The new gosling

New on the Bird Blog:

One of the nesting pair of geese eggs on the small yard finally hatched despite the constant harassment from a few yard workers. The gosling came into the world last Saturday and is now a week old and already her or his parents have brought it up to the art room fence to meet me and I've shared tiny bits of bread with the young bird, who is is already copying its father and mother chasing greeting pigeons off. It's funny to see him or her wobble around, flapping its tiny nobs of wings covered in yellow like cotton down, no feathers yet. It is already bigger than the cow birds and black birds. There were more eggs but I imagine the geese, particularly the mama goose was so agitated by the constant harassment of the yard workers and also there was missing eggs that they decided to take the one hatching from the nest and stay moving. By next Saturday the gosling will have doubled in size. What a splendid sight. Continue on the Bird Blog

The Process

Like for a bird, being in the sky is the most important aspect of flying, the process is the most important part in creating art. As a poet, an artist and writer the act of writing is what frees the art, the soul, spirit and heart to flow.

I believe art is waiting to come out when allowed the room to flow up. We can only verbalize just the tip of the iceberg. It is the state of putting pencil to paper that sometimes even when you think you have nothing to say you find or create a flow, a process and clear the way for stories, songs, poems, plays and even acting or whatever to come out and allow the muses to come forth.

The U.S. premiere of At Night I Fly is at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 20th!
The screening at MoMA will be followed by a discussion with director Michel Wenzer and producer Tobias Janson.

From the program: "Most of the prisoners at New Folsom, a maximum-security prison in Sacramento, California, are serving life sentences, and they must cope on a daily basis not only with the crimes they committed but also with prison's punishing isolation, hopelessness, and violence. To that end, participants in New Folsom's Arts in Correction Facilitation program learn to express themselves through poetry readings, gospel choirs, playing musical instruments, and discussion groups. Survival, however, is a deeply personal process that each must chart for himself. Eschewing a simple narration of redemption, Wenzler assembles a complex portrait of prison life. At Night I Fly won the Swedish Guldbagge Award in 2011 for best documentary."

At Night I Fly to New York

At Night I Fly has been selected for the Museum of Modern Art in New York's prestigious Documentary Fortnight!
This will be the film's U.S. premiere.

Director Michel Wenzer will be attending the screenings. The festival is organized by MoMA Film and is held from February 15th to March 4th 2013.

Writing From the Inside Out

Spoon writes for The Good Men Project: 
 
What is a good man to me?

A good man walks in his own shoes, and as a human being seek to balance in a nonviolent way his one foot in darkness and one foot in light. Some of us, bad like myself, had to transform into good, and you can imagine how hard it can be when in prison. I walked in darkness as a youngster and as a result I encountered deep life changing darkness. I could have enveloped myself in this darkness and become worse, but I chose to balance the darkness with light and love and realness. I chose to walk in my own shoes.
It took a deep fall for me to see the light about myself and share the realness and talents inside me. (I speak about my journey in my memoir book By Heart and in my poetry book Longer Ago)
I had to be real and not allow myself to hurt or destroy lives, but to build up lives with wisdom, love, peace, understanding and shared struggles.
I have been incarcerated now for 36 years, and transformed from a young troublemaker to someone who cares for and mentors young folks. I encourage them to to know themselves and to walk in their own shoes and....Read the whole article at The Good Men Project

CALL FOR RACIAL PEACE IN CALIFORNIA PRISONS

By Spoon Jackson

The call for racial peace came from Pelican Bay SHU - the hole - and I read about it in the San Francisco Bay View, where my poem “Go On” was published. I think that was a brave, human, and needed call for racial harmony. Since I’m a believer in peace and realness - one people, one race - I must echo their cry and add my voice to the chorus. I think it is a call all peace groups around the world, inside and outside of prisons would welcome.

I always tell my creative writing classes that you must stand up for what is human, true, and real. You must stand up for how we want our children, parents, grandparents, and spouses to live. Who would want loved ones to live in violence anywhere on the planet? It is a call to peace, love, growth, truth, and harmony. No one wants to see their sons or daughters in a bloody pool on the side walk or in someone’s back or front yard, or in some prison yard or cell.

