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Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

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Trauma

Drugged

November 22, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Drugs or die

do drugs or die

doing drugs cuz I wanna die

doing drugs cuz I feel dead already

doing drugs cuz I’m scared to feel death

life hurts, death shouldn’t

just say no

it’s harder to say no in prison

plus im coping with drugs

but you say “don’t do drugs”

so I go to your therapy

but to remedy my diagnoses

your therapist prescribes me drugs

I got the message loud and clear

don’t do drugs that you don’t profit from

all addicts know their drug dealers

but I don’t know you

so why should I listen

how are yours different?

drugs

drug dealers

you’re all the same

only difference-

one provides peaceful escape

the other forces it

and life…

well it just seems I have no choice but to cope

so who got the best dope?!

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Mercy, Trauma

Avarice Society

November 21, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Love, Mercy, Spirit, Trauma

Contempt Contentment

November 20, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Right before I enter my room

I look into it’s narrow window

and it’s small, confined

claustrophobic dwelling-

for any human with possessions-

and realize I have nothing.

This is what it is

and I have to succumb

and make do with this near nothingness

and still venture to find a smile in the day

and a ray of hope in the tomorrow

while possessing myself

with beliefs of normalcy

of what is now my reality

in order to not to go crazy

and I do this all in a matter of nano seconds

so fluently

as if it was never even pondered for a moment

fooling myself at times

believing this is my life

my room

my place

but this is prison

and I have to accept it,

because if I choose not to,

then what…?

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Mercy, Trauma

Compiled Compliance

November 19, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

You want me to be myself

but more like you,

more in the way that you see fit.

We want people to be individuals

then punish them for their individuality.

You really want them to be,

think

and feel

like you

but autonomous individuality,

always has a recklessness to it.

It either offends,

scares

or empowers the wrong people

before considering what it may do for you.

Free will

is a promise

and an illusion

that people will kill for

have killed for

whether that killing,

is actually for it

or to keep people from it

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Trauma

Peeping Through My Window Part 4

November 17, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

“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.

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Love, Trauma

Peeping Through My Window Part 3

November 16, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

“Peeping thru my Window pt 3”

I’m a boy.

Relationships, where do I even start with that vast term? Do kids even consider family and friends as relationships these days? I don’t remember that being a thing spoke about, I only believed relationships was a girlfriend-boyfriend, husband-wife type thing.

I knew nothing of relationships, believing that I could have them by just being the best version of myself while hiding my worst, clueless of the inevitable implosion. There was a rage that I had no clue had festered so deeply becoming something so void, dark and wounded, that would expose itself at unexpected times, mirroring those very people and things I deep down hated, wanting to be nothing like.

I blurted this out one day to my best friend on the phone, maybe because I had never said it out loud, but I told her about one of my foster homes. How I used to get tormented in that home. I was punished with crazy labor when I got in trouble. I had to carry a wheel barrel, digging dirt and dumping dirt for hours, or walking stairs for hours. If not just beat before or after (sidenote, it helped me become a pretty physically strong kid!).

I remember one day, I needed to use the bathroom while we were at the park. My foster brother and sisters wouldn’t take me back, so I defacated myself. They rode me on the bike with me sitting close to the tire ripping at my shorts and smashing it all over me. Once we got home, I got beat for shitting myself and for my foster mom having to clean it. I walked stairs on my toes up and down from the dark basement for hours where I was told werewolves were,(my worst fear) and that staying on my toes would keep them away since I’m walking like them. (upside is that I’ve been fast with big calf’s and quads since a kid) I still walk on my toes to this day, ha.

My foster brother would tie my socks together at the toes and spin me around upside down on his shoulder as I cry out upside down. Then he’d put me down and make me walk, laughing as I fell. One day I busted my chin real bad and got stitches, obviously the why was lied about. To make it worse, it was Christmas Day, where they gave me diapers as a present, get the joke?

At that same home, the foster brother had me have sex with his two sisters, (my foster sisters) while he watched and kept an eye out for his parents outside. They were years older than me and I was told to go from bed to bed. At that age, I began to think that this was the thing to do, they liked me when I did it and I didn’t get messed with as much when I did. So I liked making them feel good because it made them like me. Obviously, I became hypersexual before fourth grade. I started seeing women and sex as things to make people feel good and like you.

So I looked for sex in all my relationships, even when I was too young still. It wasn’t for myself, but for them in my head. As I got older I noticed sex didn’t solve life stresses, it was just another mask. I had so many by then, I could find more.

But then that inner rage came bubbling up when things got too overwhelming. And those angry outbursts turned to verbal onslaughts, and later on, physical abuse. It wasn’t that I took to hitting women, that was isolated occurrences, I never desired to hurt anyone, especially women. But it was a respect thing. It didn’t matter who it was, once I’d had enough, I blew! Because I never handled my disagreements assertively, I was a passive people pleaser. I just agreed, stuffed it, and got past it, not realizing that I was just stacking it all up. That rage was colorless and sexless, I saw nothing but searing white light. Scars from being made fun of when I was little made me self-conscious and real sensitive to certain words and actions. That led to abuse with my first son’s mother.

I’ve been apologizing for those days since it happened in every relationship and interaction with a woman. To this day I’m so disconnected in relationships, scared and passive because I face those ghosts of what I went through with her and never want to do that again, knowing that I may never be forgiven nor deserve to be. The only time I’m not sensitive in my relationships is when I’m actively sabotaging them, pushing them away because after so long, I feel too dirty and unworthy of having someone. You know when someone’s so far out of your life but still control it in a way and don’t even know it, they may still be wounded by you but your shame from them rules your life? Yea, that’s me. So I emotionally detach at random. I’ve always feared hurting women because what my mom went through just to get me in this life and the abuse I witnessed her go through as well. Aand I ended up doing the same thing.

One day I’ll have to tell my son what I did, because that accountability is mine alone, though it affected his life. My distance from him was a result of my own guilt and emotional turmoil, how selfish we parents can be. He has barely had a father because I ran away from my mistake. Me and his mother, we were both kids with a kid and being kids when we had to be adults. I was older, I was the man, I should’ve been one, but I wasn’t, see why I said I’m a boy?

How can I even be a father when I had no real understanding of family and parenthood. Most examples were of crippled and fractured love, foster families getting divorced, fighting each other, or getting rid of me. I believed nothing lasted; everything eventually would fall apart.

This is just a little peak at what formed me, I don’t know if I properly correlated how former traumas became emotional with relationship identity. I’m not really trying to prescribe a definite reason or way in any of this. It’s still a blur to me. Putting these pieces together while imprisoned just seemed like a logical thing to do, though what I feel I am is illogical because I think and see things too different from most. But given my life, embracing the dark times is as stress-less as walking in the sun with a cool breeze.

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Love, Trauma

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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

  • Evolving Dream January 15, 2021
  • I Am U December 8, 2020
  • One last time December 7, 2020
  • This Sys-tem December 5, 2020
  • Concentration Camps December 4, 2020

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