Sunday 15 April 2012

Memorial Day


4/15/2012
Put yourself in my shoes for a minute. What are you going to do? You’ve lost your mind. Twelve years ago today you had a psychotic break at your hometown’s rodeo ground carnival. You blacked out after cheering on your stepbrother/cousin, who was driving an old Cadillac in the Demolition Derby, and started picking fights with people, spilling drinks over people’s heads and riding on carnival rides made for toddlers. When you snapped out of the blackout, brought on by methamphetamine “come-down”, alcohol, lord tabs and weed, two police officers grabbed you under each arm and dragged you to a police cruiser. You went willingly until you blacked out again. You woke up again in a headlock with the passenger side cop holding your legs. You were thrashing, spitting, kicking. Something popped in your neck and under your foot. Again you black out. You wake up in a holding cell, nose broken with no shirt on. Blood all over the place. That was twelve years ago. In 2001. 

You ran away from home after that, to California. To just change the spelling of your name from Brandon to Brendon allowed you to get a drivers’ license and avoid any criminal record to show when cops ran your name. Two abortions, several suicide attempts later, you pull into your Hometown in a stolen Sprint Truck. You’ve reached your limit. It was time to grow up, you thought, and quit running. You were arrested and sent to prison for the stolen truck. 115 Lbs, sick and coming off a two year crack addiction, you had to fight to stay unmolested and alive. The prison sends you to solitary confinement for fighting. This is 2003. You do eleven months and they let you go home.  

While in solitary you developed these fears, this hate, this “animal-like” emotion. You learned about needles from a neighbor and psychotropic medications from another neighbor. You start to shoot cocaine and methamphetamine at home. Your mom starts you on medication.  You drive 400 miles, up and back, to Las Vegas every two days to keep your dope supply up and the money supply up by selling. One night after shooting up a gram of cocaine you and your girlfriend decide to sit in a hot-tub for a couple hours. Your brain starts buzzing, your body goes numb, you can’t talk or walk. She takes you home and spoon-feeds you creamed corn for two weeks until you can stand up. 

You start bouncing her checks. Running off with her car for days so she has to walk to and from work. She’s mad. But you can’t stop. He has every right to be mad. You still can’t stop. She turns you in and you are picked up by a public park with several grams of methamphetamine. Back to prison. Back to solitary. This time for 18 months. You parole to a halfway house and tell them to send you back the very day you get there. They do. You couldn’t take the stress after all that solitary. They send you home two months later. This time you make it for three weeks. On the third trip to Vegas you bounce a friend’s check for $600.00. And your mom is mad at you.  She turns you in and the police set up a roadblock between home and Vegas. You pull over, get handcuffed and placed in cruiser. You don’t want to come back to solitary so you slip your handcuffs under your legs and reach up and grab the officer’s shotgun. You see, the partition between the front seats and back seats was open. The cops see the shocks move on the cruiser. They rush you. You didn’t have time. You spit. You kick. They hogtie you. 

At the county jail you pull sprinklers and throw shit. They tazer you. You flood cells. They force medicate you for a whole month on full strip cell after you attempt to hang yourself and cut out the vein on the inside of your elbow.  See “my idol.” They start you on medication again. Back to prison. Back to solitary. This is 2006.
They send you to Olympus – the crazy prison. You make the mistake of lying on the psychological tests so you can get more medication. You begin to lift weights instead of taking medications. You feel better. They say you’re not crazy enough for Olympus so they send you to general population. There you complete High School, G.E.D., substance abuse classes, computer literacy, financial literacy, anger management, thinking for a change, and you held down a food server job for two years. From 115 Lbs you are now 220 Lbs. 

You graduated school from scratch. All 24 High School credits, in under a year. The prison takes everybody’s jobs and closes the gym at the same time you graduate. You’re fucked. You can’t lift weights. You start with the needles. With the heroin. Your arm swells up the size of your leg from an infection and you contract Hepatitis-C. Another stroke. Your back’s blown out from too big a stomach and too many squats in the weight room. Your arms’ veins collapse. Your heart and brain hurt because of the infection and the loss of vein. You decide to jump the fence. Either they’ll shoot you or you can escape. Dumb idea. Back to solitary.
... 


I am told to feel regret and remorse because I haven’t assimilated into mankind’s most parasitic, hypocritical, chauvinistic, “racist”, mind-washed society ever on the face of this earth. They label us behind these walls mentally ill criminals as those that consume enough to become obese; who pay taxes happily to bomb the 80%; who plastic surgery, medicate and vegetate in front of Fox-13 believing the lies; upstanding law-abiding godly citizens a.k.a. the true criminals. 

All we did to get here in prison is steal someone’s TV and spit in a pig’s eye. Let’s see you pledge allegiance to the stars and stripes, citizen consumer, because those that do so are the terrorists. The true terrorists. Amen. Can I get a Hallelujah?