We must pay the peace call forward. We must call for racial peace among all prisons, not only in California, but around the world. It is said you know society by its prisons, and if are a microcosm of society, it is time to make harmonious change inside, and perhaps peace will spill over to the free world. We can hold peace and love in our hearts like a sunset, ocean breeze, or soft bird song.

In my family, there are many colors and cultures. One of my grandmothers was half Caddo Indian. I have brothers married to Asian, Mexican, White, Native American, and Black. I appreciate them all and I am happy my family is like it is.

I have shared the call for peace article with blacks, browns, and whites. I’ll share some of their words in this article. This call may translate to the streets, if only to affect a few people, a few youngsters. It is time to embrace, each moment, and repeat what Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and John Lennon said about unconditional peace. I cannot sit idle as a poet and artist, while brothers of all colors in the hole call for racial peace and not echo those thoughts, vibes, hopes, and wishes.

We are all human beings and something that affects one of us touches all of us. Nothing human is foreign to any of us.

The Way Light Breaks Apart

By Marty Williams

I don’t believe for a moment that someone doesn’t see race. It looks back at me like a mirror image of everything I’m not sure of within myself. I clique, I flock, I herd, and the struggle to do otherwise makes me dizzy with anxiety. My phony holiness says, “There is no race,” but if that were true, the history of the world would be much different, and chains would mean something else entirely. But here I am, and my liberal guilt wants to prove to you how very inclusive I am, while the truth is I don’t know enough about how deep my own racial preference is buried. So what I want is first to just know what I’m missing, to know the depth of someone else’s difference, and the depth of where we are the same. First meet me on the field, and then I’ll deserve to live with you, and you with me. Not in harmony (another phony holy ideal), but in human beingness, that needs us to be different, the way light breaks apart into colors. One light. We are just colors.

Our Struggle

by O.G. Woody, Watts (Solid & True)

I’m Brown, he’s Black, you’re White, so what?

The question is not why, the question is how. How did we let ourselves become so divided, so narrow-minded, to where we can’t see the pain that we’ve caused ourselves in our own struggle? Racism is the wall that blocks our vision to a future vast and beautiful.

Wake up! Open your eyes! This struggle is real. The pain that you have inside is the same pain that I feel. This is our struggle; our struggle is real. What will it take for our kids not to have to go through this pain that we face? What will it take for us to be just one human race? This is a battle that we can’t afford to lose.

A better future is what we choose. How grand will this world be if you would only look past my color and see me? Get to know me, know who I am, and look into my heart. All I’m asking for is just a start. Though I’ll continue to try, I know I can’t do this alone. But I’m doing my part here within this poem. So stand at my side, every color and creed, open your minds so that we may succeed.

How Do You Improve Race Relations?

By Soto

Race relations are quite difficult to come to a successful outcome where everybody is

respectful and loving. I have always said that in order to resolve a problem, one must conduct an inner examination, come to terms with its causes.

As a society and young country, it would benefit us to learn about our dealings with Asians, Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics. The learning of culture should be done not only as current events. The study should go as far as the very foundation of this great nation. Although it would be extremely difficult to be objective when learning about racism, genocide, injustice, and straight out executions, this step of acknowledgement must be taken as soon as a young mind is able to comprehend the paths between right and wrong. Once the true history of races is known, the second step should be a quick course of culture learning. This course would involve a study of any given race’s religion, music, spiritually, costume, dances, sports, etc.

Without a true knowledge of other races, costumes, and habits, a peaceful and understanding relation among different races would be impossible.

How Do You Improve Race Relations?

By Joseph Ennis

Well, this is a big issue, bigger than one could imagine, though not so big that we can overlook or ignore it. In my opinion, to im-prove race relations you first must find common ground between two open-minded people. The ways of growing up are all similar, even if in a different place or street. Relations can be built on real life events and experiences, and what I may find in common, three can, then five can, and so forth.

Change is the most fearful thing one can experience. I know ‘cause I’m a walking testimony. That’s what it’s all about though, not being afraid of change, positive change. Just think of the doors that can open through having a good relationship with someone not from your own race. Why shut those doors? If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I don’t know it all. And if the next person knows more, or even less, that’s someone I could learn from, no matter the race.

