays on so called “free TV” are 99 percent garbage, especially network shows, news, and talk show programs. Reality shows with no reality. The programs worth watching — like Discovery, Animal Planet, National Geographic, Nova, art and live sports — have all been moved to cable or satellite, and are hidden from our view. We are left with the dumbest dumbed down reality shows and the most unrealistic cop shows that indoctrinate their audiences with false justice and false rights of criminals in some magical land where poor people receive good and real lawyers and all the judges and law enforcement officials are angels, heroes, and good people, people who have never spat on the sidewalk and are only down here from heaven to make sure poor people and people of color get justice.
All the stuff you see in law enforcement shows is only true for TV. More often than not, people of color and the poor are not getting good lawyers or real justice. No judge or prosecutors care about an accused receiving healthy court representation. That’s a myth, as is the one about justice being color-blind in the USA which has always been a myth.

TV was not allowed into prisons in California until the late 1970s when the Department of Corrections figured out that TV could dumb down and pacify the masses of prisoners through lifeless, vicarious living. Even the prison videos they show are mainly violent with no redeeming value.

I remember when I came to prison in the late ‘70s that TV still had not become like crazy glue. TV was still not yet paramount in prisoners’ lives; had not totally paralyzed and chilled the minds, hearts, and soul; and had not turned off our ability to learn, grow, and come together to promote deeper and higher education, positive change, and civil and human rights.

Now the first thing one does in the morning is turn on the TV, like a drink of water. I don’t think TV can be a learning tool because it lulls and forces the mind and imagination to sleep and makes the creative spirit lazy.

Knowledge, heart, wisdom, and change used to bounce off, through and beyond these walls, when prison was a positive change university recognized around the world for imparting positive consciousness-raising and awareness that lifted prisoners’ spirits and hope and which acted as a catalyst for positive social change regarding human rights and the rights of the poor. When I turn the TV off, time flows better and minutes and hours become enriched and enlightened. This morning, before I knew it, I had read seventy pages of a new book. Suddenly, it was dinner time and my mind, heart, and spirit were busy pondering ideas beyond prisons of any kind.

First published in the SJRA Advocate March 2013 issue

Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough

Spoon had an essay and some poems in a very important forthcoming anthology about Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough. You can read more about the project and contribute to the campaign to get this book out to California legislators and policy makers by going here: http://www.igg.me/at/todpp.com

Gosling Part 3

Read the third part about the new gosling on the Bird Blog!

Day 17

Another guard approached me today, and told me the geese family waited patiently at the gate of the rotunda to return to the small yard. The geese family know they are special here on this yard. Unfortunately though an ignorant yard worker decided he wanted to hold the gosling, so he chased it around the small yard and sought to separate it from its parents. Parents that screamed in horror with their beaks open. The gosling's security and peace, my little buddy's freedom to grow was shattered. The yard worker bird hater finally stopped harassing the bird.

At the end of my day I sat on the milk-crate outside the art room playing my flute. The geese were not in sight, but when I looked to the side and opened my eyes, I saw my little buddy and its parents, some black birds, cowbirds and a couple of seagulls and pigeons listening to me play. My day was made.

Read it all here...

Unrelenting

It is almost impossible for any human being to be incarcerated ten or more years and not have some kind of mental health problems. Prison life is not a natural or healthy environment, particularly inside California prisons.

The soul, heart, mental, and spiritual torture are often unrelenting. Pain unending for the prisoner and his family and friends. Some short term mental health dilemmas can be handled in the heart or soul through self-help meditative and communication groups, through letter-writing and art programs. Sometimes outside help is required, especially if one is suffering through long lockdowns or isolation. These long lock-downs caused me some depression, sadness, and deep pain. The lockdowns only illuminated my stress, especially after 35 years of incarceration and mostly good programming.

Despite the 35 years, I have never adjusted to being caged. During the last long lockdown, I missed visits from Sweden and lost my Swedish girlfriend. I missed playing my native flute and teaching my prose and poetry classes.

I had not been on such a long lockdown in dec-ades. This 9 month lockdown came almost on the heals of a 4 month lockdown. These super-modern, race-based, lockdowns are ridiculous and unjust and dampened my heart and spirit some.

