Caged creatures Growl at one another. Youth, primed for life, Placing first one foot… Then another Into the cesspool of a culture Where they don’t belong. Dreams faded, jaded and defined By the moldy smell of dirty money. Old, wrinkled white men Making laws, standing judgment Over black, yellow, red, brown And poor white folks, Just wanting to live the promised dream. Spirited women searching for Lives without being chastised or despised, Pedestals unattainable. Razor topped walls shred sunlight, Wrought iron doors closet sins that never die, But compound, like interest, In a social bank account That doesn’t exist for the cardholders, Just like investors whose credit lines Are governed by dreams deferred. Ruined bodies, broken minds, The mangled souls of families that no longer exist. Friends once had, Moving on without a care Or backward glance. Behind locked doors, Cries can be heard, Young men gone bad, Ruined further, Lost manhood. Unsure women, Afraid to shower. Both taken by the legacy of decades, Years, weeks, days, hours of rotten time, Breeding wadded genocide of generations gone, By the way of soulfully flushed toilets Into the wombs of bloated sewers, After count, at the stroke of midnight…
ABOUT THE WRITER. Preston Shepherd is new to WITS, and I am glad he chose to contact us. Mr. Shepherd is a poet, striving to share the experience of being incarcerated with the younger generation, in the hope that they might avoid that path. Mr. Shepherd can be contacted at: Preston J. Shepherd BP7188 4B-1A-107 P.O. Box 1906 Tehachapi, CA 93581
Hey, I’m not sure how much love you get through the mail, brah, so I thought I’d push some your way. It’s free, so why on earth wouldn’t I give it away? You only have to pay for it, if you refuse to pass it on. Funny the truths that you’ll trip over in these little cages, right?
My name is DeLaine Jones, and I’ve been on lockdown for the last thirty-three years. I’m also a writer for WITS. I’ve been reading about you for awhile now, meaning to get at you, but only now making the time. I’m not sure if you’ve read any of my work, but I’d like to write a piece to you.
I’m not looking to gain from the war you’re fighting to take your next breath. But I don’t just look like this, I’m really black! I speak, read, watch and write through these bars, into and about a struggle that I can’t physically take part in. But even as I gasp and choke my way to hope… I see you, brah!
Back in the dayz when we were in chains on the other side of these bars, we as black people used to speak to other black people whom we had never met. Not simply as a courtesy, but from a genuine concern, a want to help someone who’s chains, pains and scars resembled our own. I personally believe that if I can in any small way, shape, or fashion, help you be heard – it is the reason for my ‘hood card’. As I started out, you’ve got to give it away to keep it coming in, brah.
I’m serving ninety years for crimes I committed when I was seventeen years old. Though I don’t have a date to die, I too know the value of hope, how being touched can alter the quality of the air you breath. That at times it’s easier to let go rather than fight to hold on for another day. That at times, we need to be held on to. Today, I’ve got ya, brah!
So, this is us passing on an old dirt road in the deep South… “What’s up blood, you good?” – meaning, if you need me so you can hide for a awhile and rest till you are able to run again – I’ve got you. I’ve got a scrap or two of food that’ll tide you over too! “You good, cuzz-in?”
I’ve only ever written about my life and the people who’ve passed through it. It’s crazy how I can hear their voices at times when I write. Has that ever happened to you? For me, it comes when people encourage me. It’s then that I hear my granny say, “We are all that we’ve got.” Only the encouragement comes from some place other than my blood. So I expect the givers of those words to give up at some point, to wake up tomorrow and they too will have ‘passed through.’
No family, I’m not in the same part of the river, but I can see you being drowned from where I’m being held down. Those words are needed, welcomed even, but as we both know this is way too much water for either of us to be tryin’ to drink!
People will try to rob you of your anger, telling you to be ‘be calm’. But as a black man in the system, ‘be calm’ is code for ‘stop struggling so that I can kill you!’
