Voices from Solitary: From the Vortex of Uinta One

From: Solitary Watch

June 14th 2012
In: Voices From Solitary
 

The following comes to Solitary Watch from inmate Brandon Green at Utah State Prison, Draper’s Uinta One facility. The facility currently holds 91 inmates in solitary confinement, including the state’s death row. Green has been in isolation for five years, after a brief period released from prison before being rearrested.  He has been corresponding with Solitary Watch since February, and has been a prolific writer, chronicling his harrowing experience in isolation. He has described his situation, and the challenge of expressing his situation, this way: “I told my cousin that it’s like he and everyone out on the street is building a life, a “house,” while we sit holding up the roof to our past “houses” as it slowly just crumbles. How does one who is busy building understand how it is to just sit and hold up a roof? They can’t.” The following is a sampling of his writings. –Sal Rodriguez

Where to begin? How to begin? One fellow captive described Uinta One as a vortex. It just keeps sucking you in. My first experience of solitary was in 2004. I was around 21 years of age. I was put in a shower in handcuffs as they searched my cell and I slipped handcuffs from behind my back to the front, then was unable to put them back when ordered to. Thus solitary. My first taste.

I remember crying a lot at first. At night mostly, as the night crept up on me. My neighbors would want my cookies from my white sacks. And they offered all these colorful pills. “Green to sleep, red to wake up,” they’d say. So I fished off my cookies under my door to my neighbor so I could sleep instead of cry.
I remember paroling in 2006 after I’d done two stints in solitary. My mom picked me up and just to hear the music on the radio gave me cold chills. Being so long without music. Mom took me to a restaurant and we sat down to eat. I got nervous because of all the people, hopped up, went to the car and waited for her as I listened to music. I sat paranoid looking in the mirrors at all these people coming and going from their cars to stores and back. I felt like…like a bad guy. Outlaw. That no one will know what it was like to sit alone for so long with just my thoughts.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t imagining my moms “just cried out face” as she hopped back in the car and drove us home. “How could he,” she probably thought “after all that time. Does he hate me?”
“How could she,” I thought, “after years of eating all alone, how could she not know I’d be nervous.”

Neither understanding. Both blaming the other while feeling guilty ourselves.
It’s been almost five years since we’ve spoken.

I sit going on five years straight in the hole. A sound of buzzing comes from my exhaust vent because I place a piece of paper there to create sound. My door is plugged off, with white sacks, except for a small place at the bottom to allow air and mail. I go through these periods of extreme abdominal pains, blood shot eyes, dizziness because of my Hepatitis-C. I’ve not shaved or had a haircut for almost five years. I do not leave my cell unless guards do a search or I get blood tests for my disease.

My knee is pulled because of overexercise and pacing. To pace, then turn, then pace, then turn, really screws up the knees after a while.

We have these sandbags surrounding our doors so we cannot fish. Bugs get trapped under these and set up little colonies and infiltrate our cells. Most of these toilets do not flush correctly and most cell toilets stink with green moss inside the bowls. Most air vents are clogged and one can taste the city exhaust smoke as one chews ones carrots.

Just this week, a captive was antagonized by a guard. The captive requested mental health. Was laughed at (at his door and over the cell electronic speaker). He snapped, took all his “fish oil” medications, pulled his cell sprinkler then proceeded to swallow the metal sprinkler. He’s been gone days. Probably in section four–suicide watch.

Section one is death row. Sections two and three are general hole, intensive management unit. Section four is suicide watch with an officer in section 24/7 with 15 minute checks. All other sections have hourly checks.

Uinta One tortures 96 people in all. 8 sections of 12 a piece. We cannot see out our doors into the sections because of a metal window flap that is clipped on. Month back someone swallowed a window clip.
Some captives have been known to stuff shampoo bottles up their ass. Shove staples in their penis. Head butt the walls. Bite holes in their wrists with their teeth. Cut out veins with fingernails–I’m guilty of that one.

No phone calls since April 2008. No radio, T.V., magazines, visits, sunshine. Here in Uinta One we are handcuffed behind the back, dogleashed, pillow-case over the head, shackled, taken to and from shower every Tues, Thurs, Saturday. It’s degrading.


Trust me

Waking up to a nosebleed
Falling Asleep in a nightmare
Growing old minus the growing up
Adolescent at almost thirty
Buried in Cement
Pig mindgames, taxpayers hate, facial hair
Cant kill yourself because they watch
Camera mounted up in the corner
Razor cut scars on inside of elbow
Brain damage, swollen liver, tired heart
Does the crazy man know he’s crazy
Dead people don’t know they’re dead
Do those who hate me count as family
Those who can’t trust me don’t count as friends
King James! Version of the Holy Bible
Verses one of his slaves’ version of peoples liberation
White nation labor aristocrats bought off by King
Off with their heads–Away with their playthings
Give them cowards three meals and smelly mattress
Flatscreen TVs
Tuned 24/7 to the new
Revolutionary TV
Lynch mob soda repackaged justice soda
Law and order on can
Inside a caffeinated Jim Crow
Flavored with a War on Drugs
AKA PIG social control quota
Waking up to the nightmare
Falling asleep to the mindwash
Old man at almost thirty buried in cement
Growing old without the giving up

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.