I needed to get away and have time to myself to contemplate my prison future. I was stressed out and burnt out on these race-based lockdowns. My soul and heart needed some alone time to heal. So, instead of hurting myself or others, I went to the hole on a mental health break and to, hopefully, be transferred to an institution not prone to lockdowns.

I was sent to the stand-alone hole with its dirty skyline and nothing else. No books except the bible, if you knew to ask for it. The cell a cave structure that looked like the cages the Quakers created in Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadel-phia which opened in 1829 and closed in the 1970s.

I was in the hole for only a little while, and when I went back to the mainline yard, the lockdown had been lifted. But only for a moment. The next day we were back on the race-based lockdown.

I had decided to check out the mental health department, but after six months waiting, I saw the psych for 10 minutes total. Like the health care people, the mental health department here seems to be more concerned with custody issues than with a prisoner’s mental state. The mental health program at New Folsom is a joke, and they don’t bother to hide that fact, especially when there is a lockdown. They have the nerve to come and talk with you at your cell door where there is no privacy.

 

After 35 years I’ve developed my own ways of dealing with sadness and depression, but I am open to new ideas. I like to think we all have our own keys to our hearts and souls — sanity and insanity. Yet I know one must be as open as the sky and a forever student in life during the most trying times.

First published in the SJRA Advocate March 2013

Reprinted with permission of Barbara Brooks, SJRA Advocate monthly prison newsletter.

Gosling Part Two

Bird Blog news!
 
Day 9

This morning I went to work and sitting in front of art room I look out on the small yard for my geese family. I could not see them so I went out on the small yard to check for the birds, still they were nowhere in sight. So, I asked the native American brother had he seen them. He told me the birds had gone... continue reading on the Bird Blog

The new gosling

New on the Bird Blog:

One of the nesting pair of geese eggs on the small yard finally hatched despite the constant harassment from a few yard workers. The gosling came into the world last Saturday and is now a week old and already her or his parents have brought it up to the art room fence to meet me and I've shared tiny bits of bread with the young bird, who is is already copying its father and mother chasing greeting pigeons off. It's funny to see him or her wobble around, flapping its tiny nobs of wings covered in yellow like cotton down, no feathers yet. It is already bigger than the cow birds and black birds. There were more eggs but I imagine the geese, particularly the mama goose was so agitated by the constant harassment of the yard workers and also there was missing eggs that they decided to take the one hatching from the nest and stay moving. By next Saturday the gosling will have doubled in size. What a splendid sight. Continue on the Bird Blog

The Process

Like for a bird, being in the sky is the most important aspect of flying, the process is the most important part in creating art. As a poet, an artist and writer the act of writing is what frees the art, the soul, spirit and heart to flow.

I believe art is waiting to come out when allowed the room to flow up. We can only verbalize just the tip of the iceberg. It is the state of putting pencil to paper that sometimes even when you think you have nothing to say you find or create a flow, a process and clear the way for stories, songs, poems, plays and even acting or whatever to come out and allow the muses to come forth.

The U.S. premiere of At Night I Fly is at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 20th!
The screening at MoMA will be followed by a discussion with director Michel Wenzer and producer Tobias Janson.

From the program: "Most of the prisoners at New Folsom, a maximum-security prison in Sacramento, California, are serving life sentences, and they must cope on a daily basis not only with the crimes they committed but also with prison's punishing isolation, hopelessness, and violence. To that end, participants in New Folsom's Arts in Correction Facilitation program learn to express themselves through poetry readings, gospel choirs, playing musical instruments, and discussion groups. Survival, however, is a deeply personal process that each must chart for himself. Eschewing a simple narration of redemption, Wenzler assembles a complex portrait of prison life. At Night I Fly won the Swedish Guldbagge Award in 2011 for best documentary."

At Night I Fly to New York

At Night I Fly has been selected for the Museum of Modern Art in New York's prestigious Documentary Fortnight!
This will be the film's U.S. premiere.

Director Michel Wenzer will be attending the screenings. The festival is organized by MoMA Film and is held from February 15th to March 4th 2013.

