Prose of a Con

Poetry and Prose by Russell Wardlow

Trauma

Everyday C.O.

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C.O.’s are average any day people. When handling prisoners, I would think there should a deep screening and training process, maybe even a cultural education and implicit bias testing, since there will be many different people from different walks of life.

Objectivity and professionalism shouldn’t be an understatement in prison. Human error and prejudices can’t be overcome without proper education, identifying, and training, especially if their job is to make criminals better people and the community more safe. They have a duty to not allow their personal issues to derail the rehabilitation of an inmate. You wouldn’t hire a McDonalds cook as a chef at a 5 star restaurant. At schools, all employees are there for child’s betterment and protection. So in a prison, it should be the same.

C.O.’s have a responsibility to aid inmates in healthy relationships with authority figures

But it’s a contentious relationship. There’s still a disconnect and distrust because of the oppressive power dynamic C.O’s are charged with: safety and security of facility. Some have different ideas, tactics and beliefs on how to carry that out and once they experience power, it has a way of swaying a person’s resolve or intentions, working their own unchecked agendas biases and personal problems. Their reason for employment should be centered on making a difference not just on being employed, because the interaction and relationship with the occupants of their employment is vital to both society and the inmates.

But their reasons for employment don’t always have good intentions. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. All teachers can’t be professors. All porn stars can’t be models…or vice versa. All employees can’t be C.E.O’s. All cooks can’t be chefs. All drivers can’t be chauffeurs. All politicians can’t be president.

And just anybody shouldn’t be able to be a correctional officer. But yaw already knew that. Rehabilitation is misleading. You need professionals for that, not high school diplomas.

Cost to Change

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Money!
That is the barometer of change
Those who have it vs those whom don’t
Those that have it are most capable to effect change
While those who don’t, can only appeal to that dollar
Us broke and broken have cried out to the immortality of the American dollar

Us who have built this country and collectively own only a stark 1.8% of our own land
We have pleaded and died for gains in this country
We have conformed for your love, attention and promise of equality
But still we get nothing
Still we are unseen
Unheard
Unfelt
And barely sympathized
And empathized for
Yet overly rationalized
Objectified
And subjected
To the crass treatment of this country’s elite and preferred class and color

We have been puppeteered
And tap danced
To entertain you
And you have only accepted us as nothing more than that
Entertainment
When we attempt to succeed and speak beyond those boundaries
We are shunned
Stunted
And thwarted
Placed within skinny secluded and limited boundaries and paradigms
Of inclusion
Yet spoken against as if our lack of broad achievement is nothing more than our inability-
Given the equal chance we are offered
While routinely picked over
Supposedly being over or under qualified
And implicit bias being the improvable elephant in the room
The truth is
Our gain, is perceived as a direct threat to white Americans whom desire to protect their positions At the top of the ladder of decision and discernment in this american experience-
With it’s hopes and freedoms
We get decimated and exploited socially
Educationally
Psychologically
Politically
Procedurally
Systemically
Culturally
Geographically
Spiritually
Economically
And legislatively-
All throughout our legal system with the police, prosecutors, prisons and parole system
The problem is that money determines human value
And therefore scales us as necessary liabilities and expenditures
But unnecessary beneficiaries and unworthy proprietor’s
Limiting our potential for capital and stake in this country and in our own future
Money has largely determined our futures for us
People with money whom discern our experience and legitimize our limitations
Quelling our efforts with their resources
Once freed we weren’t given the keys to our own freedom
Only the illusion of
Change is sketched on a cost benefit analysis
Where loss is the metric for true change and gain
Yet loss is overly feared and acted against
Therefore making change rigid
If not improbable at best
With change comes along skin in the game-investment
And given our investment in this country we have the worst ROI in the history of mankind
We’ve always been on the wrong side of modern history with promises and gains
While people complain about money lost
We have been taking financial, bodily and providential hits for over 4 centuries
So we don’t wanna hear about money loss
We wanna see the money spent
Since we can’t fairly get a seat at the table and create our own wealth with equal opportunity
Because we have created more than enough equity and paid astronomically more than our Weight in gold to this country’s building and upkeep as leaders of the free world
We created the power and braggadocio able to be lived
Our sweat, blood and lives made way for the idea privilege and global hierarchy us Americans enjoy


