One Day

One of these days we will rise above this place
Even if we have to crawl there
Even with these ink stains on our face.

One of these days these pills will be taken away
These pains and depressions
Cured in a single strenuous exercise session.

One of these days these walls will return to dust
Mankind will live under a mellow maybe
Instead of this boot-clicking must.

A “sinners” psychosis replaced
With a beginner's
Misunderstanding

Those elbows and eye-gouging rat races replaced
With a homegrown tomato
Picked and eaten with family

One of these days all these chains and handcuffs
Melted into hand shovels, hoes or rakes

One of these days we will die
Our tears and skin will disappear

One of these days I willl forget missing you
I'll forget you're not here

One of these days
One day
One day
One day we will learn
One day
...
------------------------------------------
5-18-2011

Ten-Hut!

One of us is 54 and talks to jehovah. Literally. He has scurvy and crawls around his cell on his hands because his legs have atrophied.

One of us is 74 and was a part of a famous prison riot back in the day. Attica. He hasn't had a haircut or a shave for ten years. And this man tells me never once was he given a book. A whole decade. Sometimes we hear him moaning and falling and throwing stuff around his cell. He says he gets mad because his body cramps up. And he has to lay there. Cramped.

One of us is deaf. We hear him singing. It's not pleasing. Officers choose no to feed this man his vegetarian meals occasionally because they like to watch him fight the S.W.A.T. Team.

One of us is legally retarded and on several psychotropic medications. He has been cut down from nooses over a dozen times in the past five years. Again literally. This man, or boy, needs to be “talked to” all day by one of us or he becomes depressed. We take turns babysitting.

One of us is a confidential informer with a speech impediment. He's secured his early release by snitching on people with 'brew' and tattoo needles. All day long one can hear him pacing his cell barefoot. Pat pat pat. Thump thump thump. Sometimes he yells. Sometimes he cries. Pat thump thump.

One of us just tattood a swastica on his left cheek with a single pin and brown ink. The other cheek has two lightning bolts that signify the nazi SS. This man's an ex-marine and he stutters. He's working on “white power” above his eye brows. Better hurry though.
The snitch has stopped pacing.

One of us is here for killing his four year old daughter. He swears he didn't do it. His ex-wife did. Yet she doesn't write him... soon this man will be a solid aryan brother. Like the stutterer. It's funny. They both are ex-marines.

One of us used to be 370 lbs. He sniffs anti-depressants (wellbutrin) all day to keep the weight off. Though he says the skin still hangs. Sniff. Sniff.

One of us was born with half a brain. And the other half was injured i na motorcycle accident. The snitch and the swastica guy spend all day belittling him. And taking his towels and pictures and envelopes. sometimes he pulls his sprinkler in his cell when they talk him into doing it.

One of us has small strokes occasionally and can't speak for hours. When he tries to talk, it's nonsense. Words backwards. He says, when able, his back and knees hurt. Soon, he'll be crawling.

Most of us believe we are “sinners” and deserve all this. Most of us just can't wait until the medical people bring pills. It's when they when they wake up and go to sleep. A sort of poison alarm clock. Most of us get out and come right back. And the really sick part? Most of us think we are cool. God Bless Amerikka.

In strength (sniff sniff tap tap) and struggle,
B.
 5-18-2011

Alone Strong

I sit doing ten years for a gram of dope

Witnessing Johannes Mehserle get probation for murder.

I sit watching men starve to death

Witnessing guards who can´t even alight a flight of stairs,

Because they´re too fucking fat.

I sit in a country that told me to stay in school

And educate yourself.

In a cell where they won´t give me a book.

I was told in my youth to just say no

To drugs.

And now that I refuse their psychotropics,

They refuse me parole.

They told me to Love Thy Neighbor,

Like you Love Yourself.

And now I watch my countrymen shoot Mexicans,

Swimming the border.

I sit in the Land of the Free,

Rattling my chains

Waiting

I see the hypocrisy and the bitter twisted lies

Do you?

I sit alone

7.4 million strong

Knowing nothing more than to carry on

Nothing more than my country´s wrong

Knowing nothing – nothing´s at all wrong

To you

… 

(Feb.´11)

Gone fishing

It´s not me who stinks – it´s this place.

Not me who´s crying – it´s my face.

I sleep here but I don´t live here

Even though I don´t ever leave – I don´t stay here.

I watched one of my friends be buried February second

My Mama´s cousin died – and I delivered her a Valentine´s present

I held the hand of my Baby nephew Gage

As we caught fish in the North Creek river

By hand.

