Greetings world

*Lehmans cave* 10.27.2013

....  been like this since birth. tough love tough life
when all along looking for a reason in real eyes....

did it. here. this side of the fence
wake up. sleep. to the tune of dead presidents

looking into the eyes of judgemental cowards
snickering females that dont know what real man is

a month ago i ceased my train
in order to lower myself and dull the sharpness.
desensitize my mind. become one
with those i freeworld do time

as the sweat dripped into carpet this afternoon
and my nephew giggled watching you tube
peanut butter jelly time cartoon

my voice lightened like yellow leaves falling
and laughter, colors... i wondered why i would
lower myself to please those diseased

cant connect. see eye to eye
out here its what now, this second, can get us by
but death in numbness equals no life

visits to the graveyard feel like coming home
tapping texts that suck my soul from the bone

seven seventy five an hour
three hundred dollar bi weekly paychecks
spent buying ammunition for parole officers gun
paying off the beast smiling like its fun

body that sat a decade in a hole
wrapped in mcdonalds belt
wiping tables, breaking down boxes
smiling like its fun

you want it to stop but it never does
paycheck to paycheck
bells tolling, rubber thinner
home. work. dinners done

dressed in black, back to a tree, gravestone surrounded
cars circling roads around markers, not even getting out
dont want to leave surround-sound for one second
uncushioned existence awkward. change the station

double meal. happy nuggets
fighting the fuck its
the what if blues and what is
disbelief

you say you are happy
car door slam. car door shut
but i can smell your pains emanating
like grease behind the fryers stalagmites

staligtites dripping. smiling, smiling,
wired to feel happiness
detached....

*He's back*

i have been out of prison a few months now, employed doing maintanence at mcdonalds, and generally avoiding sticky people and situations. i met and peacefully broke up with a kind woman and the heartache feels very human and good after that ten year solitary numbness. my lawsuits, green v downs 2:12-cv-00432 and green v galetka 2:12-cv-00600-cw, are still very much active. i pay supervision fees. i comply. im out.....

i have a cell phone and a laptop. very little time to write or think out here. i am hoping to get back into the mix here and this is my first attempt, tapping a keyboard instead of gripping a control unit flexi pen. . . there is very few real people out here in this "freeworld". my family and a handfull of comrades and the rest.... its how it feels to me.. . .the rest seem to be at the earlier stages of discovering what living means and is for. i, like i said, steer clear of these blazing personal trails.

all the people i corresponded with in prison, they and i have struggled to maintain closeness, i think this is normal in transition. i would like to contribute to the struggle to reveal the torture going on across amerikka in sensory deprivation control units. i invite people to ask any questions they might have and am seeking ways to help get the word out about this oppressive injustice system.

i have the coolest two nephews, the smartest most kind little sister, and a big brother i respect wholeheartedly. my mother is the glue that keeps us all together and i hope she knows how much we all love her. extended family, father and grandmother etc, on the sidelines ready to help each other out. its beautiful to be back in this loving family, i appreciate you all....

but my experiences with the prison system have changed me. i am not looking for a wife and bowling. im wanting to dedicate my life to fighting oppression. but, this much everyone knows...

                      so, im here. im back. out of the cages. getting footing. standing....
                      i wasnt supposed to make it. we aint supposed to survive to tell the tale.
                      :]
                      but aint aint a word. . .

     in struggle,
                brandon

Brandon's writings on website Between the Bars

Since some months, Brandon's writings have appeared on the website called Between the Bars. They scan his writings and post them there. You can comment also to them there. We did not know they were doing this until a friend found the site and told us. We are glad he is sending them his writings, but we like to have known. Still! We will post a few of the writings here when we can.

Here is Brandon's profile on Between the Bars, and here is his essay called Mama Told Me (March 3rd 2013):

 

Here is Brandon's All Alone Amnesia (written March 10th 2013)

Brandon Green Re-entry Fund

[updated Feb 23rd: Chipin will discontinue its services soon]

Greetings friends, strangers and supporters of Brandon Green!

