• 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

Culture

Pandemic

March 22, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

What came first
fear,
or
panic?
Did fear, create the panic?
or
Did panic, create the fear?
Then what created the discrimination that ensued
opportunity
Fear is an opportunity for truth to surface
and the truth these days,
is good enough reason to panic
because discrimination is still-
the real pandemic

When we react, we don’t have the ability to use our full set of cognitive skills, let alone our whole heart, we just make do with what the moment provides instead of providing the moment by becoming proactive which gives us time to associate both our minds, intellect, imagination and creativity and our hearts compassion and empathy.
We are flawed, so nothing can be wholly stopped, but we can negate our lack of effort and think more for ourselves and if then able, become more and then do more for others.
This pandemic is a poignant example of our humanity, fears, and connection to each other.
It shows both our worst and best selves.
How quickly we come together as one in any way possible, and how quickly we alienate, isolate and discriminate each other thinking of only the one which is self.
So I invite you to not only see the bad, not only cave to the panic, but search for where you can innovate compassion and your humanity when not only responding to moment but in the creation of them.
Crisis shouldn’t be our only motive.
Panic shouldn’t be our only catalyst.
Our degrees of separation has never been so clear.
I invite you to become more intimate with life, deep and personable, seeking and exploring, healing and connecting, feeling and envisioning, leaping bounds over boundaries, not succumbing to or contently more comfortable in its paradigms and limitations.
Don’t just go with the flow.
Don’t just stoop to the pattern.
Be a trailblazer, spend time.
I invite you to listen more; we have so many time saving devices that do nothing but keep us at distance and with less time. That is a choice; priorities aren’t prioritized. Instead we try to fit all things in the need and must category.
And in doing so, we miss our mark, we look over the detail and we fall short.
More can be done with less if you weave the least impactful from the most.
Less is more sometimes.
Listen.
Hear.
Connect.
Envision.
Impact.
And then empower.
Both self and others.
Short cuts succeed most at cutting effort short and therefore achieving less than potential.
Right now, lives are being lost and lives are being changed forever.

Not only those out there providing for their families, but also those in here who were on the way to getting that chance to contribute to their families and start over.
But this is where we are.
And this will end.
Like most things,
so the question is,
who will you be when the smoke clears,
and the ashes take flight in the wind
and the rubble remains-
Waiting for someone to see it for more than broken,
but something ready to be used for a greater good,
re-imagined,
and therefore
rebuilt even greater than before.
Who are you now?
Because the next moment is waiting for you.
Alexander Pike said, “What we do for ourselves dies with us, what we do for others and the world remains and is immortal”

Filed Under: Culture

judged

March 10, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

I need a jury
but not of my peers
I have no peers
you see their appearance?
how does it appear?
how does it compare?
do they see the mirror?
do they see I’m rare?
can’t they see their rear?!
while they judging my past!
judging my path!
they don’t know the half!
divided by half,
well, then maybe perhaps?
but fear overlaps
just get off of my back!

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Mercy

civilized savages

March 9, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Let’s make civility a law
then claim ourselves a civilized country
then over police our uncivilized communities
then send them back out into a cultural civil war
and amongst the social savagery, tell them to embody civil obedience
then, like any ‘civilized’ people
discard them soon as they corrupt your values of civility
after all, its your civic duty
holding certain civilians,
to higher standards civilly
besides, in this civilization
punishment is the prime nature of being civil

Filed Under: Culture, Mercy

contradictive natures

March 8, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

let’s build prisons to enhance our humanity
let’s welcome a flowers doom by presenting it romantically
let’s diagnose the whole world and ignore our own insanity
let’s change ourselves in a mirror and deny our own vanity
let’s poison ourselves with vaccines, and let the poor suffer
let’s choose instant gratification while we endanger our reproductions
let’s be counter-intuitive and counterproductive
let’s keep building on this world while becoming more self-destructive…

Filed Under: Culture

chivalry died cuz

March 5, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Chivalry is dead
because men are too intimidated by a woman with a strong voice
because men don’t know what to do with a woman free in her choice
because outspoken men can’t navigate without dominance to subservience
because most men can’t cohabit complimenting themes, preferring one side of two extremes
because women deserve more
chivalry died
because it was made to keep women compliant satisfied and valued in second place
so wait baby, let me open your door

Filed Under: Culture, Love

losing control

March 4, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Protests and movements are so offensive
because most relationships happen between fences
and compromise is taken defensively
because gain always seems to the controller to come on too relentlessly
finding your voice is symbolic of a war fought within your trenches
and it upends all authority once it fully takes over and gains its independence
someone’s rights will always correspond an opposite’s offense
because control, rather abstract or concrete, can never lose it’s pretense

Filed Under: Culture, Mercy

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 38
  • Go to page 39
  • Go to page 40
  • Go to page 41
  • Go to page 42
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 66
  • 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