Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

Spirit

Take A Hike, Take A Flight, Fly A Kite, Or Drift

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Walking…I just want to walk, feeling the vibrations of my every step onto earth, observing nature going on despite my intrusions, feeling the breeze whispering secrets in my ears, the elements dancing on my skin, inhaling the fragrant air, just a stroll, with no interruptions that block my progress or force me to turn around, limiting my explorations. I want to walk and interact with life limitlessly, my best friend was driving and saw a forest as we spoke and decided to stop and take a hike and on that hike, she found a vastly rooted lone tree that reminded her of me that she took a picture of. The storied comparisons in that tree spoke to her, and she narrated that story, inspired by nature. See nature speaks to us all, but these walls quiet those voices, I just want to hear them again and listen more this time. Even to be able to travel, I’ve barely seen life, and mostly I have imagined it all within pictures, one of my bucket-dreams is to take hikes up mountains and inside of forests, or drive across country seeing all the different landmarks, architecture, and cultures, possibly even fly just to see how vast this world is, how we can be so connected and yet so far apart, I’ve never been in a plane before but I’m in prison next to an airfield and I’ve seen all types, even multicolored planes and I just go imagination crazy, like what do the see, where are the headed, wondering of all the freedom right above all my captivity…oh and train rides, I want that too, if they still do them,1st class preferably with grapes skittles and wine-Dapper Destinations! but I just want to be able to observe and connect with life outside of a TV or picture, to be able to travel and see so many dreams concocted by so many different people that came to life, and to find myself inside the be architecture of all-Nature! Is it really taboo and dangerous to fly a kite during lightening? Never flew one…Has anyone ever stopped and watched the world rain around them while under an umbrella? Just the illusion that that creates is beautiful, its like you’re inside out, you’re in the thick of it but its happening all around you, not to you, and you are for that moment, impervious to its effect…you’re walking around with your own personal shelter so to speak, designed to protect you, keeping you in and everything out…but isn’t that how life is? We get into our own personal zones of comfort and protection, expecting the world to acquiesce to us at those moments, communicating so close yet so disconnected, inside of a whole yet oblivious to the parts and its functions..like do you every find yourself thinking…What am I or are we even talking about? Why did I do that? Why do I even think like this? am I that different or are they just that careless and dumb? freaking umbrellas! Someone it becomes a phenomenon to expose ourselves to the rain. Like it is so romantic, daring, rebellious, audacious, wild, unconventional, and cinematic…its just water! But there it is, water that can’t stain you but put a damper on what it is that you use to communicate who you are, how you feel, and how you value yourself…aka clothes, or our fabric disguises. We become so thin and thin skin that we rather just embrace life at an arm’s length, and voyeurism is the new hug, and exhibitionism is the new curiosity, stepping outside of your comfort to view other pleasures outside of yourself that may still stimulate some type of happiness that we can’t quite maintain as much as we need too. When has being happy become an event or surprise, somehow its so far contrasted from our normal states of being, as if people don’t feel unless they can speak about how what they feel hurts. People want to cry, grieve, and mourn together bto create lasting memories of bonds that blossomed from hard times just as much as they want selfies and groupies of moments they wish could last longer than that click! Well I’m tired of accepting pain, I want to live daily like a selfie or groupie lol, that sounds funny in retrospect, I want to stop feeling so inside out and just feel and embrace and experience and connect…im tired of feeling distant, I want to be present and contemplate everything I perceive instead of glancing at life! I want to be thicker than my fabric…I don’t know the answer to how to do all these things besides to just live and quit “just trying” to live. Maybe it can all start with just taking a hike, taking a flight, or flying a kite in every capacity of its positive connotations, not the negatively sounding idioms or sayings, that are used to dismiss people by saying that. I wonder if being a prison philosopher is a paradox, after all philosophy is just questioning what is, as if there is more, I mean that its not popular thought to view prisoners as thinkers, but then again, free people don’t think and question enough, maybe that quality is what keeps too many in their own self imposed prisons…maybe we aren’t so different, just like the plane fight, we’re all so connected yet so far apart…your experience is my own, and my own experience isn’t yours…

but we all experience, life should be spent more trying to experience and not straying away from experience. So, take a hike

take a flight, or fly a kite..or maybe we should draft, more than we drift?

I heard this quote from a movie that said, I think it was James Bond “you’re just a kite caught inside a hurricane…”

story of my life…story of life…sometimes life seems to big for me, right? But then I remember, what is life…without me?

Maybe Life, should experience me…

So hears to being Larger Than Life!

YoungR.U.S.S!

WayOfLife!

