Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

Love

Neurotic

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I do NOT have it all together. I don’t know why nobody gets that. I’ve been locked up the better part of a decade, how is that normal to you? So my moods and lows are somehow a surprise. What do you take me for or take this place called prison as?

I am helpless. Too dependent. Trapped.

Emotionally anxious. Guarded and weary. Depressed depressed depressed.

Suppressed, repressed, oppressed.

Overly pressed. Pressed for time. Pressed for change. Pressed for optimism. Pressed buttons.

My every moment is pressurized. I only hold it together for you. Just figured that you’d have figured that by now.

Friendliest Foes

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Agreement

often times creates ignorance and blindness

it’s in the face of opposition

that we see where we truly stand

the chill of objectivity

helps to form our truest conception of self

I noticed enemies have shown me more of myself

than friends.

Friendships are polite and optimistic

with temporary havens of security

and self indulgence.

But opposition

truly showed me things,

I once believed universally good of myself-

obviously good in virtue

of having friends and being friendly-

but was bad for this world

this world I speak of

may be prison

or life, period

it was friends that turned enemy

and enemies that revealed the treachery of friends

and my own foolishness

because at the end of the day

most people will self-serve and preserve

before sacrificing fully for a friend

I was the fool that would sacrifice all for a friend-

or the idea-

the enemies that had blossomed

showed me that I can’t just be agreeable,

having everyone like me

trying to make everyone happy

in order to be loved

because love doesn’t work that way

pliability is sticky

things given,

not worked for

will often foster ingratitude

and suspicion,

it’ll also advertise false allegiance

and manipulative

or thin loyalty

a friend doesn’t really know what it has in a friend

until discontent or trials arise

friends aren’t innately built to show you what you are lacking

in the unfavorable faces of strangers

and opposition

so they may keep you in a state of oblivion

just for vanity sake of being a “good friend”

-less contentious

opposition revels at the chance

to tell you a truth other than what you’ve been made to believe

friends can willingly lie to you

to keep you comfortable

and the friendship safe

as if believing,

disagreements mean a lack of friendship

friends almost got me killed in prison

enemies showed me more love

by their truth and revealed intentions

than the secreted selfish and held truth

I received from some friends

there’s a higher mutual respect now with those old foes

besides most of the friends we acquire

are more acquaintances than friendships

everyone doesn’t deserve to be called friends

even though we all need friends

we also all need opposition

prison made me reevaluate all roles

Belly of the Beast

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Deception, the etymology of her dialect

she sang like sirens

luring me blissfully into my demise

fatefully alerted to the fangs of her promises

my surrender was savored

eyeing the glistening venom oozing from her salivation

serenaded to a triumphant laughter

lifelessly frozen in her deadly clutches

victory and animas adorning her gaze

then her jaws widened grotesquely

consuming all of my sight

blocking even the expansive rays of the sun

turning the day to night almost instantaneously

as I stood, aligned with her tonsils

eerily similar to the shadow of mine

or the shadow I was foreshadowed to become

and with a swooshing sound

accompanied by a vacuuming vortex

her jaws snapped

and fangs jarred, barring down

with my being fatally siphoned from what was once life

once land

once liberation

now lossed, swallowed whole into her belly

where I remained idle

not dead

nor alive by any means

just wasting, while torturously preserved

to relive this consumption in the belly of my beast every day

her thirst rarely quenched

her hunger never satisfied

and heroes are just a fable

because no one can slay this dragon

they only feed her bottomless appetite

hoping she’s appeased

as to not get caught in her caging gaze

bringing down her imprisoning jaws

fearing being enveloped whole

so few rarely dare visit

too scared to risk their lives,

trying to save their lossed loved ones

while distantly crying out that,

“she must be too full by now, let some out!”

but they’ve seen love swallowed whole,

without regard, time and time again

and all that lies left

is a thick dreary fog of,

fear, contempt and hopelessness

the dragon has even been known to consume those as well

there’s truly no escape, inside or out

you either feed her

or get fed to her

and just like her servers,

her hunger knows no bounds

so life remains bleak and dark for most

because there’s no light inside the belly of the beast

Avarice Society

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Why is it so hard for us to create healthy changes to our perception, thinking and values? As we evolve, so should our vantage and therefore perception of what was before and then now…

We have an embarrassment of riches that we expend to extinction while exploiting to position ourselves within economic superiority creating ethnical inferiority towards ethnical minorities all the while becoming ethical apologists.