Writing From the Inside Out

Spoon writes for The Good Men Project: 
 
What is a good man to me?

A good man walks in his own shoes, and as a human being seek to balance in a nonviolent way his one foot in darkness and one foot in light. Some of us, bad like myself, had to transform into good, and you can imagine how hard it can be when in prison. I walked in darkness as a youngster and as a result I encountered deep life changing darkness. I could have enveloped myself in this darkness and become worse, but I chose to balance the darkness with light and love and realness. I chose to walk in my own shoes.
It took a deep fall for me to see the light about myself and share the realness and talents inside me. (I speak about my journey in my memoir book By Heart and in my poetry book Longer Ago)
I had to be real and not allow myself to hurt or destroy lives, but to build up lives with wisdom, love, peace, understanding and shared struggles.
I have been incarcerated now for 36 years, and transformed from a young troublemaker to someone who cares for and mentors young folks. I encourage them to to know themselves and to walk in their own shoes and....Read the whole article at The Good Men Project

CALL FOR RACIAL PEACE IN CALIFORNIA PRISONS

By Spoon Jackson

The call for racial peace came from Pelican Bay SHU - the hole - and I read about it in the San Francisco Bay View, where my poem “Go On” was published. I think that was a brave, human, and needed call for racial harmony. Since I’m a believer in peace and realness - one people, one race - I must echo their cry and add my voice to the chorus. I think it is a call all peace groups around the world, inside and outside of prisons would welcome.

I always tell my creative writing classes that you must stand up for what is human, true, and real. You must stand up for how we want our children, parents, grandparents, and spouses to live. Who would want loved ones to live in violence anywhere on the planet? It is a call to peace, love, growth, truth, and harmony. No one wants to see their sons or daughters in a bloody pool on the side walk or in someone’s back or front yard, or in some prison yard or cell.

We must pay the peace call forward. We must call for racial peace among all prisons, not only in California, but around the world. It is said you know society by its prisons, and if are a microcosm of society, it is time to make harmonious change inside, and perhaps peace will spill over to the free world. We can hold peace and love in our hearts like a sunset, ocean breeze, or soft bird song.

In my family, there are many colors and cultures. One of my grandmothers was half Caddo Indian. I have brothers married to Asian, Mexican, White, Native American, and Black. I appreciate them all and I am happy my family is like it is.

I have shared the call for peace article with blacks, browns, and whites. I’ll share some of their words in this article. This call may translate to the streets, if only to affect a few people, a few youngsters. It is time to embrace, each moment, and repeat what Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and John Lennon said about unconditional peace. I cannot sit idle as a poet and artist, while brothers of all colors in the hole call for racial peace and not echo those thoughts, vibes, hopes, and wishes.

We are all human beings and something that affects one of us touches all of us. Nothing human is foreign to any of us.

The Way Light Breaks Apart

By Marty Williams

I don’t believe for a moment that someone doesn’t see race. It looks back at me like a mirror image of everything I’m not sure of within myself. I clique, I flock, I herd, and the struggle to do otherwise makes me dizzy with anxiety. My phony holiness says, “There is no race,” but if that were true, the history of the world would be much different, and chains would mean something else entirely. But here I am, and my liberal guilt wants to prove to you how very inclusive I am, while the truth is I don’t know enough about how deep my own racial preference is buried. So what I want is first to just know what I’m missing, to know the depth of someone else’s difference, and the depth of where we are the same. First meet me on the field, and then I’ll deserve to live with you, and you with me. Not in harmony (another phony holy ideal), but in human beingness, that needs us to be different, the way light breaks apart into colors. One light. We are just colors.

Our Struggle

by O.G. Woody, Watts (Solid & True)

I’m Brown, he’s Black, you’re White, so what?

The question is not why, the question is how. How did we let ourselves become so divided, so narrow-minded, to where we can’t see the pain that we’ve caused ourselves in our own struggle? Racism is the wall that blocks our vision to a future vast and beautiful.

Wake up! Open your eyes! This struggle is real. The pain that you have inside is the same pain that I feel. This is our struggle; our struggle is real. What will it take for our kids not to have to go through this pain that we face? What will it take for us to be just one human race? This is a battle that we can’t afford to lose.