RAP: Reality and Adverse Poetry

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I always kinda been sketchy about being called a rapper or what I do is rap, because truthfully I’ve always been able to rap, but I found my voice, my sound, my passion, my healing, and my calling in writing poetry, or rapping in a poetic style. Its really the connotations that is carried with rap that I feel would distract from my overall difference and message when I say what it is that I do, so I decided to make acronyms of rap, rapper, and poet…because what you can’t visualize can’t be named, so I created my own definitions that spoke to the heart of what I do. Now I’m still in love with rap and the art form because its my culture and helped me find me in a confusing world, but because I’m such a fan of it, I wouldn’t destroy it by saying its what I am or do

RAP stands for Reality and Adverse Poetry, being a rapper means

Reality-Adversity Poet Platforming Equality and Resilience

and in so being a Poet, the letters in that which I speak to represent Pain Oppression Empathy and Transformation

The point is for every word to be heard and felt, I deliver a message to connect with people, its all about connecting with me, wanting to be understood and letting people know I understand them

I was asked a few questions like, what do I want people that are listening to know about me and my fellow convicts? Well simply, I am you, and they are me, so we are just like you, caught in and known by our worst moments don’t make us any less a person or less capable of thriving once given another chance

if everyone’s closet of skeletons were opened, I wonder..would we all become even impossibly more distant and rural or would everyone just finally let a big exhale out, relieved, seeing with clarity for the first time that you aren’t the only one because we all wear masks- our real selves and our representatives we carry with us a girl once told me

so my life has become an exhibit of sorts-a museum of Real life without cropped images, refined edges and paint brushes

everyday is a struggle in Every way, because we don’t have the privileged of creating space from the people and things we don’t like while being talked at instead of talked to we don’t enjoy the luxury of personal space, I say in prison we can leave a sociologist or sociopath, or maybe you can flirt with both, being a sociopathic sociologist because we encounter everything and every type behind these walls, reality tv-like experience, priceless I used to dream of wealth growing up as a state ward through out every living and non living arrangement, but now I dream of acceptance and hope and to believe that I can realize the dreams I have of impacting lives for the better off the sweat of my worst, I dream to be able to be true to myself and be my true self everyday unashamed

speaking of shame, I carry a shame that I’m ashamed I have been ashamed about…follow me?

My Mom is also in prison, currently in work release right across the street from me, I say that because just like you, I’m going through more than what you know me by, and it doesn’t just go away or get easier until you face it, we’ve all been embarrassed about our parents but um I got you beat!

I’m hopeful for the day I get out, wanting to live a life full, doing the little things I took advantage of, but I fear this weight of my past may carry more struggles that’ll keep me from moving forward, I’m my own worst critic, like most people

I was once a promising athlete and academic but I was also alien to myself, and when unknown pressures hit me, who I thought I was broke down real quick and I became a nightmare of a man that may have caused permanent scars in people that originated from scars I carried and ignored for so many years

My biggest motivation are my two sons, so when I’m out and given the chance to be a present father, my sons will not only know how their father fell but how he built a foundation while at the bottom through it all. I can’t wait to just hold my sons without a time limit and tell them I love them without saying goodbye right after…

In prison everything is a process just as life, people come and go in waves, just like life, but when they go, there’s a deeper unsettling loneliness left behind in their wake that we try to avoid dealing with

prison really shows us the extent of love by those we loved and believed love us, so how do you cope when every situation is coping?

Imagination, we dream hope believe becoming kid-like creating fantasy worlds that we plan to turn into reality, anything else is negative and there’s a list, facts

everything becomes an idea that is better than the last one and the reality we live now. We find peace in routines, music, working out, working, reading, drawing, writing, TV shows, flintstone communicating-no phones, emailing and calling out.

Escape is seeked because only a daunting

reality is offered, who likes facing rejection pain and vulnerable emotions? Not testosterone camp! but its more than that, some of us dive into classes and programs hoping we’ll find someone that sees more in us that we see in our self or something that can empower us women become the biggest sources of company, relationships become feigned for more than normally, all to escape the truth that we are lonely!

this is my life, but how much different are we from you? Prison isn’t only physical confinement, I was imprisoned way before I was in prison, and it took a sentence for me to read into that truth

what’s your prison and escape? truth you hide, or guilt/shame you carry?

I don’t mean to compare you as if you are just as bad, but to say we are just as much people as you

I hope you’ll begin to see that because a number carries a life and a life affects more than just that one person, just as yours does more than just yourself

I hope that maybe when we start getting seen as people instead of institutional livestock, then

real change can happen, one woke and compassionate person at a time

I Know How She Feels, I Promise

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I know how she feels, I promise

I know what she means

about being set free

she wants to leave on her terms

but now I’m the tree

that’s bearing her leaves

but I take the breeze

and though it may freeze

I am at peace

because there’s more to me

and she’s just ‘A’ piece

I cut off my sleeve

my cuff isn’t linked

so I too, can leave on my terms

don’t feel guilty

we all aren’t innocent..

