Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

Mercy

Figure of Speech (Free-verse)

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I am the definition
of an acrobatic radical
versatile as my vertebrae
vertical verses reverse the subversive and emerge on the surface
like sermons
to the needy persons
like verbiage, the wordage is worms to the birds that keep swarming earliest
my mentality merciless like the enforcement and legislation of laws
and the time I’ve spent observing cold-blooded murders from systemically created murderers
nature nurtured hurt
and murmurs of the worriers
and warriors and tormenters I’ve placed inside of my melancholic melodious journalism
scripting their penchant for privatizing and profiteering the purges of pain
punished inside of the urbanization of prisons while pundits and partisans politic “if I’m fit for forgiveness, and my guiltiness”
just to guillotine my worthiness

so when my body is liberated from this captivity
actually, they’ll attack me more actively
provoking me vocally, passively
with preconceived notions and statistical quotas
by the weight of my record amidst the gravity of keeping me grounded and over-blaming me for the grounding,
I swear that this shit is maddening
but I’m a daddy and
I’ma keep rising the saddle daily battling defying the averages
prose of a con is an ionic bond,
to the iconic WayOfLife
just give me a mic and I’ll fight the fight I was born to take on
like the son of creed, all I need is a ring, and a bell I can ding
I stopped kicking the stones that was thrown at me,
when I was down vulnerably on my knees,
and I picked them up like David with his sling
so just give me the platform to set every stone free
ready or not, hear comes the figure of speech

The Angels and I We made Promise Rings out of Halos

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I rose up.
married to my destiny
I counted the blessings of my success’ dreaded predecessors
then forgave myself for good measure
opposition became opportunity
pain never felt so good
each obstacle boosted my immunity
and differentiation revealed layered expressions of Divine Unity
I now see, you and me
You, in Me
beautiful luminary
reflecting with rue the hues of my once impotent rudimentary views
my former lunacy cartooned the fool in me
reminiscing lucid spoofs
where I’d seek mental acuity as proof
loops of intellectualizing ancient wisdoms,
going through hoops of over rationalizing absolute truths
chastising my family feuds
when big brother logic is bemused
when I attempt to fuze
him to his sister, insight
and the middle-child intellect
to the baby, intuition
like a pair of Siamese siblings quibbling
my left hemisphere compensating as if it was always right,
truly only fooling me
the ego will grant illusions or allure and lore
with the guised con of consciousness
but resorts back to conformed common sense
whenever posed against something which makes no kind of sense
the problem is
the mental can only perceive from the common sense
limited to 5, pleading the fifth
cautiously acknowledging any lift from the kingdom of the 6th
devotion to the abstractions
promises less distraction with more detachment
yet appearing like madness
to the “don’t get mad get ‘glad wrap'” hypocritical fanatics-
overly peering peers
whom veer or loom near
provoking and volunteering jeers
and insults you hold dear
as souvenirs,
because to most
life is only lived and known at its lowest tier
you’re reminded there’s more than what meets the mirror
but not to a mere human being a mere human of fear
and there’s a lesson there
my new loyalty has oiled me in the soil
coiling my soul in the folds of a lotus
and I open up animated by the light of Sun as a true royal
walking upon my manifestations like Michael Jackson Moonwalking
that light within,
showed me the shadow of my skin
and to walk in the light of dark
is to live, and as long as you exist, you’ll never blend

A Mortal Man Dies with his Dependencies

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the story of the generations
which will exceed us,
is of different origins and points of breach
the development, needs, and relationship with my youth
differs at stages tremendously in comparison
for this, the definition of our knowing
and relative longevity
in the realm of senses and density
contrast starkly, in what I or you
may determine as a success or ideal
fore the only Truth in this equation is,
Time is limited
although time has limits
I live beyond it
as a conscientious choice
therefore
a second will endure
an hour will be years
a day will be lifetimes
and moments will be eternal
so come to me, come with me, and live, Life
but be forewarned
I promise you Nothing,
but the Truth,
make use of it while it is at your disposal
don’t do yourself the disservice of ego
projecting upon time what you wish
with the appearances of limits
when I aspire to be limitless
seeking the best and most from all opportunities
never once evading from an inability to covet so as I please,
I can not lay idle and revel in aversion
when some see it fit to project their ideals
upon my being
which further limit the limited capacity and construct,
of time,
by one’s own dwarfish compartment of mind
housing preference
seek excess
and you will not succeed,
nothing will be enough to fill the stingy belly
insecure heart
and salivating eyes
lead by past,
and you will not know tomorrow,
nor understand right now
seek that which is sought,
time,
and you will have it in abundance
to do with it as you please
for as long as it lasts
because it is all you can ask

Prison, is a Place for Ghosts?!