Put up or shut up
Just like in business,
If you really want the real estate then money talks
You say we matter well show us
Because if the colors on this end of the spectrum were in contrast, uproar and a flood of money Would be thrown at the problem
If not all out societal bedlam given the entitled attitude of most white Americans
And the pocket checks is what tilts the checks and balances of this country
The lack of resources is the primary reason for crime rising in impoverished communities
So don’t look at our communities and scathe us with your uninformed judgement
Poverty creates crime
Disproportionate resources make that happening a more static reality because the cut off of Those resources needed is what keeps the status quo safe
It’s what keeps the suburbs looking down and at a distance from true iniquities and inequalities!
So in case you didn’t know where I was going with this
There’s a reason why the money is funneled up
And the pain and its oppressive instigators reign down and rain on the bottom of the ladder
Flooding the lowest of us
And no one seems to care until their ankles get wet
While we’re drowning in this country’s consistent wrongs to us
One of two of its biggest debtors that has yet to collect on what’s owed
It almost feels like this country is the crook looking down on the helplessness and gullibility of it’s victims
While we ask
Why are you doing this
And all you do is offer pennies to the dollar of what’s been stripped from us inside and out
And we can’t even sue for pain and suffering
Because you created the kangaroo court that will proceed in favor of your ill-gotten gains
Citing survival of the fittest, natural selection and irreconcilable differences saying it’s our fault
We shouldn’t have been suckers and allowed ourselves to fall prey to your carnivorous hunger and insatiable thirst
Smugly saying spoils of war, sore loser
You’ve kept us broke
You prefer us broken and at times succeeded
But you still can’t eliminate us
Because still we rise
And we are here and will remind you everyday that we will not remain forgotten
That we will not remain victims
And this country will know and acknowledge the pain we feel because we are done going away silently in the night
Being lost to political rhetoric and the convenience of another headline
We will be that inconvenient disruption to the everyday programmed schedules of your privilege and ignorance
The revolution will not only be televised and internalized
It’s inherited
So it will be expressed and externalized with gusto, with ferocious spirit and personal pride
Because bottom line
We’re more than a bottom line
But for change, we have to affect your bottom lines
Money…

Color’dBlind

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Stop saying you don’t see my color

You are NOT colorblind

Nobody is

Why would I want you to be

I want you to see me

I’m looked passed, through, and assumed too often

My protests go largely unheard

I’m acknowledged most when I fit a stereotype

When you hear of crime, you see me

Even if just a mental picture

When you hear me get excited, you see me

But not as a normal person

Rather a rambunctious untamed animal

When I’m angry, you see uncivilized aggression

You don’t see a person allotted emotions

You see validated yet quieted implicit biases-

Plausible deniability-

So my cries of fouk are shunned

You see a prison as answer for me

Frankly, I can’t be a regular human being in your eyes

My sobering human moments

You see less a person and more a ‘thing’

A beast with too much terrain to roam-

Needing to be reeled in and controlled

You tell me to calm down

Chill

Don’t be so loud

You talk to me like child therapists

With a “1 2 3 breath intonation”