I know how she feel, I promise

cuz I felt alone

when I pick up the phone

and I’m dialing her number, but it feel too long

and I try to do right, but I keep doing wrong

and I listen to songs

that may tell me the truth

becuz I can not be that honest

no, I just can’t be that honest

I can not give her that power

I am a man, so I’m faulty

and that’s no excuse

but I am not use

to not feeling used

and I know she gets used

and I know she too use

to that kinda abuse

though I try to get thru.

Its exhausting

then she tries to get thru, but we’re exhausted

just tell her, I know how she feel, and let’s be honest…bye

Mastered Pieces

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Mastered pieces

Making up a masterpiece..

speaking of,

That hand

her hand

and its surface

that texture

a smoothness coupling a purposeful yet vague roughness

not from labor

but produced from hairs emerging upon her surface

encapsulating her radiant warmth

protecting it from the elements

an element of her own

certainly it must have been crafted within the cosmos that could only hope to marvel at a heaven a heaven

that has a mind and eye for intrinsic value with synchronizing detail

overflowing with designs even more intricate than that of the universe

only a heaven, ripe with divine orchestration could compose such an architecturing of angelic skin

where was I when I first laid eyes upon its color

a mix of colours and the contours!

where did I go, the moment…that moment…thee moment

I placed my own hand atop hers

that fragrance took me to a different plane

it lit a thirst and a wonder like a fiery furnace so deep within and beyond my sense of what’s real

that I soon became high from inhaling its essence smell

became virtue

aura, her aura, became tattoo

ambiance, her ambiance, became a light, however distant or close, but near enough to see a way throughout darkness

encompassing with it a belief in possibility

what did I experience, ecstasy?

drifting into a world of

fantasy

tantalization

serendipity

enchantment

myth and urban legend would envy her story

because her lore

held with it, an addictive romantic fiction

all from her touch

the touching

the feeling

the capturing of her hand

its not that romance is dead

or that it is unreal

but that it is so real and yet it is rarely captured enough to be revered as something to be believed in

so after life long soughts, can only harbor assumptions of it being fantasy all the while its mystery

trailblazes journeys

seeking from it,

what lay unknown yet dreamed about

I can never forget its texture,

the grace of her feel and heat

I never washed her scent from me

I slept as her smell comforted me

breathing in deeply, reinvigorated with every chest inflation

inhaling her essence

made her too real to not dream about

and what I saw, what comforted me and blotted out the darkness of my environment was her hand for there was nothing more I needed to see

because the whole isn’t necessary in understanding the parts

the parts have their own individual attributes perfuming their own identities that only enhance the whole

the parts blaze all on their own

as proof to ‘bits’ of perfection

her hand, a mastered piece

scribing the story of a masterpiece only written in the stars

I’ve laid my eyes upon, listened to, inhaled and even felt the wonder of that story

and the only mystery I have left to my senses, is consuming the taste of her literary better the experience or better the mystery?

I’ll ponder that question for a lifetime

maybe its the unknowing that compliments intrigue

and the knowing that compliments jade

some things you just have to try

wonder versus experience

two concepts within a master’s mind a master tries to mastermind while appraising a mastered piece of a masterpiece

her hand

What’s a Tree With No Branch

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What’s a tree wit no branch?

just reach out

don’t bleed out

let it ink out

I rather u write ur wrongs with me

than write me off swiftly

p.s. I can’t let u go

fucking glue…

Do u love me too?

Or is this too much for you?

Sometimes I struggle

but I love feeling stuck with u.

We can hum the blues or run the rules-

off the road and be ride or die

but without the die

air without u is cyanide

a painful death I would willingly die one thousand times inside y

our eyes spark like dynamite

a tree may sprout out more branches if it keeps in tact with its roots

I don’t know if that’s possible, but we have nothing but time to find our truths.

Lock the Gate

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Lock the gate

I lock my door

my door opens

but I’m still closed in

cuz I don’t have the keys that matter, what does it matter

story of my life and your heart

maybe u will, maybe u won’t open your heart

that doubt that clouds ur mind is still closed-in

your hang ups hanging up like a clothes pin

how can distance not hurt more than our closeness

fear is not the same thing as an omen

thoughts become reality when you act them out

painting reality as coincidences you try to ration out

I told u so’s-becoming rationales

but you did this to us, to u, to me, regardless however it fractions out

we’re fractured now

forget you mirror, the truth is clearer, when I’m backing out

starring at the broken fragments, of fragile glass, reflecting off my glasses-we’re matching now

but what happens now

you’re brokeness never freed me, I’m still trapped

tried to fix the pieces but how long will that last

I open my door to only stare at more locks

as time pasts, im not aware of the clocks

tick tock

a locked door behind a locked gate

a trapped soul inside a broken mirror

a wounded man still doomed to pride

a runaway love with no room to hide

a lost mind tryna find peace a lost time that reminds me

I’m not fine but don’t mind me

cuz its about time that I find me

maybe time, is the right key.