They locked me up at twenty-one,
And then they set me free at sixty-three,
All the things I have seen and done,
They still haunt me in my dreams.

All those years in prison,
I couldn’t begin to tell you how it feels;
Of the pain that comes from living,
And of the death which holds no fear.

Even, if now, he were to visit,
I know I would not shed a tear,
Because they locked me up at twenty-one,
And set me free at sixty-three.

But everyone I love is gone,
And now it’s only me.

Robert McCracken LG8344
Sci-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370

The windows here at the MCI Norfolk Security Housing Unit extend from floor to ceiling, about eight feet high, and only five inches wide, impossible for anyone to escape through.  The Plexiglas is clear.  That surprised me, because most segregation units I’ve landed in have cell windows that are frosted over from the outside, making them impossible to look through.  Here, there are trees and lots of wildlife.  I see the occasional hawk looking for a bite to eat or a blue pickup truck driving ever so slowly along the perimeter fence.  Here, we’ve got a view.

This morning I got in a good workout and took a birdbath in my sink. As I hung up my laundry on the clothesline beside my bunk, a golden stream of sunshine poured into my cell.  Drawn to its warmth, I sat down yoga style and crossed my legs at the base of my window, looking out at the nearby gravel and moss.  As I peered through the glass, I noticed a small insect climbing up the window’s sheer face.  An ant was on the inside of the pane, a rare visitor to my cold prison cell.  I gave it a closer look, aided by the sunlight outside that illuminated his semi-transparent body.  He was red.  Should I crush him?   I’d hate to lose track of him and later awake to find him gnawing on a piece of my leg.  Plus, he was likely a scout!  What if he found a crumb and rushed back to tell his army that there was food in my cell?

Twice I held my finger poised above his fragile body, and twice I aborted the assault.  The longer I stared at him, the more I was impressed by his tiny, intricate design.  Surely, in a thousand years, I could never create something so amazing.  So, why should I crush him?  It’s not like cutting down a tree and knowing I could plant another.  So, I let him live, and he continued his journey up the window pane.

“A Stupid Little Bug”

About halfway up the window pane, he slipped and fell, dropping a few hundred of his own body lengths and smacking his tiny self against the sill.  Yet, within a matter of seconds, he was back up and remounting the glass.  The fall didn’t even daze him, though it would certainly have bruised the life out of me. Extremely interested now, I sat watching him scale the glass again, even cheering for him, as each attempt ended in disaster.  He climbed, slipped, and his plunge ended, once again, on cold steel.  I couldn’t help but smile at how stupid the little bug was.  As I watched him try, yet again, my vision refocused onto a blue pickup truck driving by, past the electric barbed wired fence perimeter, driven by a prison guard making good money for driving in circles all day.  Maybe we’re not so much better than the ant?  At least he was trying.  At least he was moving forward.  Quitting wasn’t a part of his vocabulary, I realized, as I watched the blue pickup disappear from view.  The idea of giving up wouldn’t make sense to the ant.  He was programmed to always keep going, keep trying… How come we humans don’t share the ant’s drive to conquer the hurdles in our own lives?

Anyway, the ant made his way about two-thirds up the pane, and I decided to play human helper and not let him fall again.  I grabbed a yellow envelope and held it flush on the window, a few inches below him, like a safety net.  My arm got tired just holding the envelope. He fell twice – once about a foot from the top and again a few inches further up.  If he had chosen to explore the yellow envelope rather than remount the window, I would have simply blown him out under my cell door and sent him on his way.  But both times when he hit the paper, he was back on the glass before I could even get a good look at him.  His enthusiasm made me happy.  I was intrigued to see what would happen when he reached the top of the window.