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pt. 1

prison is a place
I go to often in my mind
jogged in each crossed line
and jotted in every wrote rhyme
trying to find
a semblance of freedom, within time

there is no freedom in time
there is no time in freedom
freedom is timeless
when time enters my mind
I’m less mindful and more or less mindless
blinded
perceiving at a minus
cuz being confined to constructs that constrict my mind is
prison

prison is my mind
and
my thoughts feel like fists!
and my heart is a punching bag
and my spirit my emotions my body is worn down and beat the fuck up
sometimes me and my thoughts play bloody knuckles
see illusions are powerful
at one moment, seeking atonement or an at one meant to bludgeon any opponents
I’m swinging at all of my troubles…the next…I’m swinging at nothing
that’s the thing about perception huh

which reality is real
no for real, which reality is real?!
show me and I’ll punch atonement into that one too!
for real!

and yea I have tools
but when I should ply, my priors drill
and when I should drill
I screw up and drive my hammer to nails!

prison is a cell in a jail in a hell which I know, you know, we know, all too well

it’s hard to find empathy and forgiveness in prison
when a limitless spirit is placed inside of limits
and the body’s misery is witnessed
and potential is assumed finished
and fighting is nothing but fitness
a prowess you seek to finesse
so less truth can be addressed
therefore anything you repress when under duress is meshed into just another physical mess
as you drip sweat
blood peaks thru flesh as lungs gasp for breath
you realized you gained nothing
but just another prison…

I used to fight so much
I didn’t know why
til I came to prison on my first number from a fight
where my victim almost died
I was scared but I told myself he deserved it
I didn’t make him a racist nor a drunken belligerent woman beater, served him right
but that fit my narrative
because in my not so distant past, I had been the same
running from my shame
I hit into him the blame
then I kept fighting until I began fighting as if it created value to my breath
I even fight because of my size
so you’d know I’m short but far from undersized

but I didn’t know who I was nor why
so I asked myself, Russell
and I’m like what
I’m like what you doing
and I’m like I don’t know
and I’m like why you do that
and I’m like I don’t know
and I’m like why do you like to fight
and I’m like I don’t like to fight, I’m actually scared to fight but prepared to die
so why do you fight
cuz I don’t know who I am
because I wanna be liked
because I wanna be feared
because I wanna be respected
because I’m scared and have no direction
because I’ve never felt protected
because this is my only weapon
because I feel rejected dejected subjected objected injected ingested digested thrown up shitted out pissed off
personally a person of non-importance
and societally aborted

I’m a father
and it’s probable
my toddlers I’ve hobbled because of the effect of my domino
seeking more substance and conjugals over any semblance of being responsible

now stand up if any part of that resonates with you

now stand up if you’re sick and tired, of cycling between prisons

emotionally spiritually mentally physically or even unknowingly
like you don’t know how to explain or express it, but you know its something that you wanna get through over and done with

now stand up or keep standing,
if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired of being ice sickled inside by locked doors, screaming no more locked doors!
and barbed wires until you tire or expire
steadily stifled by psychological classifiers and stereotypical identifiers
punished by the statistics of outliers
crying out from a spiritually doused-out fire
trying to get what you want most, babysitting a disguise like Ms. Doubtfire
as mugshots hang out like best friends and fliers

your image is a poster for reconstructive criticism
mirroring the same sickness of this system
a being, isolated segregated quarantined, and alienated
until properly immunized
all the while unable to fight being institutionalized
while learning more acceptance and remorse than authority…figures

this right now is an expression of self-determination, the need for freedom
this is an escaping of prison
this is us!
for us!
our thing!
so keep standing if you know what I mean, what you mean to the whole mean, with all your means and that you still mean something
something more than rap sheets and mean-mugging
that you’re more than orange one-pieces khakis grey sweats and blue jeans white shoes or boots which need rebuffing from feet scuffing

keep standing if you want nothing but peace!

a piece of healing
a piece of forgiveness and freedom
a piece of understanding
not just a piece of…pie,
but a piece of love
the real type
a piece of something greater than the nothing you run with
a piece of peace that you know
or want to know-
which to your senses are still unknown
I’m not talking about religions
something more simplistic
I’m talking about bucket lists
a peace that is spent without budgeting
budging buckling or bucking against
the things you are up against

keep standing if you wanna hold something besides grudges
and if you believe having dreams mean something
damn it! keep standing if you’re not done dreaming!

pt.2

to change, to grow expand transform transcend, we have to be audaciously truthful with ourselves about who we are, what we want, and where we are, and what’s it going to take to get us there, no matter how humbling or hurtful to one’s pride

what are you willing to lose to truly gain what you really want?
there’s more things I wanna do than the things I don’t wanna do, so ima do what I gotta do, to have what I really want!

