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Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

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Culture

Real Paradise

August 6, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Within our SPIRITS

Flowing throughout our bodies

Which we can express thru our hearts and minds

Paradise is not in this world

It’s within us

Which we express outwardly to the world

Identifying it as a place

But that place is us

Therefore paradise is where you make it

Where YOU choose

Paradise, like all things, is a matter of perception

Most of our thoughts, customs, wisdoms, morals, values and traditions

Have all been occupied and saturated

Any display of difference is met with indifference and intolerance

If not violence

As if it is a threat against, instead of, an opportunity to coexist with

But outside of what has been determined for you

Is what you have determined for yourself

Despite and against all odds

Even if what is odd, is You

See your Paradise

Embrace your Paradise

Become your Paradise

And then take it with you everywhere

So that peace and freedom may be with you always

Asé

Filed Under: Culture, Love, Spirit

Fight or Flight Fright Night

August 5, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

You fight or flight change

I fight or flight for change

Though my fright of heights may fight my flight

Because this fight I flight is fright of change

But even if I’ll never get this right,

I’ll fight my fright instead of flight, for a change.

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Love

Color’dBlind

August 4, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Stop saying you don’t see my color

You are NOT colorblind

Nobody is

Why would I want you to be

I want you to see me

I’m looked passed, through, and assumed too often

My protests go largely unheard

I’m acknowledged most when I fit a stereotype

When you hear of crime, you see me

Even if just a mental picture

When you hear me get excited, you see me

But not as a normal person

Rather a rambunctious untamed animal

When I’m angry, you see uncivilized aggression

You don’t see a person allotted emotions

You see validated yet quieted implicit biases-

Plausible deniability-

So my cries of fouk are shunned

You see a prison as answer for me

Frankly, I can’t be a regular human being in your eyes

My sobering human moments

You see less a person and more a ‘thing’

A beast with too much terrain to roam-

Needing to be reeled in and controlled

You tell me to calm down

Chill

Don’t be so loud

You talk to me like child therapists

With a “1 2 3 breath intonation”

As if training a wild animal

With your superior logic and reserve

Believing I’m genetically incapable

You’re even more outraged at my wrongs than that of others

When I do wrong, it makes sense to you

You aren’t colorblind

My color makes you blind

Filed Under: Culture, Love, Trauma

ProPros’d Thoughts

August 4, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Wear in plain sight, though it’s deep as genes
wake up, hate everything seen
blood flows through body, feel it bleed?
misery overwhelms mindstate, feel it breed?
emotional fatigue, feel it breath?
pain, only feeling that runs free
lack warmth, so cold
even more, when alone
alienated, never understood
cast away, with firewood
I’ll create my own society!
my own social norms
my own emotional emoting
no psychosis
no hierarchies
no taboos rules class conformity nor monarchy
a land of will and embracement
equality, quality over quantity, individuality spread across acreage
only herbal stimulants
no harm done to innocence
what you know, over who you know
but all, are in the know
with all languages, and ‘No’ is universal
power and fear will not coerce you
birth disparity will not curse you
only naturality of life may hurt you
you are what you speak
do as you think
have what you work for
be you freely, chase worth no more
I don’t have to be like the masses to succeed
I don’t need to do as you do, I am me
materials and notoriety will not determine my value nor love
roles are acquired, not inherited
gender will not dominate advantages
women will have a voice, kids safe and given options
guns and government abolished, (Laissez faire) and currency is oxygen
No war, Unity is reality
vast fields of flowers, organic cures and no allergies
colors will only describe objects not people, I may even turn green, blue
imagine that looking at the sky and ocean, incase you didn’t notice, I have dreams too
-MeTopia-
“we repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom…and recognized no moral obligation on us, no inner sanction, to conform or to obey”-Keynes
“We were out to construct something new; we were in the van of the builders of a new society which should be free, rational, civilized, pursuing truth and beauty. It was all tremendously exhilarating.” -Leonard Woolf on the Bloomsbury Group
“We found ourselves living in the springtime of a conscious revolt against the social, political, religious, moral, intellectual, and artistic institutions, beliefs, and standards of our fathers and grandfathers”
RANT!
–I crave an authentic life, thought ethic belief and emotional autonomy. No clichés no conformity, standing out, uniquely comfortable with my own identity and way. I’m a felon, a con in all right and definition. It’d be best if I were to shut up, be grateful and docile, conform and fit in..No I can’t with everything in me be that way..be that it may, or be that it is good advice, my nature is disruption. How many of you are like everyone, how much of everyone is their own unique self in conscience? No separation of self from society slowly planted the conventions and doctrines that now so many complain about in off-hand private conversations, social media and the out loud protests rally. Life has become apathetic and reactive, not empathetic and proactive, there’s comfort in conforming I admit. Though think, if you valued the individuality of self on a higher plain, how much more would you hold in regard to life and other people’s freedoms and liberties?
Could that duty of-self ignite a more assertive duty to humanity? Because the other way has only engineered un/subconscious modes of self survival. Principles only reinforced by non-committal or lack of care until home is affected, somehow you know and love..by then its too late, it takes time to be, and it takes time to be undone…Life has been controlled by the ‘either, or’ narrative, either puppet or puppeteer, either victimizer or victim, either kill or be killed…but what about that uncomfortable middle ground where real choice lies. No ‘either, or’ just You. Why can’t that be a way of life, why isn’t that the way of life. There has been revolutionary thinkers that have lived between those fragile lines of tolerance, and yes, people fear what they don’t understand…inclusion eliminates that fear, otherwise numbers stay low and idealism is assassinated before it gathers true momentum because people always start with a select group of people, we can all live together and flourish within our difference in thoughts and acts. There’s this island where all these rare and different species of animals coexist together peacefully, why can’t we?