A better future is what we choose. How grand will this world be if you would only look past my color and see me? Get to know me, know who I am, and look into my heart. All I’m asking for is just a start. Though I’ll continue to try, I know I can’t do this alone. But I’m doing my part here within this poem. So stand at my side, every color and creed, open your minds so that we may succeed.

How Do You Improve Race Relations?

By Soto

Race relations are quite difficult to come to a successful outcome where everybody is

respectful and loving. I have always said that in order to resolve a problem, one must conduct an inner examination, come to terms with its causes.

As a society and young country, it would benefit us to learn about our dealings with Asians, Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics. The learning of culture should be done not only as current events. The study should go as far as the very foundation of this great nation. Although it would be extremely difficult to be objective when learning about racism, genocide, injustice, and straight out executions, this step of acknowledgement must be taken as soon as a young mind is able to comprehend the paths between right and wrong. Once the true history of races is known, the second step should be a quick course of culture learning. This course would involve a study of any given race’s religion, music, spiritually, costume, dances, sports, etc.

Without a true knowledge of other races, costumes, and habits, a peaceful and understanding relation among different races would be impossible.

How Do You Improve Race Relations?

By Joseph Ennis

Well, this is a big issue, bigger than one could imagine, though not so big that we can overlook or ignore it. In my opinion, to im-prove race relations you first must find common ground between two open-minded people. The ways of growing up are all similar, even if in a different place or street. Relations can be built on real life events and experiences, and what I may find in common, three can, then five can, and so forth.

Change is the most fearful thing one can experience. I know ‘cause I’m a walking testimony. That’s what it’s all about though, not being afraid of change, positive change. Just think of the doors that can open through having a good relationship with someone not from your own race. Why shut those doors? If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I don’t know it all. And if the next person knows more, or even less, that’s someone I could learn from, no matter the race.

Simply Saying Good Morning

By V. Tapia

Racism has its periods and changes of heart. I guess some people just need a key moment or to hear words of gratification to make them feel at peace with a different race. My moments of peace, while riots were occurring in prison, came through words of gratification expressed through the vent in my cell, directed towards my neighbours. These were a simple good morning or good night. And my moment of peace was when my neighbour put the trust in me to lend me a book, even though tensions were high between our two races. We found the key mo-ment and words to look past our difference and vibe together.

That’s what it’s about, coming together and sharing. Whether it’s a moment of your time or simply saying good morning or good night.

First published in the SJRA Advocate Dec 2012 /Jan 2013 issue

Republished in San Francisco Bay View

Reststops, Death

Our bodies are reststops on spaceless voyages beyond doom. Speaking with one of my best friends about death she brought up how “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” is almost like a bible to many Buddhists. She speaks on (bardo) transition between the moment of death up until 49 days later, where you are supposed to have another existence. If you did good and knew how to act, you may be reborn into a realm for the good. Otherwise, you may enter terrible realms where suffering is legio. I told her it does sound like the Christian views of heaven and hell. For me death is a transition, and can appear at the strangest times. Even a seemingly healthy person riding a bicycle everyday may drop dead. I suppose we will all find out in our own ways and collectively by and by what or if anything comes in the hereafter. We will then find out the true phase after we pass, die or transition beyond the body.

When I think of the hereafter, about death and passing, it must be a beautiful state and place without the body. An unencumbered place of unlimited space, growth, expansion, flying, loving and realness. I cannot imagine ugly unenlightening states or things there like hate, racism, sexism, revenge or violence. All those states and conditions will be left in the physical realm. I cannot see the madness of this physical realm carried over to a bodyless world. I cannot see this madness as a part of a spiritual realm, a place without a body.

Before dawn

I did my sit ups, curls, push ups, back arms and leg work. Made a cup of coffee, with cream and sugar-free chocolate. Looking out the thin thick window I see does... deer under the boulder tree, nibbling around in the extra dry brown grasses and weeds, mingling in the long leaves of the tree. The deer are unimpressed by the prison trucks and cars that pass by. Autumn with a late spring sun. I haven't seen any bucks around the does under the tree. Perhaps all three are young deer and their sex is not yet expressed.

Read the Bird Blog for more nature observations!