“A Journey to Nowhere”

And, he did reach the top.  I held my face within inches of him as his antennae touched the black sealant.  He examined it briefly, then turned and scurried off toward the left side of the window.  When he reached the sealant there, he turned around and headed for the right side. This went on for about ten minutes.  Finally, I told him he was on his own, and I pulled the envelope away from the window.  Of course, once the safety net was gone, he slipped off the glass and plummeted to the bottom.  I leaned down to see what shape the fall had left him in and found him crumpled up in a grave of sealant.  He was still moving but only a little, so I left him and decided to eat my lunch.

There wasn’t much to the lunch.  SHU time gets even harder when you’re living on state food.  As I finished off my oatmeal cookie, I looked over to see if my hurt ant was healthy enough to enjoy a sliver of my second oatmeal cookie.  But wait!  He was back on the window pane!  I couldn’t believe it – four inches up from the bottom and moving along like it was the thing to do!  I examined him closely and noticed that all of his parts seemed to be working just fine.  Since I was by myself, with no books or a celly to help pass the time, I had nothing better to do than watch this little guy climb the window for about an hour.  In between, I cleaned my cell, drank some water to hydrate myself for the next workout, and sat down at my desk to write this essay.  All the while, I intermittently watched the ant.

It didn’t make sense.  He had fallen about a dozen times and reached the top twice since I ate.  But he still kept on climbing.  Shouldn’t he have, by now, figured out that there’s nothing up there for him?  ‘Why does he keep climbing?’  I wondered.  I stood looking at him, my face just inches from his.  At one point he stopped moving and twittered his antennae at me.  It was as if he were saying, ‘I just like to climb, buddy!  It’s all about the climb!’

At that moment I came to realize that we all, at one time or another, fail and fall down in life, but like this determined ant, we must never stop fighting, never stop climbing.  Regardless of the destination, the climb is what it’s all about.  And when we are unwilling to give up, a new beginning awaits us all.

Written by a man serving life.
Darrell Sharpe #W80709
P.O. Box 43
Norfolk, MA 02056

I’ve been incarcerated for almost twenty-five years.  That’s nearly 9,125 days without family, without the comfort of friends, without decent food.

People often mistake freedom with happiness.  When you have lived in both worlds, you know it doesn’t exactly work that way.  Some people are more locked away in their own little worlds than I will ever be.  Freedom isn’t liberty.  The ability to come and go as I please is liberty.  I may have lost my liberty, but I’ve always been free.  Freedom is a state of mind, a matter of the heart, a question of the soul.

What does this have to do with puppy love?  It doesn’t, really, but it reminds me of a dog I once met.  About eight or nine years ago, I lived in a dorm that had a reputation for being in trouble most of the time.  Illegal contraband abound, the rules be damned, caution to the wind, full speed ahead.

So, the powers that be would come in and shake the dorm down for said contraband, usually finding extra underwear, rubber bands, and paper clips – no drugs, no weapons.  Bring in the dogs!

I’ve seen drug dogs before.  I took classes before coming to prison on how to train and care for these special warriors.  They are disciplined, eager to  please, extremely well trained, exceptionally gifted individuals, and I’ve rescued (with and without my dad) at least thirty such animals from dog shelters over a period of thirty two years.  They are mostly Labradors, black, brown, yellow, and white.

They are smarter than people in a large sense and not only man’s best friend, but loyal to a fault.  If people had the same qualities as these guys, the world would be a better place.

When a dog’s service is deemed over, they are usually taken to a shelter.  That’s where Dad and I came in, we saved them from Death Row.

So, when I first saw drug dogs in TDCJ, my heart skipped a beat.  Unlike so many of my fellow incarcerated mates, I don’t have an authority complex.  I was a military brat and proud of it.  I don’t hate people in uniform – police officers, highway patrolmen, National Guardsmen, Army, Navy, Air Force.

The list includes correctional officers.  Personally, I couldn’t do the job they do because of the daily routine of having to enforce every single conceivable rule imaginable.  On the other side if it, I hear inmates say, “Rules are made to be broken.”  No, rules are made to bring order to chaos.  If everybody did whatever they wanted, the world would spin out of control.

