Sunday, December 24, 2017

Too Much of What You Don't Really Want


In this merry time of consumption and giving, one has to wonder when enough for some is enough while others have to do without. The haves give and get more and better of what is already beyond sufficient while the have-nots live with lack and go hungry. The haves worry about toxins in their gourmet food while the haves live in poisoned places and are lucky to get processed junk. The haves drive to the gym to use expensive exercise equipment while the have-nots collapse into bed exhausted from long days doing minimum wage work with no benefits. It's a social justice thing. When you have enough, isn't it a good thing to help someone in need rather than feather a nest already thick with expensive down? Doesn't too much feel a bit empty when brothers and sisters are strained to breaking with need and want?

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Outta Gas


It was a good run. He gave all he could and tried his best not to ask for anything in return. And that is what he got back. Nothing. It wasn't their fault, more the way people are right now. They just don't seem to get it and take and take and take. Oh well, so be it. He was scraped so raw and empty that there was nothing left to draw on, not even fumes. He was the bug in this life, not the windshield, and windshields ruled the world. He was the target in the cross hairs. Maybe next time around he would get it right and save something for the days that went so dark he couldn't remember where it was he wanted to go.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Looking In, Looking Out


Integrity lives somewhere in your conscience. Reflection allows you to see that. But when you try to translate that to the world of livelihood in the late stage of the corporate state, you get slammed. Ethics are old-fashioned, if not forgotten, out there in the world of money changing and hustle. So what do you do? If you aim high, you might find a sympathetic ear to help you survive. If you aim low, nobody really cares what you think because you have no audience. If you hang on to your principles you will get hammered out there where convictions are anathema to business practice. It's all about the bottom line, and you must play that game if you want your little cookie of a reward. The hard way is to live according to your beliefs in a world that exists to crush them. Eyes wide open, dear one. It's a bone-crushing machine to those without money or power. How do you get some power and still stay true to justice, to your birthright of connection?

Makin' a Living


Thick skin. That's what you need when you're down here trying to get up there. You have to swallow hard when the boss says you're wrong, even though time will show you to be right, and the knowledge of that is pulsing to the core of you. You suck it up and say yes sir/ma'am, I'll do better next time, because that it is the way things open up. You have to show that you are able to let go without getting angry or they will send you back down there to oblivion if not give you the bum's rush to cold streets. They have power and you do not. That's just the way it is. Editors are like that and they are always right if you want your work to see the light of day. Someday things might be different, but for now, you just keep going, shedding and shuffling to the commands of the market economy. If you play along they will throw you quarters and afford you a seat at the table, three hots and a flop.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Just South of the Duodenum


The song comes from deep down. It originates just below the spleen, next to the turn of the large intestine. It was lodged there when your heart broke so long ago you have forgotten the particulars. What you have to do now is let the song rise up from down there in its steaming fold of living grief and let it find sound and light. There is sadness, sure, but beauty too. You survived, my dear. You survived. And now you can learn to love again.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Out of the Mist


After three hundred twenty some miles of rainy highway driving I pulled into a brightly lit urban convenience store to gas up and finish my journey. I was tired, beyond tired, having slept only a few hours after a solstice party the night before. My eyes were dry from too much caffeine and too many miles and I did not trust them to fully deliver the truth of what I was seeing. So it was that I wondered if it were really J. when a man emerged from the shadow behind the dumpster. He walked the walk of a man beaten: hunched, stiff, uneven gait, eyes shooting from side to side. I saw recognition bloom in his eyes as he surveyed the car, a car he had driven many times to make parole meetings or other errands. That was before craving overtook the need for shelter, work, friends, love. He stopped by the driver's window and peered in at me. I rolled the window down. Hello J. I said. What's up he said. Back from a long trip. He nodded at that. You doing OK? I said. Great, he said, ironic bitterness rising at the edges of his smile. Just great. Yeah, I said. Nobody is these days. I have some brand new sauce pans and cast iron griddle if you want to buy them, he said. I said no and put the car in gear. It would be nice to have some spare change, he said, as the window went up and we drove off into the night, windshield wipers going hard. 

