Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow
How much can the heart bear?
you can’t answer that with mind’s logic
only heart’s experience.
The mind and its wars-
makes a soldier.
But battles of the heart,
makes a warrior.
Fortitude finding it’s fortress in depth, not surface
the heart can bear anything
it’s the mind that will cave first.
Reva Siegal created a term called–preservation through transformation–wherein white privilege is maintained, while the rules and rhetoric change. So all this crying out for change is no different than other times where laws and public consciousness seemingly changes for the better, but the unspoken rules of racism and status quo are still held in place.
Institutions are arenas of social control and indoctrination-silently enabling racism, while diatribing color blindness- then lower and working class whites-whom are determined not to be the bottom of American hierarchy-are pitted against urban peoples for resources and mainstay so racial sensitivities are stoked to give breath to self, race, and preservation at the expense of the lower class. Which so happens to be the largest percentage of “America’s” people.
Prison is a unique walk
that is,
if you’re looking to grow and mature
because making it through should be an accolade of itself
it is the physical boundaries of self determination
and self actualization
versus
self sabotage
and self annihilation
and the walk of growth and maturity in prison
almost never happens in the beginning
you have to go through that obligation to darkness
to achieve that opportunity for change
its actually surreal
when the world sees change as a demand
which it constantly stifles
yet sentences you to its quarters
as if it is a cleansing process
all go through and inherit without strife or struggle
but in prison,
change is a reward of long, hard fought battles
that end in many personal deaths
manifesting itself for you in the illusively ending war
as a right,
and if you take it’s hand,
it becomes a matter of how much of you is there left
to even bother taking it up on it’s offer,
unknowning what you have to offer
or even how and where to start
after seeing the truth of humanity
all concentrated in one area
the cost of change comes with
disorientation
survivors guilt
and PTSD in here,
what does yours come with?
Promises
“progress”
poverty
public policies
politicians
profiteering
police
prosecutor
prison
parole
and
presidents(dead or alive)
Voting either or is better than neither nor
Because if we’re only spoken for
Then who will we be speaking for
The worst choice is no choice
The worst voice is no voice
No choice gives no voice
To those with no voice and no choice
Because that choice and that voice
Isn’t our voice nor our choice
So we remain voided and voiceless
Having no real choice hoisted, because our choices are voided
So it may be ideal to have the best of both worlds
Instead of being hurled at with either or’s
because we may believe in one thing while we’re may be leaving more
and when it comes to making answers then those maybe’s leave a sore
but if we only get two choices that cement our either or
we can’t choose neither nor
because ‘we’ is more
we can’t treason our seats of reason and freedoms every 16 seasons
because our personal grievance left us needing more
let’s make do with at least a few of the pieces we leaning towards
and bring to them more meaning and agreements we’re feinding for
we have to awake the sleeping and unleash the sleepless horde
not ignore choices to settle secret scores
passing right through change and achievement’s door, like cheating scores
choose the lesser of two evils, that’ll help us sheath our swords
because if we don’t keynote speak our peace then we’ll concede our choice
and may peephole see and hear the speed of war
therefore what we had may be taken and feasted on
while keeping us screaming and seeping between seams and teams of either or
until those seams are torn
boring a new lore of we is more and we or nor
let we be our north
because I get it, this world forces us to be either either, or
but we have to build up from reaping the floor to sowing new ceilings and reaching for doors
so even when we’re lost at sea, we’re high enough to see the shore
and after we’ve cultivated enough of this and that
we’ll be able to create a oneness of people with middle ground, that won’t leave or mislead you to either or
where maybe the eqalitarian equilibrium plea of three is born
because we have to be hands on like ouija board
and have a direction that will ultimately reveal the best of both worlds that silenced people been dreaming for
because right now, people like me can’t vote either for either or
Too smart for my own good
too smart to do no good
but too smart is no good
the judge said,
I was ‘too smart’ before he BANGED the wood!
sentencing me as, “too smart, for good”