We picked “picture rocks” out of the gritty fish smelling sand.

My father paroles any time soon.

Our tent and fishing poles are just waiting

You wanna come – there´s room

I visited my brother Jesse in the Beaver County Jail

Him and I still can´t get along – oh well

But when I left I still miss him

I´ll still hug him the next time I see him.

My baby sister has got two babies

Gavin´s three months and I swear he´s crazy

He spits and kicks and giggles too much

He ruined my work shirt and poked in my lunch.

Everyone thinks of me as gone – not returning.

My captors think I´ve lost it – afraid to serve me

My fellows are mad without their medication

Trying to prove themselves in every situation

Games and fronts and insecure rantings

Solitary supermax – but in reality I´m camping

Firewood, campfire smoke – my family laughing

Woodchucks, pheasants - my family still laughing

(you see?)

(February 2011)

Bouncing Around (RIP Roger)

 

 

Bouncing Around (RIP Roger)

Another one of my old friends just killed himself last week and I want to share my views on why this keeps happening here in small town Amerikkka.

Roger Thomas, Steve Ruesch, Kenny Ruesch, Jackie Erwig, Paul Bradshaw, Troy Bradshaw, and “Mick.” My friends who grew up with me up North Creek. Poor whites. The lower class in a state that lacks, literally, any Blacks to sate the white settler lynch mob “criminal” hysteria. (our state is so racist we won´t even allow non-whites to move here). These men lynched themselves in some of the most violent horrible fashions in my home town in front of their families. And I want to explain why, scientifically, this happens.

One hung himself as his girlfriend went to the store to grab some bread. She found him upon return.

One shot himself in the heart with his girlfriend´s pistol. In her bedroom on her bed as his girl went out for a cigarette. She found him.

Another unloaded a .22 caliber pistol into his head in front of his mother. And the other two hanged themselves.

One in the back country with a power extension cord from a pine tree. The other on work release at the Beaver County correctional facility. He used the radio wire from the radio he was installing in sheriff Yardley´s police truck.

I don´t explain in detail to sicken you. I provide detail so it can seem more real to you. And so that you can see what this capitalist/imperialist patriarchal society is doing to its poor. And the lengths these men go to avoid becoming a bogeyman prisoner or pig.

If you still believe these U$ gulags are filled to the brim with law breakers or degenerates you´re blind. These cells hold the poor and unemployed. And my hometown´s graveyard holds those who refuse to be chained or badged; those who have remained politically unconscient, but who knew subconsciously something´s majorly fucked up with imperialist Amerikkkan society. These are the men who turn fascist minutemen, Aryan brother, pig, prisoner or commit a violent suicide. It´s simple, it´s sick, but it´s reality.

And I find in writing my Gran it´s easier to explain. So like “Owls eyes” I´ll copy a piece of the letter in response to the news Roger killed himself. It´s less bitter. Less cynical this way. More Amerikkkan. More tailored to the average reader. The ones the anti-imperialist, anti-patriarchal, anti-militarist struggle needs to wake up. My Dear Reader:

“I know the pain that Steve and Kenny felt. And Roger felt. I believe this pain is centered in patriarchy and the greed-driven capitalist “dog-eat-dog” “devil-take-the-hindmast” need for success. We men are taught to feel shame if we are ´unsuccessful.´ This even ties into the fact that so many women are single mothers. We believe a man´s superior and should be the breadwinner. And the woman is the caretaker and should be sheltered. And when the man can´t provide, it kills him. It ruins him and the relationship, because he feels guilty and unmanly. They separate. She takes the kids because it´s her “job.”

            Then she feels bad, because she´s alone and she thinks it´s her fault. He feels bad because he thinks it´s his fault. She continues on because she must raise her kids. She has that. He bounces around searching for forgiveness in a cruel world. At least cruel to the unsuccessful man who can´t provide. Loser!

This is why Amerikkka has 7.4 million men and women in prison or on parole. This is why so many kill themselves.

In order for the military to expand, in order for these prisons to expand, people like Roger or Mick need to be bouncing around in society. A percentage will pick up the military gun, put on the fascist badge or succumb to the poor man´s chains. (you can just leave the old military draft in the closet if you just take jobs away).