Rain

Poem by one of my students and friend.

Wind blows harder

Colder

Green grass tilts its bodies

Windward.

Pigeons line up

On the roof

Enjoying the first rain

Waited year long.

We, two people

One mood. One plight

In the corner

Talking, watching.

People passing by

Clinking sound of keys

Of the gate keeper

Walking to and fro.

Gate opens

Group of people

Walk outside

Chattering. Laughing.

Rain has stopped
Sometimes ago
Suddenly
Downpour.

On clothes
On shoulders
On faces
On our lives. 

KP.NVL
Van Nguyen

Today's lesson

I held my prose class today, and did I did a lesson on; What is compassion? What is empathy? I wanted the fellows to relate both states to their individual lives. Some cats went straight to a denotative meaning of both words. Other students went to the denotatíve religious and philosophical meanings, giving the questions no flavor or personality at all. I had given the questions open ended. One guy, an old writer did personalize both compassion and empathy into a story about a lady who helped drug addicts and prostitutes in San Francisco.

I asked for at least two paragraphs. At the end of the writing period I spoke about the importance of making the lesson their own. The compassion and empathy, make the states personal, and see what they come up with. I asked was not empathy encompassed within compassion? Can there be compassion without empathy, was the homework.

Peace Gang - Thank you

Greetings Peace G. family friends and realness folks. Thank you for your thoughts, vibes and blessings. Thanks for continually being a part of the realness struggles to keep human rights, rights of all people, regardless of color or gender in the forefront of the realness struggles. You are definitely an inspiratin for me and always bring me out of a funk, a deep sadness and mild depression. Your thoughts, vibes, heart and meditations help heal me and not to allow the sadness to stay and build a life long nest in my heart, mind and spirit, even though, so many years in physical prison makes it tougher now a days to come out of the funk.

But, I keep creating, glowing and growing. Love and light to brothers and sisters imprisoned around the world especially lifers, LWOP's and those on Death Row.

May the people, the States who love to kill and execute people, soon love to love. Keep sending out realness, love, healing and light. Keep growing and glowing!

A breeze

Sitting in front of art room and feeding the birds as Marty runs his visual art classes. The sparrows, cowbirds and blackbirds come inside the chain-linked fence. The pigeons try to come under the fence and I run them off.

Today I am more at peace with myself than yesterday. At first there was fog on the Folsom hill where the trees that we see or cannot see determines whether there is program or not. The sun broke through and is generous with his rays. There is an about 10 – 15 degree breeze which is nice on the skin. It makes me think of a hug that dispels the loneliness. One can choose not to be lonely but sometimes loneliness gives you no choice.

Art Room - Music

What a day full of song, poetry and music. Diane Patterson came in to do an all the way real concert and brought two of her poetic musical friends, Sara Tone & The Earth Tribe Gospel and Al Torre medicine music bringing tunes to the heart and soul of the men here. Bringing poetry and lyrics that smashes the B.S. and leaves the heart open to hoping. I sat back after the concert and now in the art room I watched our guests check out the previous guest artist wall. Al Torre spoke of Kimberly Bass and flow notion and Sara Tone spoke of Michael Franti. Diane has from the beginning been a part of the art room and a welcome part of my writing classes and has often visited my poetry class as a guest artist sharing her incredible lyrics, songs poetry and prose. So glad I was not on lockdown to miss Diane Patterson and her friends. A blessing and I am sure  Earth Mother is so proud.

Stay real!

(written in November)

Stay Cool

There is a mean hateful officer running the rotunda where I and my co-worker run the weekend guitar check out program. He hates that prisoners have any programs and make things as hard as he can to disrupt the programs. I remember what my long time friend Karin from Sweden tells me, be nice and stay real and not curse anyone out. She is correct, because I give away my peace, realness or power over my realness and love when I get angry and express that anger through verbal insults. So I stayed cool and thankful. Instead of participating in the negative game, that could get me locked up in the hole, I took my flute, some bread, cookies and prison silence and sat down up against the small wall and fed my blackbird and cowbird friends and communed with Earth Mother. The sky was sweet and cool, but my heart, soul and spirit warm and cosy with realness. There are always peaceful, growthful healing ways to express or sublimate anger.