Friday, December 15, 2017

Next Chapter


This chapter still has a few more surprises and scenes of farewell, but the next one is looming larger, even though I don't want to prepare for it. I have not told the men in the workshops or made the necessary plans to launch out of Tucson into the wide open What's Next?.  So what does it look like, this forbidden subject, this figure standing behind the curtain of an unknown future? I hope it travels the dangerous path of creativity of some form. Music, writing, painting would all be good. And I see two wheels rolling over packed dirt, rocks, and gravel. There may be some service in there too. Maybe writing workshops at the detention center down the road. I can't quite imagine yet, though, a heart that is light, full of hope, beating with love. It may be there, someday. Until then, I'll keep wooing it home with songs sad and sweet in search of that raw, grieving nerve in need of tender light.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Cold, Dark, Clear


They say that millennials spend, on average, three-and-a-half hours a day on their phones. They watch movies, kibitz on social media, shop, research, text, even make phone calls once in awhile. I watch them as I stumble around campus in my late-life astonishment at how things have changed. I have an ambivalent relationship with my own phone. It's an elegant little thing that is capable of far more than I will ever want it to do. It has a life of its own, though, and has been taken over by advertising and commercials. That aspect of it I do not appreciate. When I try to search for something, it switches out my search for an ad. Ugh! Corporate blather insinuates itself into every crack it can break open in the scramble for eyes to watch and ears to listen. I silence the phone and put it in my jacket pocket. There are stars out tonight, meteors too. It is dry, too dry, and the air is rich with hunger for someone to pay attention to the songs of coyotes, the desire of wild things to survive another night.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Gettin in the Mood


My paltry string of Christmas lights looks silly on the door frame. It lights only one side and has no pleasing symmetry or balance. It makes Charlie Brown's Christmas tree look like a prize winner standing in the square of Rockefeller Center. Oh well... We do what we can. Still, it feels good to do something to mark the season, to fend off some of the darkness that closes in during this cold and dark time. The silly lights do warm part of me that needs some help when the doors feel like they will never open. Time to build a fire, take down the guitar, sing some sad songs, and gather to share stories of heart and light.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Turnover


Attrition has struck the workshops at the Rincon Unit. Handpoet, Sonny, Champ, Bell, Psycho and others have all been moved off the yard, leaving the workshops thin and sparse. Where before fifteen to twenty men sat in the circle, now there are four. These transitions take a toll in terms of adjusting to the chemistry of the new men. Lovett and Stilo are still coming, so there is that continuity. But the pages of writing left by the men who have moved on still speak their voices. Yesterday I stood and read a piece by Handpoet, he who began the tradition of standing to read. The new guys just looked at me and listened, a little amused. This is an awkward time, but the personalities of the men in the workshops will fill in the gaps left by those who have moved on. The spirit of poetry carries on as long as we show up and invite it in.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

What's in a Cell?


Some say that a man (or woman) in a cell needs to be contained, deprived. Others say punished; hard time will keep him from coming back. Labels like predator, sociopath, felon, criminal, or worse often fall into the mix. The story then reveals what we think we should do about these people out there, locked up. Policy exacts revenge through humiliation, degradation, and dehumanization. Don't let them have books, tools, classes, rights, or any kind of opportunity, we say. Or, given another scenario, those men and women might be seen as human beings who committed a crime, made mistakes, stupid decisions. If they have to do the time, why not make the time count for something? Why not work on changing whatever it was that contributed to their being in prison in the first place? Most inmates are where they are, in part, because of trauma of some kind. Poverty, violence, broken families, and drug abuse all contribute to time spent in prison. If inmates experience more trauma in prison, then they will likely return to what they already know when they get out. The worse we treat them, the more likely they will be back. The "tough prison" policy doesn't work. What's in a cell is a work in progress, a malleable human being, that can learn.  We could send them to school, give them job and business training, opportunities for creative expression, chances to learn how to cooperate and work together, or connect with families. Respect, trust, and skills can all contribute to men and women giving all that back and more if they get to practice. Practice makes better, if not perfect, no? 

Friday, December 8, 2017

Starting Over


It looks like the prison book isn't working. Publishers have passed on it; reviewers have offered up a big "eh," and it sits there, interesting only to yours truly. Now, I could just drop it and move on. But that would make too much sense. The path of the upper Midwest worker boy too dumb to quit is one of persistence to the finish line, even if that line keeps getting pushed back. Either I will get there or I will expire. So, back to the drawing board. Time to begin again (after all the grading and paperwork of the semester, of course). Time to drop the resistance and re-imagine the project, think as a reader, find the story waiting in the mess of it all.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Before Gravity Takes Hold


Things are winding down for the semester. Classes are over; students are writing final papers; the days are short and nights are long. For all of that, I am grateful. I need a break to mull over what is going to happen over the next year. Let's just say the next chapter of this crazy life has not been drafted and has no plot line, no setting, and an unclear theme. I don't know if this is about realizing life-long dreams of writing or if it is a slow fade into darkness. Maybe a bit of both. I do know that I have stepped off the cliff of work, like Wile E. Coyote in the moment before he plummets into the abyss after realizing he is standing on thin air. There is no "there" anymore. Just the facts. If my future is one of a fade into fog, some big decisions need to me made. But that will have to wait for now. I just need to get through the grading of this semester and survive the spring. Then it's all about looking down for something to hang onto. 