Even with our wealth of civil liberties, we are like children with so much play time and no scheduled nap, running ourselves into deep, perceptual sleep and conscious fogs dangerously towards chaotic negligence with our fatiguing faculties and clarity, therefore less capable to avoid accident or self destruction.

Our values are boasted with such ignorance and entitlement that the idea of limiting what was once sacrificed, fought and bled for, now believed owed you just sounds crazy. We can’t see beyond our own feet and that’s the problem, because our world is interconnected and therefore interdependent.

Just as we crazily defy orders to keep ourselves and others safe because our lack of freedom and sliming resources, we begin to see the poignantly cruel mirror of urban communities which lash out in ethnic and tribal violence for the competing of resources within their dystopic prisons, while you judge from a distance their behaviors, believing they have equal share rights and access to the pie that all and you yourself have, possibly even more since you believe their assistance is so much more of an advantage to your perceived lack there of.

We are hurting ourselves now and generationally but we can’t see past our own needs and bottomless cravings, filling our bellies and eyes.

And people are stir crazy because depth foundation and substance has long since left their life with the introduction of instant gratification on crack with technology, feeding affinities and avarice of entertainment, money, thirst, hunger and lust, the spiritual or deep tissue nature of our beings, rooted in our emotions and spirituality have calcified with this instant gratification and distantly close or closely distant world we live in, where access is everywhere and longevity and it’s process is torture and archaic to the pallid of our society.

We can’t spend extra time with our families and loved ones, let alone ourselves because families have lost their bond and need of one another with all the surface bandaids used to heal neglected familial issues and internal pains for the sake of appearing fine. Avoidance being remedy while barely making it through each day, let alone the next perceived struggle, threat, or possibility of abandonment.

Oh and love is just as flat and a reflection of ones own vanity and projection of emotional torment disguised in affirmations of “I love you”.

And spending time with self is as avoided as the mirror until its time to make up the mask for the day that you’re supposed to seize.

This quarantine time isolated has become disdained and haunting because the skeletons, elephants, ghosts and glass houses with stone driveways we try to keep hidden, and we have become every bit of our work and our online perception than our cores truth or the pursuit there of.

Oh but this is such the life of a prisoner…dealing with your pain daily just in the waking and sleeping in the constance of your torment and the reality of your anger, shame, guilt, loneliness, pain, losses, grief and mistakes, people hide here too, but even though we make a life in the insanity of an inhumane situation, we never lose site of our imprisonment which the world long has. And now that it is being shown to you, everyone is in abject denial trying to resist the physical dwellings of an opportunity for decompression and separation which should be a time to exhale, reassess, heal, and visualize, but is now a time of seeking an escape back into escapism which was in the many roles outside of your homes, to where you will jeopardize you, your family and neighbors own safety for the sake of your makeshift and delusional, misguided and shallowly contrived sanity.

Change is a sickness somehow, evolution is a cancer, and growth is a fairytale that distracts from the stunting of your purpose.

No one has reason and cause is but circumstantial sensitive and sensationalized.

But the question is, does this have to be and therefore stay your reality?

Can there be a catalyst or revelation of some sort providing a sustainable formula for a better life and existence…sustainable in the sense of satisfying ones needs without diminishing depth, value and the prospects of future generations, a paraphrased definition of sustainability from Lester Brown of the WorldWatch Institute… how can we create sustainable communities–social and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations…

Well for one I would say, start seeing the interconnectedness and interdependence of human life and human beings and therefore the systems we create and live within, whether religion, education, politics, science, philosophy, business, health care, and everyday life, because if these systems don’t evolve along with our new generations then we would be using outdated methods and world views to fix modern day problems, which if you broke that down and thought about it correctly, that would add to another definition of insanity which is, ” when new cures exist, cure a new pain with an expired or outdated medicine, yet still expect to be cured”.

When there is an inability to change ones perception, thinking and values then there can be no clear cure readily available or for that matter, even imaginatively feasible.

Fighting Odds

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If the faculties I possess,

which help me to identify my emotions

and react with relative objectivity and calm

are in a sense, null and void

within the chaotic environment I exist,

whereas this environment

keeps me in the constant state of

fight or flight,

overworking my amygdala,

damn my masculinity!

Then you tell me,

where do I possibly find enough respite,

for requited emotional rest

and internal personal growth

when everything outside of me

keeps me in potential danger?

And my reality

is in constant reflection of that fact

and preparation for the unknown

which is always of impending danger.

Therefore, in prison,

I can never fully change,

because to change is to be defiant

and my defiance, in large part,

is how I became imprisoned,

though it helps me survive.