ProProsd Thought:
There’s places in the world where nothing but a woman eyes can be seen in public, where their clitoris is cut off as to take the pleasure of sex away from them, where their breasts are cut off so they can’t feed their babies no more, where they are killed for educating themselves, where they are forced into marriages, taken from their families, forced to bear children, raped beaten controlled and sold into sex trafficking…These are our women, our child bearers, our mothers, our counterparts as men…so why do we have to maintain such a ruthless domain over them as if their existence is mere privaledge to accompany man. As if their roles are of pure submission, subservience, silence, docile, obedience toward men. Is it intimidation? Because they mature faster than men, more evolved hippocampus which gives them an almost uncanny ability to read and express emotions- a fragility of men, because they are sexually limitless- unlike men? There was a time, before mass religion where women were regarded as high if not higher than men and held the same cultural relevance and importance, also the same social, marital, eucharistic, government, military, and monarchic positions as men…How can we truly love what we try to dominate? They’ve been victims of domestic and societal oppression, yet still gait with abundant grace and strength. My best friend is a strong-willed brilliant beautiful motivated spiritual compassionate human being, being a woman is the icing, she sets the tone for how I view/revere and now treat women. We have to uplift them, not just our sisters and mothers. Every bond doesn’t need to be sexual, I’ve learned that they offer so much more!

Filed Under: Culture, Mercy, Trauma

Black Lives Matter?

August 3, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

It’s hard to remind black people

That their lives matter

So when it comes to each other

They engage in self hate

Expressed outwardly as violence

Because our world has not created

A reality where black is not a weaponized concept

Our consciousness is conditioned

To perpetuate the hate against ourselves

That has been acted out against us

And so we lash out at the mirror

Which results in drug abuse

And gun violence

That only makes the world say, “see?”

But they don’t see

Because they’ve all been complicit

In our self destruction

Gentrification, redlining, gerrymandering

Disproportionate education, funding, healthcare, job opportunities, imprisonment

Oh and the media images of our aggression

Which only teach fear

I can actively protest my immediate oppressors onslaught

While I lose sight of the oppressor above them-

Pulling both our strings

Black lives matter

But I don’t feel I matter

…and I’m black

Filed Under: Culture, Love

Cultured, Not Colored

August 2, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

If I cut you open

What color would you be?

What color would you bleed?

We’re all the same

So don’t speak of a color when you identify me

Call me by my culture,

Because no color personifies me.

Filed Under: Culture

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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

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