Since this coming Spring, the possibility is reasonably high that Brandon will be paroled (he writes us that he was taken from the supoermax unit and that he will be placed in different units each 30 days up to his parole): we know it is serious.

Brandon has told us that he will go to the halfway house in Utah upon parole.

He needs some funding to put his life together again: clothes, books, maybe even telephone cards and bus tickets, internet access to find a job, all of these need to be paid for when he emerges.

Here is the link to a Chipin we made for this purpose:

[Note on feb 23rd: Chipin is going to discontinue its services! So we have to take down the Chipin!]

You can of course also send Brandon donations via the way Utah DOC says here: http://corrections.utah.gov/administration/inmate_accounting.html

Now is our chance to show Brandon we want to help him with concrete donations. If you cannot donate monetary funds, keep in mind if you can donate something to him that is useful and that you want to give. (clothes, books, an old phone or laptop, etc). Once we know he is being paroled, we will try and organize an address where you can donate things to for him.

If Brandon will not be paroled this time, we will use any money gathered to help him pay off his Civil Lawsuits and get him some books and funds for his canteen, which he can now have! sent into the prison.

THANK YOU!!

Brandon's friends in the USA and in Europe

“Waiting For The World To Give Us A Reason To Live”: Solitary Confinement in Utah

From: SolitaryWatch, Oct. 24th, 2012
By Sal Rodriguez

Utah State Prison’s Uinta 1 facility serves as the prison’s super-maximum security unit, where inmates are held in solitary confinement. Inmates in Uinta 1 may be there for disciplinary infractions, notoriety reasons, protective custody, or because they are security/escape risks. The unit is divided into eight sections with twelve inmates in each section, for a total of 96 maximum inmates. Currently, there are 90 inmates in Uinta 1. The Utah Department of Corrections, in response to a government records request by Solitary Watch, claims it has no records regarding its use of segregation.

Several inmates have recently written Solitary Watch about the conditions in Uinta 1.

L., who has been in Uinta 1 for five months and previously served 28 months there, reports that he is only able to leave his cell three days a week, for a shower and 1 hour alone in a concrete yard. He reports that, in being transported to a 15 minute shower, “we have to wear a spit mask over our faces and handcuffed from behind with a dog leash hooked to us.”

“The rest of the time except on the shower days we are locked down in our cells with the door window closed so you can’t see out,” he writes.

A., who has been in Uinta 1 for a year, adds that, “just the other day, the [Correctional Officers] came and shook our cells down and took away all of our hygiene. They took away shampoo, lotion, conditioner, everything…they also don’t give us anything to clean our cells with.”

A. is in Uinta 1 for his own protection, following what he says was a decision to leave gang life after much “self-study.” Despite this, he says, he is treated as if he committed a  serious offense.

Inmate Brandon Green, who has frequently written on the conditions of Uinta 1, describes the environment in Uinta 1 as reinforcing a vicious cycle in which inmates placed in solitary usually end up back not long after they are released. Green, who has been in Uinta 1 for five years, previously served 18 months in Uinta 1 before a brief period on parole before returning to Utah State Prison. He has been held in Uinta 1 following an escape attempt and refusal to take psychiatric drugs, which he says will only harm his health.

“So alone. So much internal turbulence with nothing like T.V., radio, magazines or conversation to hide [this pain] beneath,” he writes, “a man leaves this place to go to general population or to a less secure facility where you have electronics and a cellie. You can just count down the months before he will return…We learn we can do without anything. And we become content with nothing. The more they take away from us year after year, the more family disappears, the more one doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want a wife and a job and bills and an Amerikkan future…It is like waiting for the world to give us a reason to live. But the world just keeps giving us reasons to not give a shit.”

This situation leads many inmates to report severe mental health problems that are aggravated by the long-term isolation. The prison routinely responds to such crises by placing suicidal inmates in a strip cell, where they are to be alone in a cell with  and checked every fifteen minutes. Included in many of these cells are cameras.
L. writes that “if someone is gonna kill themselves they take them and out to a strip cell and you sleep on the hard floor and treated like a dog.”
A. reports that “if I lose control because of something I have no control over, they’ll punish me and put me on strip cell for three days…when a mentally ill inmate feels suicidal, they send us to the infirmary to be on suicide watch…then we get from suicide watch back to Uinta 1 and the staff put us back in the strip cell when we get back to Uinta 1.”