It’s also been my experience that most of the correctional officers I’ve had contact with are decent, law abiding – even funny – citizens.  Remember, never judge a book by its cover.

Back to dogs.  The handlers brought the dogs into the dorm and instructed us to remain seated on our bunks and not to pet them.  So, I sat still as they were let off their leashes and went from cubicle to cubicle in a pattern that would make a marching band instructor proud.

The blonde lab, who looked to be about three or four years old and about 75 pounds, walked up to my cubicle and stopped for a second before coming in, jumping on my bunk, and laying down with his head on my lap.  His handler, an officer I had known for fourteen years and who had been promoted to the SERT team, asked the dog to step out.

The dog, whose name was Anvil, looked at him like he had just been asked to turn down a sirloin steak.  I sat calmly.  I was neither afraid of the dog or the officer.  I knew I had no contraband, never do.  Being locked away in these premises means you shake your own cell or cubicle down every day.

The officer told me, “Go ahead, pet him.  That’s what he wants.”

I scratched Anvil between the ears, and he sat with his eyes closed and his head on my lap for about three more minutes.

Then he turned over on his back, and I scratched his belly.  Two minutes later, he sat up on my bunk and licked me square in the face.

“Looks like you have a friend, Green.”

The dog still sat at attention, on top of my bunk.  He wouldn’t leave, I knew the answer – “Release, Anvil.”

The dog got up, left my cubicle and went back to work.

Dog is man’s best friend?  You bet your ass he is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  ‘Shipwrecked, Abandoned, Misunderstood’, but he still has the things his father instilled in him – humility, respect and love.  In spite of 25 years behind bars, he continues to wake up every day holding on to his humanity and on a mission to change the world for the better.

John Green #671771
C.T. Terrell Unit A346
1300 FM655
Rosharon, TX 77583

First, I must apologize for the picture I am about to share because of what it has done to me and what it will likely do to you.  I’ve carefully searched through my stack of pictures to find the one that would vividly illustrate the loss that violence brings, but there were no photos to properly convey the gravity of what I’d like to share.  So, I have no choice but to paint one, a picture painted in words.

Long before I stepped inside a prison cell, I knew firsthand what violence could take away.  Most think they do too, but I want to share another look, an intimate one.

Violence is the voice of my three little sisters saying to me with tears in their eyes, “Are you going to jail?  What did you do?”

Violence is my little nephew telling his Nana that if he eats all of his vegetables, his muscles will turn to rocks because all he remembers of his uncle is squeezing my arms inside a prison visiting room.

Violence is my baby sister, who received the brunt end of my affection, crying as she blew out the candles of her birthday cake because all she wished for was her big brother to come home.

Violence is the aftermath of me taking another person’s life and a death certificate that reads, ‘Parents too distraught to sign’.

Violence is the real emptiness that is left behind.

Violence is the guttural sound that escaped my mother’s lips when the judge gave me a ‘life sentence’.

Violence is the lie I told my mother after the trial when I said, “Momma, everything’s going to be alright.”

Violence is the sum of years that I’ve spent trying to atone for something for which there is no atonement.  It is the tears that stream down my face and stain this page as I write.

Violence is the picture I’ve painted with words, a picture of the true horror and great despair that I can never erase.  I only hope and pray that no one will ever have to paint on this canvas for themselves, because violence is not the answer.

Written by Darrell Sharpe #W80709
P.O. Box 43
Norfolk, MA 02056

At a visit the other day
His little girl asked him
If he would come to her play…

He felt as though he’d cry
If he looked into her eyes
So he had to turn away…

He didn’t mean to lie
But said that he would try
Because he didn’t know what else to say…

She had just turnt five
And couldn’t understand why
He would lie to her that way…

But with time, she would come to realize
It was because he died inside
Each and every day.

Robert McCracken LG8344
Sci-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370