• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

  • Home
  • About
  • Prose
    • Culture
    • Inside
    • Love
    • Mercy
    • Spirit
    • Trauma
  • Listen
  • News
  • Connect
  • Support

Russell Wardlow

Changed for the worse

December 1, 2017 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Prison helps you fall quicker than rise…

Normalcy becomes chaos

Impassivity becomes rage.

He now dances in the misery of rain

He thrives in the torturous contortions that fuel his agony

Amused by tears now..

As if they are of another world he once knew

He reaches out to touch one and then quickly snaps out of his reverie!

No place for compassion within the midst of a riot

He sleeps soundly in the welcoming arms of calamity

He has stands stoic

He loves the adrenaline rush-ion roulette of self inflicted wounds

Time refined his masochism, anything to feel again

He stands numb

He plots the casualty of kinship

Prefering to dine alonecat his table of destruction

His misery prefers no company

Solitary madness, he drinks down tragedy until drunken

He sharpens the teeth of pain

Because its all he knows, because love doesn’t live here

To live, he had to adapt..he just got lost even sooner

Deep inside this Sado-masochistic sanctuary

He, like so many more, changed for the worse in prison

Filed Under: Inside, Mercy, Spirit, Trauma

The thing about a Flower

November 28, 2017 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

The thing about a flower..is beauty til death
It lives with grace, as it dies in that vase
You may only wear your beauty because of pressure
Make-up veils the truth
but I see your eyes, as if life is dying inside of you
Stunning the way you hide it
You are deeper than any well
Enthralled with such elegance
Like a bug, I feel fatally lured into your luminescence
But up close, I peer into your petals of agony
Others too often hover the surface, your look induces the chase
Externally masked, ironically you put off what you hate
Composed well since you first blossomed
So no one see’s your depth
You die slow yearning for trust and true love..
But you don’t love yourself
You feel like an object, a prized possession, a visual gift
Lauded after because of your appearance
Shallowly preserved, slowly wilting away within time
Dying slowly as you stand brilliantly flushed
The thing about a flower

 

Filed Under: Culture, Love, Trauma

Stop and Seize

November 27, 2017 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Sorry sir I’m nervous
Why would you want my service
Sorry I can’t consent to searches-ah that hurts
But I’m used to the way you usually usurp when you search and “find” something not on my persons
like I have a receipt for purchase?
A mistake has no purpose-ah that hurts!
I make mistakes but what’s worse, I fear your mistake may cost the life of an undeserving person
In this case me, I don’t deserve this, I just got back from workin’
I’m not resisting sir, my face near the curb on the surface adjacent to serpents
I never felt so shamed and worthless
“Well you match the description of a suspected person
Nothing else needs to be said further
You have no right to be heard
You have no right to be heard of
Now stop resisting boy before I get a paid vacation for beating a case for murder“

 

Filed Under: Inside, Trauma

Fear of Love

November 27, 2017 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

I fear in you
The promise in
Possibilities
Paradoxes
Paradigms
And the overall perceptual paragon of paradise
called love..
The only problem healed by itself
So what am I without it
Without you
Scared…to…live…to…love…to…lose

Filed Under: Inside, Love, Trauma

Hard Times

November 27, 2017 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Stuck in this prison

Tunnelin vision

Never stumble, stomach rumbles, and stomachin tension

Drama comes I’m unencumbered

No comforters, no comfortable livin

Survived disgruntled mumbles of Russell

His struggles and troubles consistent

The sun doesn’t visit

My sons don’t visit

No one comes to visit

Came undone for a minute

But I’ll be done in a minute, I’ll be done in a minute..

Filed Under: Inside, Mercy, Spirit, Trauma

Fall

November 24, 2017 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

If I fall, would you fall with me

Would you believe, that we

Would fall in leaves..or fall in love

Would you fear that plummet into the unknown

The rustling sounds in a pile of change

Inside the symbolic nature of autumn leaves

Growth, change, evolution, resurrection

I call it life, I call it love

Not leaves

Are you caught between

The choice of freefalling into uncertainty

Versus trusting the strength of your own two legs

That never fail to stand tall

Yet you stand alone

Above the leaves like a barren tree

So if I fall

Will you fall With me?

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Spirit

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 168
  • Go to page 169
  • Go to page 170
  • Go to page 171
  • Go to page 172
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 179
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Prose of a Con

Prose of a Con is a collection of Russell Wardlow’s prose and poetry written entirely behind bars. Through writings on family, spirituality, freedom, love, justice, redemption, and vulnerability, Russell seeks to show the humanity and hope of individuals like himself who are incarcerated.

Read More

  • Whose Mind is it Anyway June 30, 2022
  • Objects June 30, 2022
  • Same Thang, Different Name June 30, 2022
  • Optical Ill-lusions June 30, 2022
  • Hollow Symbols June 30, 2022

Themes

  • Culture
  • Inside
  • Love
  • Mercy
  • Spirit
  • Trauma
  • Uncategorized

Footer

Prose of a Con

Prose of a Con is sponsored by giveabeat.org

  • Instagram

Navigation

  • Home
  • About
  • Prose
  • Listen
  • News
  • Connect
  • Support

Themes

  • Culture
  • Inside
  • Love
  • Mercy
  • Spirit
  • Trauma
  • Uncategorized

Prose of a Con © 2026 · web design by Studio Lyko