As if training a wild animal

With your superior logic and reserve

Believing I’m genetically incapable

You’re even more outraged at my wrongs than that of others

When I do wrong, it makes sense to you

You aren’t colorblind

My color makes you blind

ProPros’d Thoughts

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Wear in plain sight, though it’s deep as genes
wake up, hate everything seen
blood flows through body, feel it bleed?
misery overwhelms mindstate, feel it breed?
emotional fatigue, feel it breath?
pain, only feeling that runs free
lack warmth, so cold
even more, when alone
alienated, never understood
cast away, with firewood
I’ll create my own society!
my own social norms
my own emotional emoting
no psychosis
no hierarchies
no taboos rules class conformity nor monarchy
a land of will and embracement
equality, quality over quantity, individuality spread across acreage
only herbal stimulants
no harm done to innocence
what you know, over who you know
but all, are in the know
with all languages, and ‘No’ is universal
power and fear will not coerce you
birth disparity will not curse you
only naturality of life may hurt you
you are what you speak
do as you think
have what you work for
be you freely, chase worth no more
I don’t have to be like the masses to succeed
I don’t need to do as you do, I am me
materials and notoriety will not determine my value nor love
roles are acquired, not inherited
gender will not dominate advantages
women will have a voice, kids safe and given options
guns and government abolished, (Laissez faire) and currency is oxygen
No war, Unity is reality
vast fields of flowers, organic cures and no allergies
colors will only describe objects not people, I may even turn green, blue
imagine that looking at the sky and ocean, incase you didn’t notice, I have dreams too
-MeTopia-
“we repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom…and recognized no moral obligation on us, no inner sanction, to conform or to obey”-Keynes
“We were out to construct something new; we were in the van of the builders of a new society which should be free, rational, civilized, pursuing truth and beauty. It was all tremendously exhilarating.” -Leonard Woolf on the Bloomsbury Group
“We found ourselves living in the springtime of a conscious revolt against the social, political, religious, moral, intellectual, and artistic institutions, beliefs, and standards of our fathers and grandfathers”
RANT!
–I crave an authentic life, thought ethic belief and emotional autonomy. No clichés no conformity, standing out, uniquely comfortable with my own identity and way. I’m a felon, a con in all right and definition. It’d be best if I were to shut up, be grateful and docile, conform and fit in..No I can’t with everything in me be that way..be that it may, or be that it is good advice, my nature is disruption. How many of you are like everyone, how much of everyone is their own unique self in conscience? No separation of self from society slowly planted the conventions and doctrines that now so many complain about in off-hand private conversations, social media and the out loud protests rally. Life has become apathetic and reactive, not empathetic and proactive, there’s comfort in conforming I admit. Though think, if you valued the individuality of self on a higher plain, how much more would you hold in regard to life and other people’s freedoms and liberties?
Could that duty of-self ignite a more assertive duty to humanity? Because the other way has only engineered un/subconscious modes of self survival. Principles only reinforced by non-committal or lack of care until home is affected, somehow you know and love..by then its too late, it takes time to be, and it takes time to be undone…Life has been controlled by the ‘either, or’ narrative, either puppet or puppeteer, either victimizer or victim, either kill or be killed…but what about that uncomfortable middle ground where real choice lies. No ‘either, or’ just You. Why can’t that be a way of life, why isn’t that the way of life. There has been revolutionary thinkers that have lived between those fragile lines of tolerance, and yes, people fear what they don’t understand…inclusion eliminates that fear, otherwise numbers stay low and idealism is assassinated before it gathers true momentum because people always start with a select group of people, we can all live together and flourish within our difference in thoughts and acts. There’s this island where all these rare and different species of animals coexist together peacefully, why can’t we?

ProProsd Thought:
There’s places in the world where nothing but a woman eyes can be seen in public, where their clitoris is cut off as to take the pleasure of sex away from them, where their breasts are cut off so they can’t feed their babies no more, where they are killed for educating themselves, where they are forced into marriages, taken from their families, forced to bear children, raped beaten controlled and sold into sex trafficking…These are our women, our child bearers, our mothers, our counterparts as men…so why do we have to maintain such a ruthless domain over them as if their existence is mere privaledge to accompany man. As if their roles are of pure submission, subservience, silence, docile, obedience toward men. Is it intimidation? Because they mature faster than men, more evolved hippocampus which gives them an almost uncanny ability to read and express emotions- a fragility of men, because they are sexually limitless- unlike men? There was a time, before mass religion where women were regarded as high if not higher than men and held the same cultural relevance and importance, also the same social, marital, eucharistic, government, military, and monarchic positions as men…How can we truly love what we try to dominate? They’ve been victims of domestic and societal oppression, yet still gait with abundant grace and strength. My best friend is a strong-willed brilliant beautiful motivated spiritual compassionate human being, being a woman is the icing, she sets the tone for how I view/revere and now treat women. We have to uplift them, not just our sisters and mothers. Every bond doesn’t need to be sexual, I’ve learned that they offer so much more!