Simply Saying Good Morning

By V. Tapia

Racism has its periods and changes of heart. I guess some people just need a key moment or to hear words of gratification to make them feel at peace with a different race. My moments of peace, while riots were occurring in prison, came through words of gratification expressed through the vent in my cell, directed towards my neighbours. These were a simple good morning or good night. And my moment of peace was when my neighbour put the trust in me to lend me a book, even though tensions were high between our two races. We found the key mo-ment and words to look past our difference and vibe together.

That’s what it’s about, coming together and sharing. Whether it’s a moment of your time or simply saying good morning or good night.

First published in the SJRA Advocate Dec 2012 /Jan 2013 issue

Republished in San Francisco Bay View

Reststops, Death

Our bodies are reststops on spaceless voyages beyond doom. Speaking with one of my best friends about death she brought up how “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” is almost like a bible to many Buddhists. She speaks on (bardo) transition between the moment of death up until 49 days later, where you are supposed to have another existence. If you did good and knew how to act, you may be reborn into a realm for the good. Otherwise, you may enter terrible realms where suffering is legio. I told her it does sound like the Christian views of heaven and hell. For me death is a transition, and can appear at the strangest times. Even a seemingly healthy person riding a bicycle everyday may drop dead. I suppose we will all find out in our own ways and collectively by and by what or if anything comes in the hereafter. We will then find out the true phase after we pass, die or transition beyond the body.

When I think of the hereafter, about death and passing, it must be a beautiful state and place without the body. An unencumbered place of unlimited space, growth, expansion, flying, loving and realness. I cannot imagine ugly unenlightening states or things there like hate, racism, sexism, revenge or violence. All those states and conditions will be left in the physical realm. I cannot see the madness of this physical realm carried over to a bodyless world. I cannot see this madness as a part of a spiritual realm, a place without a body.

Before dawn

I did my sit ups, curls, push ups, back arms and leg work. Made a cup of coffee, with cream and sugar-free chocolate. Looking out the thin thick window I see does... deer under the boulder tree, nibbling around in the extra dry brown grasses and weeds, mingling in the long leaves of the tree. The deer are unimpressed by the prison trucks and cars that pass by. Autumn with a late spring sun. I haven't seen any bucks around the does under the tree. Perhaps all three are young deer and their sex is not yet expressed.

Read the Bird Blog for more nature observations!

Rain

Poem by one of my students and friend.

Wind blows harder

Colder

Green grass tilts its bodies

Windward.

Pigeons line up

On the roof

Enjoying the first rain

Waited year long.

We, two people

One mood. One plight

In the corner

Talking, watching.

People passing by

Clinking sound of keys

Of the gate keeper

Walking to and fro.

Gate opens

Group of people

Walk outside

Chattering. Laughing.

Rain has stopped
Sometimes ago
Suddenly
Downpour.

On clothes
On shoulders
On faces
On our lives. 

KP.NVL
Van Nguyen

Today's lesson

I held my prose class today, and did I did a lesson on; What is compassion? What is empathy? I wanted the fellows to relate both states to their individual lives. Some cats went straight to a denotative meaning of both words. Other students went to the denotatíve religious and philosophical meanings, giving the questions no flavor or personality at all. I had given the questions open ended. One guy, an old writer did personalize both compassion and empathy into a story about a lady who helped drug addicts and prostitutes in San Francisco.

I asked for at least two paragraphs. At the end of the writing period I spoke about the importance of making the lesson their own. The compassion and empathy, make the states personal, and see what they come up with. I asked was not empathy encompassed within compassion? Can there be compassion without empathy, was the homework.

Peace Gang - Thank you

Greetings Peace G. family friends and realness folks. Thank you for your thoughts, vibes and blessings. Thanks for continually being a part of the realness struggles to keep human rights, rights of all people, regardless of color or gender in the forefront of the realness struggles. You are definitely an inspiratin for me and always bring me out of a funk, a deep sadness and mild depression. Your thoughts, vibes, heart and meditations help heal me and not to allow the sadness to stay and build a life long nest in my heart, mind and spirit, even though, so many years in physical prison makes it tougher now a days to come out of the funk.