Dreads

I am on lockdown now just because I have dreads. Yesterday there was a fight on the yard between some crips from down south and some blacks from Bay area up north. So they locked all the blacks down to sort things out. However, instead of taking me off lockdown like they did all other blacks not from this groups, they kept me on lockdown and listed me Bay area, non affiliate, or non gang member. I have never been in the Bay area, 35 years ago I came to prison straight away from Barstow, San Bernadino county in southern California. I tried to have them fix their known mistake. I am from Barstow and run alone and never have been a gang member. The prison officials even knowing that as a fact, told me I must file a 2200 appeal form to get off lockdown. They know that will take awhile to be processed, besides they know I am not from the Bay area and know I am not a gang member.

So today and tomorrow I'll be deprived of teaching my classes. If someone was coming to visit me I cannot get my visit. How do they get away with such madness unchecked by any outside source.

Of course I will survive this. I hope whoever was coming to visit me didn't let this madness discourage them. I have never run with any group in prison and administrators know that to be a fact. I wanted to get in as many classes and hang out with as many of my bird friends as I could before I am transferred. So this evil move by prison officials to place me in a box I have no business in has dampened my heart and spirit some. There need to be real oversight on prison officials when they do outlandish and unjustified actions on prisoners. Prisoners just doing their time. It is sad when an administration of prison officials know what the correct thing to do is, and not do it. They know what the honest and real thing to do is, and yet do the wrong.

Redemptive Solitude - A Question of Justice

Drawing by Spoon

The question of justice and equal treatment for the poor, prisoners and people of color in America is absurd, and all the pundits, lawyers, judges, activists and legal folks know that. Historically, it is a question of power and a question of games.

What is most disturbing to me, is how hard it is for the public in America to see how prison is inherently retributive, evil, unforgiving and a deterrent. When prisons need to be more than just an ugly place. If the public used their senses, empirical and empathic, they would know how important some kind of positive flow is.

If individual members of the public spent a few hours, a night or a day in a cell, perhaps in solitary confinement they would realize how deep the wounds are and go. The public would then see no need to heap punishment upon punishment on people already dispirited and beaten down by their actions and losses in life. Being deprived of family contact, indeed human contact is like being denied sunshine for a life time. The concentration of all this negative energy into one place without any positive outlets for prisoners can be stifling, particularly to the human spirit. It is like a saucer of water in a boiling Mojave desert. God gave Satan a second chance even in hell.

The early Quakers had a proper idea about justice and solitude as a place of redemption. The Quakers in 1826 originally thought when they created the first penitentiary that aloneness with a bible and a tiny sun roof was enough to reform folks.

The solitude could have been productive and redemptive had it been an all inclusive healing form of solitude. Yes, spiritually, meditatively based. They had a proper intent, but the wrong format. The Quakers did not know how prison life was, how it can be a continually expanding pit. They did not know how lifeless solitary confinement can be when orchestrated by politics, government and a justice system that creates a nasty form of isolation. Solitude made out of punishment and inhumanity can never be productive.

No beings, human or not, should be kept in cages without any interaction with other human beings or nature. Such alienation can only lead to

dysfunction, mental and spiritual health problems. Just like the overcrowding of institutions are equally horrible and inhumane.

Respected solitude can be just and enlightening and not much different than monks or nuns, shamans or other folks seeking healing and communion with spirit and self. It can be a means of growth and forgiveness of souls suffering through the solitude.

But, isolation based on revenge, money, punishment and retribution cannot heal people. The solitude must be a blessed space of aloneness, and allow people to meet with people, spirits to meet with spirits, and hearts to meet with hearts. If you take away all that makes one human, how do you expect them to be human, and balance their one foot in darkness and one foot in light.

If the goal of penitentiaries are to redeem, heal and self rehabilitate, the solitude, treatment and justice must be an all inclusive meditative space of realness. The animal inside all humans suffer horribly without human contact and respected space with visits, exercise, meditation, arts, books, education, family, friends and nature to heal and bring about justice in America's prison system of politics and injustice. Justice must be a living and breathing healing entity, like Mother Earth.