In Uinta 1, suicide is not an uncommon occurrence. In 2009, two prisoners in Uinta 1 committed suicide. One was Danny Gallegos, who was found hanged in his cell in June. Another was a friend of Green, Spencer “Spider” Hooper, a “Pink Floyd fan and singer on medications for schizophrenia and depression.” Months after a previous suicide attempt, Hooper was found dead in February 2009, hanging in his cell.

A. and L. also independently confirm that sandbags at the cell doors of inmates gather bugs, which enter their cells. “They got sandbags around all the cells but never pick them up and clean under them so there’s all kinds of bugs and dirt that comes right under our doors,” A. writes.

Green also writes about the declining array of services provided to Uinta 1 inmates. “Years ago indigent captives received five envelopes a week. Now its one. We had five outside contacts a week. Now one. We used to be fed enough to stay full. Now we are starved. We used to have shampoo and lotion. Now we don’t. We grumble for an hour each time something is taken from us. Then move right along to inventing the creative willpower to survive with no penpals and mail, a full stomach or clean hair. Moving right along. We expect tragedy.”

Solitary Watch will continue to report on Uinta 1 as more information becomes available.

Brandon Green welcomes letters. His mailing address is:
Brandon Green #147075, Uinta One 305, Utah State Prison, PO Box 250, Draper, Utah 84020. His blog, updated by an outside supporter, can be seen here.

Many Limbed Oak

I had this dream the other night. I’d bought two old ’69 cameros. 350 HP engines. And I parked them in the drive. I looked over at a huge oak tree. And it had many limbs. But beyond these lims was a huge trunk twisting lift to right into the sky. Either it was broken, cut or disappeared in cloud…

Then I went into the trailer and found the floor flooded. I went to turn off the flooding water in the bathroom and managed to save the carpet. I then left and returned later and a big dog was on a chain by the front door. I was supposed to be scared and I knew if I was scared, the dog would bite me. But I just walked up to the door. Two enemies I don’t know, just people who wished me harm, were in the yard. I go in the house and pet this puppy on the carpet, look up, and there’s my wife or girlfriend and I notice the floor’s flooded again.  I stick my head out and ask my enemies if they know what happened. “Where’s the leak?” They shrug.

I know I’ll have to cut the carpet at this exact spot and pull all the carpet to save the floor. Easy, I think. Ain’t nothin’.  I feel she is waiting. Like the form of our relationship isn’t sorted yet. I stick out my head and ask them what food they want. KFC and some other stuff. I come back in, let you choose which camero you want. Give you those keys to keep. Say: “Please go get us food, flatscreen TV, DVD player, DVD’s, etc. while I clean up this carpet mess.” I hand her a bunch of money. I “give her” and I “do”. I am a man.

And then it comes back to the oak tree in the distance. The many limbs in the foreground and the huge trunk in the background. 

I’ve been a man before like that. Up before the sunrise for work. Nodding off on the drive home.

If I get out and work, she will come. If I get it straight again she will be there. But I don’t want her. I want ‘she-who-will-be-here-now.’ When I am not a “man” in the usual sense. 

She who will recognize that what I’m doing, and have done thus far, is what a true man can only do. But what a work-a-day man can do is what any ol’ man does.

No female sees this struggle – I’ve purposively placed myself into for a reason – no female respects it because they’re blinded by the mainstream man. They see the many limbed oak and don’t look past the acorns and leaves to the huge trunk zig-zagging into the sky (or into nothingness?) in the background.

I could still be at my job on the streets but it’s I had to do these things, all this had to be accomplished, even if she never presents herself at least I’ve found the real me in it. It’s a gamble. And I hope she comes… 

In Strength (but…) Love and Struggle,

B.

8-23-12