But, I keep creating, glowing and growing. Love and light to brothers and sisters imprisoned around the world especially lifers, LWOP's and those on Death Row.

May the people, the States who love to kill and execute people, soon love to love. Keep sending out realness, love, healing and light. Keep growing and glowing!

A breeze

Sitting in front of art room and feeding the birds as Marty runs his visual art classes. The sparrows, cowbirds and blackbirds come inside the chain-linked fence. The pigeons try to come under the fence and I run them off.

Today I am more at peace with myself than yesterday. At first there was fog on the Folsom hill where the trees that we see or cannot see determines whether there is program or not. The sun broke through and is generous with his rays. There is an about 10 – 15 degree breeze which is nice on the skin. It makes me think of a hug that dispels the loneliness. One can choose not to be lonely but sometimes loneliness gives you no choice.

Art Room - Music

What a day full of song, poetry and music. Diane Patterson came in to do an all the way real concert and brought two of her poetic musical friends, Sara Tone & The Earth Tribe Gospel and Al Torre medicine music bringing tunes to the heart and soul of the men here. Bringing poetry and lyrics that smashes the B.S. and leaves the heart open to hoping. I sat back after the concert and now in the art room I watched our guests check out the previous guest artist wall. Al Torre spoke of Kimberly Bass and flow notion and Sara Tone spoke of Michael Franti. Diane has from the beginning been a part of the art room and a welcome part of my writing classes and has often visited my poetry class as a guest artist sharing her incredible lyrics, songs poetry and prose. So glad I was not on lockdown to miss Diane Patterson and her friends. A blessing and I am sure  Earth Mother is so proud.

Stay real!

(written in November)

Stay Cool

There is a mean hateful officer running the rotunda where I and my co-worker run the weekend guitar check out program. He hates that prisoners have any programs and make things as hard as he can to disrupt the programs. I remember what my long time friend Karin from Sweden tells me, be nice and stay real and not curse anyone out. She is correct, because I give away my peace, realness or power over my realness and love when I get angry and express that anger through verbal insults. So I stayed cool and thankful. Instead of participating in the negative game, that could get me locked up in the hole, I took my flute, some bread, cookies and prison silence and sat down up against the small wall and fed my blackbird and cowbird friends and communed with Earth Mother. The sky was sweet and cool, but my heart, soul and spirit warm and cosy with realness. There are always peaceful, growthful healing ways to express or sublimate anger.

Dreads

I am on lockdown now just because I have dreads. Yesterday there was a fight on the yard between some crips from down south and some blacks from Bay area up north. So they locked all the blacks down to sort things out. However, instead of taking me off lockdown like they did all other blacks not from this groups, they kept me on lockdown and listed me Bay area, non affiliate, or non gang member. I have never been in the Bay area, 35 years ago I came to prison straight away from Barstow, San Bernadino county in southern California. I tried to have them fix their known mistake. I am from Barstow and run alone and never have been a gang member. The prison officials even knowing that as a fact, told me I must file a 2200 appeal form to get off lockdown. They know that will take awhile to be processed, besides they know I am not from the Bay area and know I am not a gang member.

So today and tomorrow I'll be deprived of teaching my classes. If someone was coming to visit me I cannot get my visit. How do they get away with such madness unchecked by any outside source.

Of course I will survive this. I hope whoever was coming to visit me didn't let this madness discourage them. I have never run with any group in prison and administrators know that to be a fact. I wanted to get in as many classes and hang out with as many of my bird friends as I could before I am transferred. So this evil move by prison officials to place me in a box I have no business in has dampened my heart and spirit some. There need to be real oversight on prison officials when they do outlandish and unjustified actions on prisoners. Prisoners just doing their time. It is sad when an administration of prison officials know what the correct thing to do is, and not do it. They know what the honest and real thing to do is, and yet do the wrong.

Redemptive Solitude - A Question of Justice

Drawing by Spoon

The question of justice and equal treatment for the poor, prisoners and people of color in America is absurd, and all the pundits, lawyers, judges, activists and legal folks know that. Historically, it is a question of power and a question of games.

What is most disturbing to me, is how hard it is for the public in America to see how prison is inherently retributive, evil, unforgiving and a deterrent. When prisons need to be more than just an ugly place. If the public used their senses, empirical and empathic, they would know how important some kind of positive flow is.