And the reason why some choose neither, and kill themselves, is because the military doesn´t accept ´felons.´ (just like the nazi party didn´t accept Jews. Jews – felons. Same difference). And because most human beings with self-respect and a social conscience see a minuteman, Aryan brother, police officer and prison guard for what their profession is. A fascist parasite.  Á la´ Amerikkkan neo-nazi. And most men can´t surrender themselves to such a low profession. Or one of these bogey bourgeois, middle-class hated modern day koncentration kamps. They´d rather die than be a social outcast or pig. They´d rather die than become the thing that the media propagandizes into hating and feeling superior over.

It goes without saying that the men who ran the old Germany´s concentration kamps were tried for their crimes and executed once the world woke up. And history repeats.

To be poor is a crime nowadays. Classism. To be an unsuccessful man is a crime too. Patriarchy. To join the bloodthirsty military is patriotic and applauded. Chauvinism. But to be in prison for a gram of dope for ten years straight is justice. Fascism!

Hitler did the very same stuff Amerikkka does now. Prisons and the military are the number one growth industries for decades running. Still growing. It´s just instead of Jews we use poor whites or “coloreds.” The ones unable to defend themselves with attorneys.

Amerikkka creates Rogers, Micks, Steves, Kennys, Troys, Pauls, Jackies by design. The prisons need jobless Rogers and Jackies. The prison guard unions need jobless Micks and Pauls. And the military and police force needs jobless Steves, Kennys and Troys. No need for another war or crime. Just take their jobs.

The only problem is, Amerikkka isn´t Germany – one of the weakest nations in the world per 1914-1940. The problem is, no greater nation is strong enough to come in and stop the U$ $$ neo-nazi system.

So just like Germany in its heyday it continues. With the support of the middle class. The same middle class who sat by as millions of Jews were marched off to gas chambers. We look at the past German middle class with awe and disbelief. “How could they not do something.”

Right? It´s because they profited off of not doing anything. Just like Amerikkka profits off of Rogers, Micks, Steves, Kennys, Troys, Pauls Jackies. (in fact, the bourgeois were the $$ and koncentration kamp guards! And all fascism is, is basically unemployed people finding employ in killing off a certain people among them. A la Arizona´s SB1070 law and the crack cocaine/powder cocaine sentencing disparities).

Just like Germany profited off Jews and Jehovah Witnesses.

The poor are expendable says Fuhrer Obama.

The Jews are inferior, says President Hitler.

But try and tell that to our “free” nation. They´ll not give you parole – or drive you to suicide.

In strength (I know you feel me) and struggle,

B.

Feb 13th 2011

Swindle Hearse

Pull the fucking pistol out of your mouth

And pick up a book

Turn off that damn bourgeois television

And take a look.

Shit´s getting hectic, Brother, sure

But a bullet in the brain, Amigo, isn´t the cure.

It´s too late for you, man, but what about your son?

What about his generation who´s been taught to run

To stomp and tantrum and tattle tale

Suck the plastic flea market and dodge bourgeois hell

Imperialist sons medicated for depression

A hybrid oppressor slash enemy nation

I´ll sell you this for a gallon of that

Then starve the world and die of heart attack fat

It isn´t the way it´s meant.

All these senseless suicides ain´t some static event

The reason exists .- the why´s right here

Your casket costs thousands – payment plan three years

Sucking the fucking juice out of life - capitalism

Then profiting off of your death – straight sadism

Rent the church to grieve you in

Buy the hole to bury you in

Pay the – poor -  priest to say some words

Then scribble on some grey marble how much it hurts

Picking the pocket of the family that weeps

Dying´s expensive while living is cheap.

Business in death and death in business

What´s the price, father, the price to miss us?

Owls eyes

Comrades. D.H. Lawrence wrote once that a sign of insanity in a man isn´t all the crazy shit that he knows. But all the normal stuff he doesn´t know makes him insane. The stuff he misses. Like, the stuff everyone else sees but he himself misses – makes him insane.

I´ve been told lately that I´m awful bitter and cynical. Or I come across that way in my essays. A person can deny it only so many times, and from so many people, before he, if he´s smart, hears some grains of truth in the words.

So, I´ll get personal here for a second. Even though you guys probably don´t want to hear me pooh poohing, I´ll share some words I wrote to my grandma. The context is how I´ve done ten years thus far for non-violent drug charges. And I got four or five more years to go before parole because Utah considers me a “threat to the community.”

            Keep in mind, here in Backwards Reactionary Utah, not paying your tithing is a capital offense. So they frown on stoned atheists threatening their bourgeois polygamist community´s mellow degeneracy.

Pardon the bitter cynicism. Couldn´t help it.