a sense of peace!
but it’s as fleeting as the span of your attention spanned

life has turned us into onlookers
it’s turned us all into Lifer’s
prisoners of the moment

but remember, to transform, we have to be truthful

this ain’t about judgment,
it’s about the deception of perception and projection

see this beating organ’s plight
is spiked endorphins
which combat to distort
the proportion of person the emotions reward or feel remorse for
versus
your spirit immersed within
which manifests as a higher thirst
which you have the will to consort with
that can sword fight and war with
your emotional torment
which you may only ward off, using clever word tricks like WayOfLife Wardlow the wordsmith
whose nouns and verbs rip
through surface and expose turf hurt earth and purpose
by peeling back scorched curtains
seeing what lies dormant
plus a heavy guilt needing a forklift
and if I’m going even deeper, if you can see through the seams of demeanor
you’ll see me leaning
because I’m still working and it’s still hurting
but I swear the swords that are my words that ward off my wars and worst like warts is worth it!
WayOfLife Wardlow
who else but yourself! do you go to war with!

especially when feeling cornered
by a swarm of hornets
every waking hour through every new morning
you’re mourning

so we must fight on!
because I fight on from all these prisons, remembering I am still sick and tired

of my mother struggling
she’s on the run, as I speak
my sisters and brothers suffering
from the same perceptions of life I left them with
my family and any other familiars stuck as caterpillars
living and dying while I’m stuck here hoping my life will live again before I or another one of my loved ones die
before I had a chance to rectify and be a difference or
shift and transform into a bigger picture conjured before their eyes that could change their lives

because to God, I’m nothing if not butterfly

and to one of my son’s I’m the greatest alive

and to the other, he’s living to make worth of my last name because of my absence and the pain it inflicted in his life

so I gotta stay sick and tired
cuz the work ain’t over
it took prison to contemplate what had me imprisoned
and that list can’t fit in this sentence

make a noise snap or clap if you feel any of this

I know most of you had your story pre-written
and you had to absorb all of those emotional punches in bunches to the stomach, rumbling
stumbling fumbling tumbling wondering was relief ever coming
or
will you always just be accustomed to the constant cumbersome suffering
stuffing and crushing you into corners like punishments?!

but this pain was and is just but a prelude to greatness
a greatness forged by fire

behold your chapters, you’re more than being marginalized in the margins of pages and vacant spaces

what I’m saying is
that you’re more than what this system of beliefs made you to believe you had to be in this system for relief
just to achieve while at the cost of another’s grief
there’s enough room for you and me
because truly within an eye that sees, is We

listen,
you are more than the actions captured
that’s a moment
there’s many where that came from, lump sums

the job is not done
we are creators and curators
we are innovators and motivators
we are mental skyscrapers and monumental renovators
we are bosses and administrators
we are motha fuckn ogres with layers despite the naysayers and pepper sprayers
we are foundations and acres
we are amazing graces
amazing greatness
and America’s greatest!

that’s the truth
you are alive
just cocooned
pain cocooned you as a full-bellied caterpillar and birthed the mothaf… butterfly!

your resilience against resistance doubt and fear,
that audacity to change and cultivate a personal resolve and revolutions of strength and evolution,
forming a peace, not to be disturbed, which transcends all prisons and imprisoning thoughts and actions is nothing short of amazing, transformative, and butterfly!

if you still feel and believe in this energy synergy chemistry symmetry and remedy for an expanded identity building within this building
if you know deep down you are more than a villain, but brilliant
and you are alive, well, and real-
real enough to recognize being sick and tired of veiling and concealing and shielding and kneeling and over appealing all the while desiring to peel your disguises revealing a rekindling feeling of what’s innermost
because a heart, doesn’t beat on a ghost
and I heard Eminem say every parasite needs a host
but sorry not sorry venom, those doors are now closed
our heart is our lethal protector
and what’s open now is our minds
where the parasitic prison once found a place and time to take up space and time
but a free heart
is the key to your door to open from a room of darkness, and let in your light

realization is growth
because a prison is literal but also metaphorical,
so it isn’t just for the birds, but for the ghosts…

Calling out all Demons

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I call on my ancestors, so that I may have faith in them, to speak good speech, so I may at this moment, be an orator of wisdom and truth
because I seek to call out my demons
invoking the divine power called love
by righteous and just thoughts, speech, and actions
love compels truth and empowers one to have all power of self,
environment, and those who have not yet activated the will within themselves
still needing to be lead
this power compels the metaphorical demons within us latching on like parasites siphoning our life force
so we speak the truth of their name and origins, that they may be brought back under the control of all-powerful love
love is about locating yourself
living love is locating and activating the god within us, powered by the God of all, whose very body we all exist