If individual members of the public spent a few hours, a night or a day in a cell, perhaps in solitary confinement they would realize how deep the wounds are and go. The public would then see no need to heap punishment upon punishment on people already dispirited and beaten down by their actions and losses in life. Being deprived of family contact, indeed human contact is like being denied sunshine for a life time. The concentration of all this negative energy into one place without any positive outlets for prisoners can be stifling, particularly to the human spirit. It is like a saucer of water in a boiling Mojave desert. God gave Satan a second chance even in hell.

The early Quakers had a proper idea about justice and solitude as a place of redemption. The Quakers in 1826 originally thought when they created the first penitentiary that aloneness with a bible and a tiny sun roof was enough to reform folks.

The solitude could have been productive and redemptive had it been an all inclusive healing form of solitude. Yes, spiritually, meditatively based. They had a proper intent, but the wrong format. The Quakers did not know how prison life was, how it can be a continually expanding pit. They did not know how lifeless solitary confinement can be when orchestrated by politics, government and a justice system that creates a nasty form of isolation. Solitude made out of punishment and inhumanity can never be productive.

No beings, human or not, should be kept in cages without any interaction with other human beings or nature. Such alienation can only lead to

dysfunction, mental and spiritual health problems. Just like the overcrowding of institutions are equally horrible and inhumane.

Respected solitude can be just and enlightening and not much different than monks or nuns, shamans or other folks seeking healing and communion with spirit and self. It can be a means of growth and forgiveness of souls suffering through the solitude.

But, isolation based on revenge, money, punishment and retribution cannot heal people. The solitude must be a blessed space of aloneness, and allow people to meet with people, spirits to meet with spirits, and hearts to meet with hearts. If you take away all that makes one human, how do you expect them to be human, and balance their one foot in darkness and one foot in light.

If the goal of penitentiaries are to redeem, heal and self rehabilitate, the solitude, treatment and justice must be an all inclusive meditative space of realness. The animal inside all humans suffer horribly without human contact and respected space with visits, exercise, meditation, arts, books, education, family, friends and nature to heal and bring about justice in America's prison system of politics and injustice. Justice must be a living and breathing healing entity, like Mother Earth.

At Night I Fly – PBS denied

I just found out today in the art room that At Night I Fly has been denied acceptance on American PBS stations. At Night I Fly was a finalist on Point Of View PBS program. We had two guests today in the art room, and I had just read my poems Go On, No Beauty in Cell bars and Not a Poet. I was in a splendid free flowing poetry reading mood, until Jim Carlson, free staff who helps keep alive the art programs, that PBS did not accept the film. My poetic heart dropped like a boulder in a pond. I was too choked up with feelings to do anymore poems, even after Jim asked me to read my poem At Night I Fly. For the cool guests we had there in the art room, one of them spoke of how there are internet things that can be done to bring the film to a USA audience.

Not that I expected an American PBS to do anything less than it did. Yet, I believe in realness and know that film eats raw meat.

I had to step outside of the art room, take deep breaths and commune with my bird friends and the sky. I do not understand the USA's non acceptance of the film At Night I Fly. But, I also do not understand the USA's non acceptance of my work.

This film has won two top awards in Sweden. I know Sweden is a small country, but still. The film has gathered great reviews in other countries as well. Still not even the smallest film festivals in America have accepted the film. Too much realness, I imagine and not enough fomented violence for a USA audience that love to bash prisoners and people of color. If the film was full of us cutting each other's throats USA would have treasured the film.

It breaks my heart, not for me, but for my brother Michel from Sweden, and others who put so much life, hard work, and truth into this unique production. I'll keep being real and spreading realness no matter what. Even if America never accepts me or my work, I value more what folks think and believe around the world. Stay real – Peace G is love and creativity. We'll keep flowing.

Writing classes

I have both my prose and poetry classes up and running sometimes twice a week. I'm trying to get in as many classes as possible before I'm transferred. One of the visiting teaching artists, Anna, who is a tremendous writer, artist and mother came in to do her workshops in my class, she is always most welcome and her stories and lessons shared are little gems of realness appreciated by both of my classes. She has come into my class as a guest artist for years. It makes our classes more real. Anna shares the same goal when it comes to teaching, we are all students and teachers, and the most important thing is to write, write, write, to create from your own hearts, lives and worlds in order to share what is universal.