Doggy Paddle

Doggy Paddle

Will you be with me forever

Let me pour your lips sips of wine

And light your joints of only the best

Kind

Would you accept me barefoot beside

Smile out of breath at night

I want you there when I die

Like

I need to be near when you cry

Share our headstone

Humbly

Carved out of sandstone

Grow old with me unknowingly

Baby

If you were a mermaid

I’d cut off my legs

A vampire

I’d let you feed on me

And hold you tightly entombed

Every day

Until eternity

If I lost my mind I’d discover it

For you

I would

If you lost your mind I’d lose it

With you

I would

Give me all your pain

I’ll turn it into that beautiful smell

Of dust

On a summer afternoon rain

I want you to hate me when you need to

I need you to want me when you hate to

Indian style in the desert naked

Talking

Laughing

Smiling

Doggypaddle in a mountain lake

Naked

Shivering

Pine gum in our hair – laughing

The thing is, Girl, we live in a world

Gone crazy

Do you see this?

A world of airwaves, oil and aluminum

All cancer causing

All part of the problem

And I’ve done too many situps

Do too many pushups

In the past

I did way too many drugs

To make it here

But I’ve made it

And I’ll make it

Nights alone beside

Your nights

Just for a chance to share a night unalone

Isn’t that what life’s about

Spending the nights

Unalone

What else is there , Beautiful

The thing is, Girl. I’m crazy

Can you feel this

Become accustomed

To this

Forgot how to miss

The thing is – I love you

But the water’s deep

And I’m drowning

Without you

Four Walls

Four Walls

Al this I’ve said

Where would it go to

Without you to say it to

Where does all that

I never find someone to say it to

Go to

Without you

I’d be lost without you

All these lives here spent

With no one to go to

To just know you

Knowing you

Gives my thoughts somewhere to go to

Someone to say I Love You to

Too

I’m lost without you

And I don’t even know you

Knowing you without ever

Meeting you

Wanting you without ever once

Having you

Missing you though I’ve just written

To you

To think of you

During everything I do

Makes my days sweeter

Just knowing you

All these things I’ve said

Where would they go to

Without you

1-16-2011

Strategic confidence

Forty years ago today Attica rose up

Since then 600 million children starved to death

Pelican Bay Comrades we’ve had enough

A Revolution sparked by refusing pig lunch

Cover this one up, oppressor

We’ve had enough.

Supermax solitary chokeholding Attica’s sons

Gray-faced and pale captives dying alone

Bricks and steel sucking the life out of everyone

Clench-fisted against imperialism we die as one.

Bring in your army and mow us down

Manufacture a cover-up you plutocrat clowns

Each one of our body bags more heavy

And sacred

Than a billion of your fascist small towns

Red flags draped over true soldiers’ coffins

Reminiscent of those buried beneath Kremlin Gates

Red dawns rising like earth under stampeding buffalo

Another empire crushed poetically-

Like the Greek Goddess of fates.

Forty years today Attica rose up

And for the first time ever  today

One captive voice echoed the world over

As one

One Lung

We’ve had enough

9/14/2011

9/26/2011: PBSP hunger strike commences

My idol

It’s mid-December. You wake up curled tightly in a ball. On your left side in the fetal position. Both hands tucked tightly between your knees. Someone’s banging on your door. You open your eyes. You’re naked. Laying on cold cement.

“Get on your knees. Go to the back of your cell and kneel down. Interlock your fingers and place your hands on your head. That’s a direct order.” A voice screams at you. 

It’s breakfast. In order  for you to receive Your Rotten Bologni you must comply. You attempt to comply. To uncurl yourself from your fetal position. You can’t. Your neck is jacked to the left, stuck in a muscle cramp. You cry out. Spittle runs in a gluey string from your mouth. Down your cheek. Into your hair on the cement. “Ahhh.”

“Pussy. Lay there like the dog you are. Bet you’re hungry. What is it, a week since you ate? Good. I hope you die. You bastard…” The voice laughs. Closes the cuffport. Locks the window-flap. Walks off.

A tear runs down your cheek. Into your spittle. Into your hair. You still can’t move. For the past two weeks, twice a day, officers and medical technicians have shot you up with Thorazine and Haldol. You beg them to please don’t. You don’t want it. Please. No.

The door opens. Several officers and a nurse enter your cell. They are talking about the TV-show “Survivor.” A foot nudges your side.  The needle enters your buttocks. Empties. They stand around talking about “Survivor,” looking at you.  One guard kicks you. Laughs. They depart now talking about “American Idol.”

The drug slowly starts to take effect. You unfurl. One leg stretches toward the ceiling. The moaning starts. From deep in the pit of your stomach long, peeling, unearthly animal moans. You can’t stop. Your leg won’t go down. It cramps into a “Charlie horse.” Sweat breaks out on your face. Another day. Solitary Supermax.

At about noon the guards find you with your face in the toilet drinking dirty water. You see, you are unable to stand and reach the sink. Though; the water is shut off even if you could reach the faucet. It took you all morning just to drag yourself over to the toilet. If you don’t drink, you’ll die. 

“Get on your knees. Go to the back of your cell and kneel down…” Laughing. Shutting. Walking away.

You have about four hours to drag yourself to the back of your cell and attempt to kneel. Rotten Bologni sounds damn good right about now. As you crawl, slither, cramp and moan your way, you wonder:

“How will I be able to even chew. My jaw is cramped open and won’t shut.”

“The last captive to use this toilet had Hepatitis. Damn!”

”I hope Keri Underwood wins American Idol. She’s one of the finest. ..”

In strength (the beat goes on) and struggle,

B.

I am Bradley Manning!

Brandon sent us this kite to make a collage (see in the side bar) with his photo of the Utah DOC in support of pcf Bradley Manning.