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Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

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Trauma

Our state- ran by brilliant billionaires

November 25, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Uh we have the most billionaires per capita in the U.S. here in Nebraska. Pete Ricketts and his family has made government a family business. A quote from our great recently termed out senator Ernie Chambers, in his reelection race, he spent $2.5 million to the opposing candidates $50k. Safe to say he controlled all the media and exposure.

People more easily vote for familiar faces, great tactic. With no cap on campaign spending our policies have been ruled by finances and he has successfully used his seat as governor creating laws that further set up his family. Originally from Chicago, he and his brother are both governors funded by their father whom owns TD Ameritrade and the Cubs. Hey! we have TD Ameritrade here?!

How can he be the voice of a people they’ve never been part of? He has single handedly financed the drug to revamp our death row. As crimes have dropped, incarcerations has heightened. We now have the second most at capacity prison in the U.S.

Covid cases amongst inmates have been hidden, all the while refusing to relieve the capacity for any reason. And he is another practicing tough on crime aristocrat, which is a disproportionate systemical slaughter. He implores the parole board to not grant parole despite public demand and usually terminates most reform and prison overcrowding bills that pass the legislator, but he wants to build another prison! oh yayy!

He’s really made an obvious difference in the black community. There’s even more of a gaping whole of injustices, inequalities and disproportionate absences. We’re 8th in the nation for property taxes and our economy still haven’t recovered from floods 2yrs ago. 2nd per capita in over capacity prisons which solutions seem like more bars, more guards with barely enough staffing as is. Recently there was a bill submitted to make all the prisons here private.

Smart leadership is always rich in the capital they create in every misfortune..

So liberty, justice and opportunity for all at the expense of the broke and the broken!

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Spirit, Trauma

Capitalism rites, write rights

November 24, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

This country was always capitalists

or at least headed that direction

there’s no heart in capitalism

only capital

but how do I know this country has always been captitalistic?

Well my ancestors were property

sold, traded, herded and bred

and the only way my people can trace their history

is because it was recorded

as property, cargo, on the ships manifest

even the ones that jumped over

choosing the watery abyss over the cruelties of their capturers

the humbling and antagonist part of it is

that my lineage is literally held in tact

as a former piece of property

and that in itself is history

not a proud one

so no matter what, somebody was on a ship-

that beat, raped, mutilated and cannibalised it’s occupants-

listed,

yea everyone sold slaves

but everyone didn’t do to slaves

like what was done to them in the Americas

America had redefined slavery

and in these modern times

it continues to do so

there’s no real love in capitalism

just a beating organ

which is vacant any depth

besides bottom lines

but rites of passage and property is a right written for capital

Filed Under: Culture, Spirit, Trauma

Unheralded Nebraska Corrections

November 23, 2020 by Russell Wardlow Leave a Comment

Everyone flies over

walks past

or stops by

this middle America

Nebraska

our crime lowered

but imprisonment steadily increases

we’re in a state of emergency

having second most overpopulated correctional system

155% over capacity

with a parole board clinging to inmates

like overly attached parents

but no one cares

no one sees

we’re one of few states left with a parole board

a unicameral red state

big money made from our incarcerated bodies

though worldwide attention is only given to bordering states

but Nebraska has BEEN in need of prison and parole reform

approx 850 inmates still incarcerated past their parole eligibility

yet the answer is to build more beds

or construct another prison

staffing still a problem

most states have no parole board

when eligible, you leave

Nebraska is the quiet evil left to their own devices

flying under the radar

our last hope, Senator Ernie Chambers, just termed out

where do we go from here…but in

because we definitely aren’t getting out!

so can we get some attention

what’s a border, without a middle anyway

Filed Under: Culture, Inside, Mercy, 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

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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.

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  • Objects June 30, 2022
  • Same Thang, Different Name June 30, 2022
  • Optical Ill-lusions June 30, 2022
  • Hollow Symbols June 30, 2022

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