I remember as a boy my Navajo Indian friend ´Mickey´ told me that owls are a sign of death in the family. If you see or hear an owl it´s bad luck. After grandmother Norma died of cancer I shot this owl with my 22 caliber rifle. I shot it several times before it fell to the ground out of the cottonwood tree it was porched in. I was out behind grandma´s house beside the main ´North Creek´ river.

I came upon this owl, still alive, looking at me with its big yellow and black eyes. I felt so bad. I was angry shooting it, thinking I was “getting-even” with it for making my Grandma Norma die. That´s what I felt – at first. But then I came upon it laying on the creek-bed. Looking at me like: “Why, what did I do to you?” I felt real bad. But it was dying. And I had to finish it off. So I did.

But I´ll never forget that owl´s eyes, Gran, asking: “Why, why?”

I don´t know if I´m maybe insane – but when I look into the mirror into my own eyes – my eyes question just the same way as that owl´s “why, what did I do?”

I didn´t do nothing. Neither of us did. Me. The owl. It´s just sometimes people (and systems) get angry and confused and react without thinking. They believe they are helping or “getting even,” shooting people out of their life´s trees because of some silly “belief.”

The belief that I´m a “sinner” or “criminal” and a threat to them. To something? To what? I can´t barely… - There´s nothing even left in me to hurt with. I´m just ´me´ now. A person. Alone. I´m like a ten year old!!

I´m just an owl in a tree getting shot at by some confused angry boy/system. I didn´t kill their grandma. I´m not bad luck.

But damned if I´m going to end up in the creek bed! Damned if! I got stuff to do, one day I hopefully…

So I´ll flutter from tree to tree, day to day, dodging the 22 bullets. And cross my feathers / fingers…”

2.4 million of us / 7.4 million if you count parolees and probationers – flutter from tree to tree dodging society´s hate of us. So yes, I am bitter and cynical. But it´s because I can be. Thus far I don´t have to worry about censors. Or if what I write will mess up my death row appeals. I´m not in the creek-bed. I ´may´ go home one day.

But I´m damned aware of all these that won´t.

I´m sickly aware of my nation rounding up thousands of Mexicans and “detaining” them. Deporting them. Gunning them down like dogs. All in an effort to protect their jobs. (Jobs they´re losing because of capitalism´s unstable nature, not a brown people´s hated persevering human nature).

I´m intelligent enough to make the mental leap that if my fellow countrymen act this way towards innocent outsiders, not a fucking thing´s stopping them acting that way toward hated native-born felons.

I know I´m not here to be corrected. I understand the percentages – 79% recidivism rate, 6 out of 7 junkies return to the junk – if there´s not room for a handful of Mexicans in our society where do we 7.4 million Amerikkkans go? How long until you just throw on the old grand dragon sheets and start picking off parolees like you do Mexicans? Like you do Palestinians and Afghans?

Put yourself in our shoes for a minute. It is one of the world´s greatest “mind-fucks= which we sit in the very center of. The majority of Amerikkkans are so mind-washed sitting in front of their television believing all the bourgeois bullshit propaganda that they don´t realize (or they actually do and applaud it) it´s their very own taxes, their own 22 rifles, picking us off. – my countrymen.

D.H. Lawrence. His definition of insanity perfectly, almost frighteningly, explains the U$ of A. to a tee.

The world looks on, as uncle $am slobbers on himself, rocking back and forth in the gutter. The man has lost it, grabbing and snatching everything in sight. And twisting it. Shoving it. “Correcting” and “rehabilitating” it. Sanctioning and globalizing it. Bending it into something whiter; something cheaper; something less bitter; less cynical.

“Who” does he think he is?

“Why” doesn´t someone stop him? --------

I just wish I was still a boy up North Creek. And I´d of paid that damn Mormon tithing on time. --------

In strength (“who who” – “why why”) and struggle,

B.

27^th of January 2011

Damn me?!

There’s this confusing aspect I’ve never quite been able to understand about Christian morality. You see, I’ve sat alone for three years in a solitary supermax control unit sensory deprivation dungeon. Where every emotion is sharpened a hundred fold but every avenue to share or express this feeling is cruelly taken away. Except mail. And my pen.

So it irks into me to receive these fancy guilded colourful Christmas cards from total strangers where they´ll tell me they love me but damn me to the depths of hell in the same breath. Because I´m a sinner, my soul is in limbo and it´s time for me to repent and prostrate myself to the all-mighty glorious One. Or burn!