Now. What are we going to do? Now? Now that we understand that those calling us crazy are the ones truly crazy? I hold my psychotic breaks on my chest like medals of honor. The hell with society being afraid of me. It is I afraid of you. You with your X-box, I-phone, Kindle, GPS, Sirius radio, Plasma TV Hi-Fi, Hi-Def, Anti-depressants, Viagra, Botox, Jenny Craig, Televangelism, 1-800-Call-Pork, Amerikkan Idol, Big Brother, Corporate-C.E.O.-worshipping, Big Bank Window Brick Thrower by Night but Bank Teller by Day…

Occupy Wall Street why don’t you Occupy The Militarized Border with Mexico? Why don’t OWS-ers Occupy Iran or Syria before Uncle Sam pulls an Iraq/Palestine on them? Why? We all know what would happen if prisoners occupied our prison yards or block sections. Attica. We all know what happens to Palestinians who occupy their own land or First Nations (Native Americans) who occupy their own motherland. Intifada and Wounded Knee. 

Wall Street doesn’t mind if you occupy it. But let’s see you occupy the front lines. Between these modern day Koncentration Kamp razor wire fences or on the border of Iran. The front lines. Not in the pigs’ play pen. They don’t care if you’re in a pack in Amerikka in a fucking tent. Let’s see a vigil over every single one of the 15 million childrens’ graves who starved to death in 2011. And 2010, and 2009… Let’s see OWS on the wire fences with your signs. Camp out along prison razor wire. I dare you!
The struggles where the AR-15’s, AK-47’s, unmanned military drones, INS, ICE, marine snipers, any shock and awe’s ready to pop off.

Rise the fuck up where it counts or pick up a book and learn where it counts.

These are the words of a solitary madman who has learned the hard way to refuse direct orders. To say no when yes is mainstream is considered crazy. Crazy today is revolutionary. Amerikka orders you to pay taxes. Amerikka orders you to consume. Amerikka orders you to get married, fill up the gas tank, buy cigarettes and join the bloodthirsty military. The U$ orders you to vote, eat fast food, drink Pepsi and Coke, buy Tide with bleach and Colgate with mouthwash beads. The United Snakes orders you to hate prisoners, “Illegal Aliens,” Muslims, Islamists, Iranians, Homeless, Blacks, “Minorities,” ”Special Interests,” Women, Jobless, Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, Revolutions.

Amerikka orders you to love the stars and stripes and only the stars and stripes. What are you going to do?
Occupy Fox-13 offices, studio’s, and dissemination stations. ABC4, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, Hollywood. Know your enemy. What did Zucotti Park i.e. Liberty Park  ever do to mind-wash or murder? Shut down the mainstream radio / tv / newspapers and broadcast your voices or static. Some “Rage Against the Machine.” Occupy your fucking minds for once. What are you going to do?

It makes me fucking sick to see people protesting against Wall Street, or prison administrations, during the day, but curling up in front of its propaganda television or swallowing its mind control psychotropic poisons at night. Such a motherfucking disconnect so blatant “in-your-face” you can’t even see it. What are you going to do?

This life is my life and most will say I’ve thrown it away and am throwing it away. My future is bleak, to say the least. That is, if you gauge it by the status quo. Big house with mortgage paid. New car. Beautiful wife. Kids in the military. Crisp, clean flag flapping on a pristine, sprinkled lawn. Crab grass and dandelions kept in check with ‘round-up’. Pecker kept stiff from a pill bottle. Mind kept numb with sitcoms and cigarettes. Isn’t this the Amerikkan Dream? Isn’t this why everyone rat races, pays taxes and votes for the richest man? What are we going to do? 

Say no. Stop. Back the fuck out and have a psychotic break with me. I dare you!

You sit reading these words in your prison cell, either in prison or a vacuumed, tide-with-bleach- smelling apartment, and you think: “There’s no stopping it. I’m addicted to these pills, to this TV, to this feeling of being better than the world ‘cause I’m an Amerikkan.  Or this feeling that I’m better than the crip or the blood or the “terrorists.” There’s no stopping it.”

You close your eyes at night and before you is a graveyard. 15 million graves stretch to the horizon. The grass is crisply, smart green and the headstones are placed perfectly in line up and down the hillside. As you lean down to read the inscription, to lay down the rose you have clenched in your fist, a loud voice booms behind you ordering you to stand. Ordering you to take the sledgehammer out of his offering hands and smash the inscriptions one by one.

“These aren’t Amerikkan children,” he screams at you, spittle hitting your nose and neck, “These children were terrorists. They wore blue if your’re down with red.  They were south if you bang north.” The loud screaming man’s eye twitches and you notice sweat stains under his armpits. Behind him stands Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, CitiBank, Fox 13 News, The New York Times, Homeowners with Sons and Daughters in the Military cowering. Waiting. Hoping you obey. 

“You are crazy. Give me that rose you worthless criminal and pledge alliance. Now!” What are you going to do? “Now!!!” 

In strength [it’s on you, we are waiting…] Love and Struggle,
B.