The irony

is that I’m expected to achieve something

that the environment actively seeks out

and preys upon,

so I can’t be who I want to be ultimately

while in prison

because the natural law of self preservation

and darwanisitic capitulation to survival of the fittest.

Prison made me more of what I was

and more of what I wasn’t

with an infinitely tested,

yet unwavering will

to become and stay those things.

Only time will define what those things truly are.

I could speculate

but I’ve been given enough time to sit and assess

time,

something you outside these fences have limitlessly,

yet live as if in limited supply

unconsciously spending so much of it

going against your own direction.

Peeping Through My Window Part 4

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“Peeping through my Window pt 4”

I’m a boy.

From 2007, I left my group home and aged out of the system as a state ward, graduating high school, going to college, then to jail, then out to fatherhood, then back to college, to imprisonment, to homelessness, then back to prison where I am now.

When I first graduated high school, I was finally free for the first time in my life! I had a car and the world in front of me! I survived! I was like, kiss my ass statistics! No prison, I’m going to college!

I did something most thought I wouldn’t do (I get it though, I was a troubled child with a plethora of complexes). My dark skin, my height, my living situation, I felt I was a mountain of shame. Everything I did, in retrospect, was a cry for attention; I wanted to win affection, from whomever. I wanted that constant validation, someone to say all the time that they get it, despite everything I’ve gone through, they are proud of how I handle it, how I deal. I don’t really believe everyone needs a pat on the back for everything, but a kid can’t decipher what’s too much and not enough when dealing with emotional fractures. Graduating was bitter sweet, leaving the best home environment and family I’d been a part of and separating from my best friend going out of state to college. I was starting my new journey, only to realize how lost I actually was. I wasn’t used to having no worries and just a clear day left to my own devices. I didn’t know how to handle that kind of peace and sunny disposition. For a while, it was good, but stress was pulsating me. That toxic relationship I had with my first son’s mom was the wreck I never saw coming. I may have secretly craved it though, because I knew I should’ve cut ties. I had many signs and opportunities to escape, but I don’t like breaking hearts. And a not so good reason I’ve always kept that had me over staying in relationships was that many gave up on me and I saw the worst relationships that people stayed in. I’m not a quitter; other people can quit, but I won’t. Anyone can change, they just have to feel wanted.

I had a chance to leave, but she sent me a positive pregnancy test on a picture message. I was going to have my own family. I never had one, never had a father but I was going to be a great one! At least in my own mind. I was going be there every step of the way. But before our son came, I went to jail during my second year of college because of that relationship. Once I got out, we moved in together. Parenting and working as kids was doable but we made it harder than it should’ve been because we both had our own things we hadn’t matured from. I tried to run back to college but only lived the party scene instead of going to class. I began drinking and smoking heavy, going from relationship to relationship, my favorite hiding spot. I was miserable inside and I missed my son. Maybe I hadn’t lost him yet but my distance made that a certainty because I felt dirty and guilty after the fall out between me and his mother.

So I ran, too ashamed. That was my excuse. I haven’t seen my son since he was two, he’s 11 now.

I carried my childhood pain and anguish into my adulthood and it sent me from college right to prison of all places. What an irony. So needless to say, I became that statistic. I remember my aunt saying that getting there is half the battle, but staying there and out is the other. Well I didn’t stay out, I became my worst nightmare and proved people right in the worst ways.

My first prison term was short, but it only made me worse,.I was kind of in an aftershock after my world being flipped upside down. Prison was another monster with different implications I’d never faced. So smartly, I dived deep, hiding in yet another relationship that became deep and toxic at times, but pain means love right? If you fight me then you really love me, that’s kind of a mindset of toxic love. It was the only thing I knew, so naturally it gravitated my way. I don’t think misery loves company so much as misery manifests its own company and then says, “what the hell.” Misery settles in its own supply. Needless to say, the mindset and lifestyle in that kind of love guided me straight back to prison.

I had too much pride and fear to ask for help. This time, the gavel was brought down on me harshly. And I’ve had to find myself, and then recreate myself inside these prison walls. It’s been a tough and long journey, but that journey still hasn’t ended yet.

Another time when I’m not still in prison, I can talk about the specifics of my journey inside these walls. One thing I know now which I didn’t back then is that I still don’t have it all figured out, I hope I never do, because that’s a comfort I’m not willing to embrace. Something can always be done to be better. Plus, I like connecting with those still finding themselves. It’s a more authentic intentional WayOfLife. Connecting with people with similar stories manifests depth, and often I’m told I’m too deep…eh, those people just haven’t been through enough yet.

Becoming a Man.