However, it's an end of an era here at New Folsom Art Room. Sure they can find some other prisoners to have classes and One Soul will still come to embrace the art room. No one is irreplaceable and I will be forgotten here. But I will keep walking in my own shoes knowing that when you walk in someone else's shoes you leave no foot prints.

The Edge

If I am crying, I want to sound like I am crying, and be each tear-drop. If I am dying, I want to sound like I am dying and be each death. Today I did my poetry reading, and realness was my edge, my voice, my tone, my feel and flow.

I do memorize and say my poems out loud, but my readings are spontaneous and unrehearsed. I have no set voice, or tone, or standard modulation. I try not to speak too fast, and pronounce my words clearly. Because, I do hope folks get to savor each word, and let the beat and rhythm ring inside them like cello, violin or native flute, letting each word flow its distance in a cadence that blends one word after another. Sometimes I do rush through a reading, because I think, who am I to stand in front of anyone and read poems. Who am I to think what I offer is worthy of anyone's ears. Still I like to engender my own flow in the moment and not be rehearsed or sing-songy, but just let the moments flow as deep and real as it need be.

If I am sad, happy, angry, proud, romantic, sexy, lonely, crazy, melancholic or bitter, I want that flavor to be expressed. I am a river, a bird or a mountain's cry, whatever those moments entail. I believe we all have our own voice, cadence and speech patterns. We must cultivate that realness, that speaking poetry in our own voice. The power of realness, as steel sharpens steel. Today I opened my poetry reading with my poem “Sag” and closed it with my poem “No beauty in cell bars” and my edge was anger.

Invisible

I've been uninspired and invisible for the last few days, indeed for over a week. So much sadness and melancholy sitting in my heart like low clouds or fog in a mountain valley. Not waiting to do anything, feeling too much alone.

I've not been inspired to write even snail mails, something I adore doing.

I'm in a lull and invisible like a fish without eyes in the deepest, darkest depths of the sea. I am full of emotion, actually fears longing to roll out. I am full of passion, love and realness, but no expression. But, as I write this blog I am coming out of this lull and have started my snail mail writing as well.

Michel's visit - At Night I Fly

I've just seen "At Night I Fly" for the first time. I've still not seen the short documentary "Three Poems by Spoon Jackson", that started this film history.

I must say Michel did the best job on the film and I can see why it won the Swedish Oscar and also the second biggest award in Sweden. The piece is amazing, unique, real and a blended balance of art, life prison, and the human condition everywhere.

This film touched on aspects of life and art in a way that transcended stereotypes and hatred. It'ss a blended non sentimental ballad of a film with imagery, art and words. Life and suffering at it's deepest, and most profound levels and at times a bit absurd. Something I'm sure Samuel Beckett and Barney Rosset would have appreciated. The proper balance of imagery, silence and speech which spoke for themselves. Young people are able to see from the film how prison life is and can be and not glorify it. Young folks anywhere in the world can relate to At Night I Fly.

The only thing I'm kicking myself in the ass about is how I could have been more in the film, and could have had an individual interview like the other prisoners in the film, if I would have kept my ego more in check. I was pissed off because there were limits on where I could be filmed. I told Michel the film maker forgive me and my ego for getting in the way of the production at times.

But Michel told me the way I am in the film was not perfect but fitted the entire narrative perfectly. The Spoon I am came across and I am thrilled about that. The film is a blessing. A unique, universal take on humanity, prison life and the arts. How as human beings we are all connected through darkness and light. I could be you and you me. I know it's hard to believe.

Thanks film maker brother Michel, and At Night I Fly.