Charles, I’m not sure if I’ve ever met an innocent man before. But I do know that they hand out far too many of these sentences without revealing every bit of information that they can get their hands on, laying it out for all to see, rather than allowing the D.A. to decide what it suits his case to present. Who knows a diamond’s worth until it’s seen? Under magnification at that!
It’s the systemic contradictions and racist collusions that gall. To be willing to seek a mans’ life as payment for a life – but to be negligent in that you don’t turn over every single stone in your quest, this in respect of the very priceless substance you claim to hold so dear.
Life!
Charles, I call the collusion systemic and racist because its not an accident that you’re black nor how you’ve come to be on death row. Your legal counsel never bothered to ask basic and obvious questions that would have lead to the truth. How does anyone who’s passed the bar in this country allow testimony about a sexual assault without the challenge of a rape kit? Evidence? Examination? Something!
Your counsel stood by and let that become part of what the jury heard and a fact, agreed to but not supported by evidence. The D.A. knew it and your counsel had to know it. But it gets better!
The medical examiner shows up without the physical evidence he gathered! Doesn’t even mention it. The D.A. shows up without the only physical evidence that can suggest that you didn’t, in fact, commit the crime. The Judge allows it all to happen, and your counsel, none of the sworn officers of the Court, think that it is note-worthy? Each of their perspectives center on the same physical evidence, which happens to have been collected in a rape kit, and none of them bother to produce the only existing physical evidence? And we ‘the public’ are to simply ignore the obviously choreographed farce?! Allow you to kill a man based on the above?!
A lone woman from Virginia went to Texas and found the rape kit twenty years later. It was never lost.
Charles, I have no idea at what temperature the naiveté of white people is burned away. Many seem baffled as to why black men would be so desperate to escape the mere presence of police if they were not guilty – as if guilt justifies murder.
For some, it’s the walk on the sun that has fried the brain’s ability to believe what it’s seeing, a quick flicker of a thing that is banished in a single blink of the eye. In that glint, they reach for justification that makes them okay with themselves and cools their soul. They can then dismiss and pardon and excuse themselves.
In that flicker, they find themselves on an old dirt road in the deep South, passing a person who’s breathing hard from running. They see the pain of the other’s soul reflected in eyes they quickly turn away from, denying them to be like their own. They don’t offer the other a place to rest until they can run again, a scrap of food to tide them over. “You good, bro?” only crosses their minds.
In that encounter they find themselves face to face with themselves. Their guilt isn’t about Jim Crow or slavery or things of the past, but what happened this morning. The modern day lynching of a black man that took place in a courtroom in Texas. But hold tight, brah! Charles, be encouraged! If you need me so you can hide for a awhile and rest till you are able to run again – I’ve got you. I’ve got a scrap or two of food that’ll tide you over too!
ABOUT THE WRITER. DeLaine Jones is not only an amazing and thoughtful writer – he displayed his heart and compassion in this piece. He was never asked to write this, simply sent it in with no prompt at all.
As a WITS writer, he receives pieces from other WITS writers when possible. In that way he came to know Charles Mamou’s story, also a WITS writer. I can’t think of a better piece to post this holiday season. As always – I look forward to hearing from him again. Mr. Jones has served 32 years for a crime he committed when he was seventeen years old, a juvenile. He can be contacted at:
DeLaine Jones #7623482 82911 Beach Access Road Umatilla, OR 97882
In the free-world separating true worshippers from fake can be difficult. No doubt, some are true to what they believe, and for them, their faith defines their identity. In prison sorting the true worshippers from the fake is nearly impossible, many ‘in it’ only for what they can get in return. In here we have little variety, so the little variety offered, multiplies in significance.
Prison-issue anything is homogenous, monotonous, bland, devoid of personality. Even one’s personality can start to look prison-issued unless one actively strives to individuate – by getting sleeves of bad tattoos, for instance. Religious affiliation also offers a chance to stylize and spice it up a bit since each religion gives access to exclusive privileges.