But I love you, brother, take care. Is this what a motherf#$ker needs? Maybe if you all got together out there and started chanting and holding hands, these walls that hold amerikka´s 2.4 million political prisoners would crumble and we could join you for a psalm.

Well?

Were waiting…

Of course, maybe because we are top notch “sinners” in your books, the last thing you want is for us to be released. Does that thought frighten you? Is it a whole hell of a lot easier to pray for someone´s soul than it is to minister to their torturous mind f%$cked life? Because, in reality, Christians and “criminals” are both mind-washed masses. I´d be surprised if one could exist without the other. The former needs the latter to lord over and condemn. And preach to from afar. (the further, the better, no?) And what would a “criminal” do without the piles and piles of guilt, shame, sense of inferiority and hurt his brother christian bestows? In shiny Christmas cards.

The time has come to turn the tables. Your religion and these U$ koncentration kamps; your steeples and the judges´ pulpit; the church and the court house are one and the same. Tools of oppression. Both are filled with bigotry, racism and egotism. The priest and the judge. The gangster, the killer and the dope dealer. Who are the real sinners here? Who´s the bad guy? The true gang?

I heard once that to interact with true insanity in a person one has to be aware of the fact that craziness likes to jump ship. Meaning: a crazy person has the ability to make you feel like you´re the one that´s nuts. And I´d say the same applies to unjust systems I power. They have a way of mind-washing you into a nazi or a “crazed-fascist-mexican-border-minuteman.”

So father-elder-sister-brother our struggle is a fight to survive. Day to day. Minute to minute as human beings. Your creed and country are killing us as you pass around the collection plate and mail “form-letters” to us to ease your consciences. Our struggle attempts to raise our fellows´ ´self-esteem´ and heal -  not ´guilt-trip´ and destroy as your church does. The living, right here and now, interests us. Not some idealist bourgeois bullshit afterlife and prostrate and ask for mercy. And not from the all-mighty or some winged man. But from your fellow man you´ll kneel in supplication. And I´m going to ´go-there´, I must.

Why are we the ones hated? The prisoners. Who sit and study and starve to death. And why are they the ones supported? The soldiers. The ones who drop bombs on innocent people for a paycheck. Maybe because all we do is keep beds full and a handful of your employed, we´re inferior? At least compared to those that keep your gas tanks full and new amerikkan colonies occupied we are. No?

But I disgress.

Brother Christian, I´ll wish you a merry christmas also. And I send my love. But please note I´m not parting with some ´beefed-up-scare-tactic- ultimatum´ that might leave you in tears tonight, fingering your pistol. I understand that your kind, who keep medical science in a moral chokehold and evolution out of the elementary schools, are escapist and weak. I know a person who´s a citizen of earth´s most ´murderous-racist-atomic-imperialist-hypocritic´ nation feels a need to bury the old. Head in the sand. I feel you. I used to hide beneath the needle myself.

I just ask you keep your demons to yourself. Please. Never once did I try to push my dope on you. So give me the same respect.

And as you stand bent over with your head in a stale hole, know the rest of us have woken up and changed the cd. That bass beat you hear as you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen isn´t the ´Stars and stripes.´

We´re rocking the anthem of international socialism round these parts. The Internationale.

Let no one build walls to divide us,

Walls of hatred nor walls of stone.

Come greet the dawn and stand beside us,

We´ll live together or we´ll die alone.

In our world poisoned by exploitation,

Those who have taken, now they must give!

And end the Vanity of nations…

We want no condescending saviors

To rule us from their judgement hall…

And comrad Christian… comrade!!!

In strength (nighty night) and struggle

B.

@Comrade Christian@

(Blue Light Special)

Show me where it hurts

And I´ll stick a knife in it

Tell me all about it

But – you know – I´ve only got a minute

My flock sits perspiring

Fat, useless but pretty

Dressed to the nines

With pockets full of $10s and $20s.

I walkabout like a loudmouth cock

Strutting and condemning

My paycheck is paid on guilt

My new suit from J.C:Penny´s

A half off sale on common sense

Scare tactics and twisted history

Buy two get one free

Trading evolution for hypocrisy

Sell your soul to the denomination

Hurry before it´s too late!

Cast them muslims into damnation

We preach love not hate (right??!)

Fundamentalist islam, fundamentalist christian

Fundamentalist amerikkan in support of

A fundamentally racist system

I send strength to all Georgia comrades

And the other fifty states

I send strength to all comrades worldwide

Let´s do this damn thing mates!