once realized
it’s a sense
a 6th sense if you will
that feels a calling to live Truth
and by living Truth, knowing the real from unreal, we can recognize true self, and become vessels for heaven on earth
this sense, this calling, compels us to live Righteous and Just with one another
a moral imperative unrivaled by quibbles of color, code class culture creed constitution, or claim

so what are the names of our demons
like math, to find the solution
we must know the problem, the beginning
and just like math-when checking your method
and accuracy-
to know the solution
would be in fact, knowing the problem

names mean something
they state an identity, a location, a problem, an origin
the names of our demons are spawn from not living truth,
not recognizing self, living just nor righteously
by denying the god in us all
as to say, what binds us as one

again, what are these demons I speak of
which possess us
having us disconnected in our trivial and tribal rivalries, which we have yet to steed and bring under control
we name them by placing over scrutinized narratives prescribing titles and labels like antidotes to identify ourselves
but these states are not ourselves

we have taken the identity of our capturers unknowingly
like Stockholm syndrome
we know our demons intellectually
but not intimately
we will soon as accept them as our truth,
love as our bane
and the god in us as blasphemy

yet I tell you, there’s always a way, a sense, a calling, an imperative to get back to form, to truth
by locating ourselves
so I ask three questions so we can locate and then distinguish the actions needed to bring the demons to task
to truth
as to say, this state of disconnect, to now reconnect

where have we been
where are we now
where are we going?

is the progress we seek as a people only deduced to matters of body, its physical experiences, and acquisitions
ebbs and flows, inclinations impulses and instincts
likes and dislikes
are we just a race, class, phenotype, species, and kingdom of people that can only be measured and reduced to the lowest common denominators of preference?

if you pose the question to me, what is black history month
I will now say emphatically, it is the calling!
the calling of humanity to get back to form by the examples set forth by a people who transcended at every crossroads and against all odds imagined
a showing of human ability, by the hue of those who were and still are in many manners, considered subhumans!

everything has a consciousness, and that consciousness sets about your journey, the experiences you will have spawn of that consciousness–the coded vibration for how you see self and interact with the world
the ancestors only made distinctions by such
before the consciousness of individualism and capitalism
which birthed nationalism, nihilism
determinism
humanism
modernism
recidivism
matter of fact, any and all isms!
we had the consciousness of communalism
we were communalist
the ist
and ism
the act
and the belief, can not be separated

when we asked the question, how are you doing

we would look beyond our own personal experience into the state of our collective, community, children, country, and continent, and if all or most were not in good health, in moral standing
then we would respond that we can be better, we have been better, matter of fact, we will be better because we are better
this act was in a belief of communalism
we located ourselves, yes we, black people, I say again, we located ourselves within the collective, the macro and the micro, the individual and the whole, we would make no such distinction between one or another which we could not see at some level in ourselves
Mbutu, I need you to be as good as you can be, so I can be as good as I can be, so we can be as good as we can be
each one learns, each one teach one
a teacher not only teaches, but learns, therefore the teacher is both teacher and student, master and pupil, eye and object of desire
perspective and projection
what I’m saying is you would see self in all
not self from all
black history month is the call
the call back to consciousness which was onset of all
pan Africanism
all peoples
that’s right I said it, all peoples
African consciousness was not exclusive
it’s how strangers were let in to steal from the neighbors
the neighbors saw the strangers as neighbors
the strangers forgot we’re all gods
all bodiless bodies put into bodies to embody the bountiful boundless experience of the one body in your body
locate yourself
where are we now, where are we going
we never stopped being
we just stopped realizing that no matter where and what you saw, all you were seeing was God
although your consciousness saw demons, an unconscious disconnect
name them, and call out what all they created
once you lost and forgot, you claimed what you are not
so we can’t have any sense of equality quality or quantity until you let the god in you qualify Truth
otherwise you will be, we will be, I will be
believing like a demon
looking outside myself, idolizing just to become, still unbecoming of self
not realizing that I am them, in my own set of lessons
because I have not yet
called out
my demons

Book Worm

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is the apple bad
because it a worm was found
or
is the apple already claimed
and now, both home and meal

to a creature compelled by its nature
never straying
created and animated from a source
no different than mine

what would make the worm lesser
and me, greater?
besides my powerless ignorance
to shun the divine

and how long is the kingdom
of might, when my foot
can become the God
of the worm’s plight?

is my power in the very choice
of mercy or murder
and the perception of the apple
being spoiled or perfect

what great lesson
can become of one’s own illusions
if one can not recognize
relations and influence

is it not the energy of possession
which has so possessed me
believing I have inherited all
confusing the very truth I seek

and if the world is a book
which I am learning to read
the moral is in how I see the world
isn’t necessarily how the world sees me

are not humans like the worms
consumed by consumption
with forgotten hearts
and full stomachs?

upon further thought
I have come to learn
how I view myself
reflects, how I view the worm