If one registers as Jewish, he can receive a ‘special diet’ tray at meals, prepackaged Kosher food that’s fresh and edible, especially compared with typical prison-made grub, which is often congealed, stale, and wilted.
To prevent a choke hazard – think garrote – necklaces are prohibited. However, if registered as Catholic, one may place an order with a vendor for a fancy rosary. Nothing displays one’s piety (and class) like gold-fixtured, dried-blood-looking rosary beads made from compressed rose petals.
Muslims get access to Kuffs (knitted skullcaps) of various colors, and giving alms to the less-fortunate is obligatory. For some guys the deciding factor is the stylish cap that highlights their eyes. For the indigent, the guarantee of commissary items from their brethren is the appeal – plus they get a couple of annual feasts and can brag about (or sell) the lamb, fried chicken, hot sauce, and delicate flaky baklava they get to eat that we don’t.
Back in 2009, tobacco products were banned in state facilities, including prisons, but not for Native American practitioners, for whom tobacco is an essential element in praying. Overnight the Native population exploded from two people to thirty. Death Row’s population is only about 140. Each man lined up outside, stepped to the center of the sacred prayer circle, and the chaplain would hand him a medicine cup containing a teaspoon of pungent tobacco pressed into it’s bottom like a fat brown quarter. They could smoke it in their pipe, burn it in their smudge pot, sprinkle shreds of it into the wind – or secretly smuggle it back to their cellblock and sell it for a dollar per hand-rolled cigarette at least. They could easily get five bucks for that teaspoon – that’s 20 ramen soups or 25 coffee packets: that’s nine stamps or, for the druggies, five pills; or for the perverted, a blowjob from Randy. The Natives also get an annual feast they can brag about or sell food items from.
We can register with only one faith group at a time, but are permitted to change faiths every 3-4 months. That alone should tell you something about the waxing and waning of devotion in prison. Often, when one changes religions, his former faith’s paraphernalia – now contraband in his hands – finds its way to the black market. Headbands and Tupperware sacred-item boxes, prayer rugs, Kufis and Rasta caps, thick Bible dictionaries, prayer beads and shiny crucifixes. It’s all for sale.
Back when they banned tobacco, I registered as Native American so I could smoke and sell tobacco three days a week. I did this for years, despite being a professing Christian. Eventually, I felt so guilty that I left the prayer circle and re-registered as a Protestant. That first Sunday rolled around and I had no intention of attending church services with some I knew were hypocrites. Lying in bed, fiending for a cigarette, I heard a voice in my head that I attribute to God sounding like Charleton Heston in that old movie in which he played Moses. It was a deep, authoritative voice, with a slightly ironic tone. He said, “You went outside to smoke three times a week for an hour at a time for three years straight and missed not one day. In the rain. In the freeze. In the scorch. In the ants. You skipped weekly movies. You skipped recreation. You went through the strip searches… And you can’t go to church twice a week because of the hypocrites? So, there weren’t any hypocrites in the circle? Well, maybe not now, not since you quit going.” Of course I’m paraphrasing, not quoting verbatim, but you get the point.
I got out of bed and went to church. And I haven’t missed a day since, even after we Christians lost our three annual feasts we used to humble-brag about. I also no longer pass judgment on who’s real or who’s a hypocrite because I realize that despite being a sincere worshipper, I often do things to make this hard life a little softer, which from an outside perspective probably makes me look fake as hell. Even so, I am a Christian… meaning I’m forgiven, not flawless.
To demonstrate my devotion, I own the most expensive Bible in our small congregation, ornate, leather-bound, handmade (in China).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer with a unique style, and a solid commitment to his craft. I know when I see a submission from George, I am going to enjoy the read, and I am going to share his work. He is consistent, he is original, he is thought-provoking. He is only an occasional contributor to WITS because he is working on his own book projects, and he is also a co-author of Crimson Letters. I am grateful he takes the time to share his voice here.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 Central Prison P.O. Box 247 Phoenix, MD 21131