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Dream Day


The morning promised rain by afternoon, though none was in the forecast. I stood on the corner watching for lost students. Our class was going to meet at the Little Chapel, a special place, a sweet setting, one that would put them on stage, in front of an audience, where students would present their community projects; those projects will address some issue related to incarceration. We had read memoirs: A Place to Stand, Writing My Wrongs, Beyond Desert Walls: Essays From Prison, Crossing the Yard, A Case For Freedom, and others. We had written, workshopped, reflected, argued, and laughed. It had been a wild, confusing semester, one in which I did not know sometimes what I was going to do in class until I stood there in front of living, curious, beautiful people. This assignment to write a proposal for a community project had stretched me in new ways. So there I was, standing on a corner, looking for my lost students, waiting for rain, feeling the cool December Arizona breeze, nervous about how it would go -- this new thing. When it was time, I turned and went to our room, the one where I would listen to what these lovely young people had dreamed up, what they imagined as a new possibility. It was time to enjoy. The first drops fell, tentative at first, then steadily, with a smell of water, of creosote.

Sunday, December 3, 2017

It's up to Art


A line of corrections officers marched across the yard, shotguns and automatic rifles held at the ready while I waited in no man's land for the lock to snap and the gate to swing open. This was a drill, but the ammo was live and the riot gear ready. Bad food, price gouging of commissary goods, exploitative pay for prison work, and the big stuff like loss of voting rights and social invisibility have all contributed to inmate anger. It builds up to a boiling point. A man in the workshops assaulted an officer. The details, as told by inmate witnesses, involved an argument over hanging up a phone call. The inmate was talking to his mother and had some minutes left on the call. The officer wanted him to hang up. The inmate asked to use up his allotted time. The officer pressed his order and took the phone. The inmate then cursed at the officer, a struggle over the phone followed, a radio was smashed, and the inmate was sent to the hole. The phone hung on its cord, transmitting the sounds of struggle to the mother. The trigger for the assault was the phone call, but years of disrespect and humiliation had been subjects of this inmate's writing. He saw his place in the web of inequalities clearly. The spark has been struck.Tension fills the yard, and the workshops are under scrutiny. The men want to write. They want to write stories, letters, editorials; they want to bear witness. It seems up to art to turn the machine of a the prison system out of control toward something that corrects and rehabilitates rather than deprives and punishes. If not art, then what?

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Sustainability


This November was the warmest on record, a month in the warmest year, which was one of the three warmest years, all of them in the last four years. No pattern there if you listen to the deniers. And the polluters need more more freedom to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, tax cuts too. And rich people need more money. And people of color need to be less uppity. And poor people should just take care of their health without insurance. Oh, and resources will last forever. If you have anything to say you should just tweet. Don't listen or read or compromise. That's all loser behavior. Shortcuts, deal making, and getting more and more and more is the way to go, for sure. If you feel somehow uneasy about this, get a comb-over and beat up anyone who says otherwise. That'll work. We're good.

Friday, December 1, 2017

Lookin' Good


A high school that will not be named became famous for how well it prepared its students for college. All of the graduating class not only earned diplomas but was admitted into some form of higher education. After a bit of scrutiny, however, it turned out that administrators had cooked the attendance records to allow students (about half of the class) to pass in spite of excessive absence and missing academic work. Many of the seniors, according to teachers, couldn't even read or write. Now what does this mean? Well, it means that you can look good in the eyes of a world that doesn't peer too deeply into what's really going on and come out smelling pretty good, sweet even,  saying all the right things, with laurels on your brow for having made yourself look so fine.

The Cup and the Towel


The towel is waiting there, a bit dusty from waiting so long in the same spot, and wrinkled from the cat using it for her afternoon naps, but it is ready and will work for what I need it to do. I don't want to pick it up, much less throw it in, but the signs all point to the need to do so. The results from this small action will ripple out for years into the rest of the chapters of this crazy life, the ones that lead to the end of the story. I am not too proud to admit I am scared. I am losing what I thought was mine for much longer than it will last. The future is both empty and thick with resistance, like a heavy curtain that I have to part in order to pass through. But pass through I must because the time is now and the conditions irrefutable. I want to step back -- put it off for a few more days, weeks, months -- away from the cup that is being passed to me, to refuse to drink from my destiny. A lot of good that would do. It follows me, is always there, rising to my lips. Time to grab the towel, take a deep breath, and open wide, do the deed.