- - - 

 

If you want to see the films, buy the DVD's here:

At Night I Fly

Three Poems by Spoon Jackson

More about At Night I Fly on this blog:
Why not At Night I Fly, America? 
At Night I Fly - Thank you

Art Room: Rock & Roll

Again I sat in front of the art room reading Paolini's Brisingr Eragon and J.K Rowling's Harry Potter, first book. I thought perhaps I must read one of the H. Potter books to see what all the fuss is about. Inside the art room there's rock-n-roll. It lasts from 8:30 to around 11:00 am. Some wardens, prisoners and free staff passes by and they commented on the singing and no one of them liked the rock-n-roll singing today. The rock-n-roll is so loud sometimes you can still hear it down the corridor and on the yard. I sit and commune with the birds and warm breeze. The free staff supervisor sits outside too, during the rock-n-roll session. The blues session takes over at around 11:30. The door is left open to let the blues flow into the breeze and corridor, not closed like when the rock band plays. I like all kinds of music, blues and rock. I just want to be blown away by it.

New release

Spoon's poem Go On is one of the poems in a new anthology called "Too cruel, not unusual enough". SF Bay View writes: "This book, about to be released, is made up of essays and poems by prisoners sentenced to “the other death penalty,” the long, slow, agonizing death of life in prison without hope of parole. This poem by Spoon Jackson is one of them. The editor and co-editors are also serving LWOP sentences, and the cover was designed by a prison artist."

Clinic Politics - Health Care/Diabetic

The four pillars to good diabetic health are: diet, wholesome food, exercise, and monitoring of your diabetic status. I found out in 2003 that I am a Type II diabetic as I literally peed out sugar water. At times, my sugar level can be high or low, sometimes within the same day, expressing itself by making me lightheaded, faint, or giving me headaches. Due to injury to my hip and back, I was unable to walk down to Medical for a few days and I missed my diabetic treatment. When my hip and back healed enough to walk back down to the clinic, the nurse who runs the diabetic checks convinced the doctor to stop my diabetic morning treatment. I heard she said it was too much work. All the nurse does is hand over the finger stick and record the findings. How hard can that be?

Over the years here, I have met a couple nurses who had over 20 years experience inside prisons and in the outside world. Both nurses quit because they said they were not able to nurse, to do their jobs as best they can, because of the clinic politics. Both nurses retired or moved on to outside jobs. One shared with me, with tears in her eyes, the frustration of trying to do their jobs and be real nurses. The real nurses are not with the politics.

We are stuck here in prison with some nurses and doctors who do treatment on paper and in quotas and not according to any medical oaths as doctors and nurses in health care. Why be in health care anywhere if you don’t care?

I have observed that many nurses here at New Folsom just want to do the least amount of work as possible. They complain that diabetic treatment takes up too much time. Sadly, some nurses and doctors are here just for the big money and are not concerned about patients anymore than slavers were concerned about the education of slaves.

To make their jobs easier, some nurses will do anything not to call a prisoner down to the clinic to tend to the prisoner’s health. This is in order not to appear weak or to show genuine concern for a prisoner’s health. Some nurses’ and doctors’ main concerns are custody issues and not the health of prisoners. So why are they in health care?

Prison doctors and nurses have no real checks and balances, except other nurses and doctors who are questionable themselves. There used to be healthy diabetic trays back in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and part of the ‘90s. But they stopped the diet dishes to redirect that money toward the health care practitioners who barely do their jobs. Nurses and doctors who try to impress custody with how bad nasty they can treat prisoners, or to get out of treating us at all.

As diabetics here at New Folsom, we are only given the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner as non-diabetics. We have been advised not to consume most of the food on the trays and what’s left does not sustain one throughout the entire day.

The health care folks I have among my friends and family contacts in the free world, said I should be getting a special diabetic diet. And my sugar levels should be checked each day. I should be getting supplements to lower or raise my sugar levels as needed. None of this happens.

© Spoon Jackson
First published in SJRA Advocate September issue 2012

Reprinted with permission of Barbara Brooks, SJRA Advocate monthly prison newsletter.

Art Room

Only one person came to check out a guitar today to play on the small yard. So I sat outside the art room and watched the sky and barked sweetly at the crows, and played my flute. Prisoners went upstairs to visit*. I tossed the geese, pigeons and black birds my bread. I had a special treat for my crow friend. There weren't any sparrows today on the backyard. So I went to the front yard and found a group of spring sparrows and watched, tweeted at them and shared the cookie I had brought for the crow. I could sit all day long under a shade tree and ponder or read.

*to the visiting room