Wake up call – Lockdown

Does it take the loss of human lives like hundreds of prisoners being burnt up in a Honduras prison for the human rights organisations to wake up? Does it take another Rwanda that took over a million lives? Does it take prisoners being shot dead in masses or one having a plunger stuck up his anus by wayward cops?

It is amazing how flagrant discrimination continues on C-yard at New Folsom against black prisoners and no human rights groups have stepped up. Black prisoners are being denied programs that whites, browns and others are allowed based not on anything black prisoners have done. This is Black History Month, where are the black historians? Where are Amnesty International, ACLU, NAACP, FBI or Federal government to stop this unequal treatment of prisoners based on color of skin.

Back in December 2011 they said there was a race riot, so if that is true, why only black people are locked down? All other races have normal prison programs, and that is all I ask for of this inhumane prison system, equal treatment of prisoners and of people in general.

On the day of the incident most blacks were already confined to cells or at work. There was but a handful of black prisoners on the yard that day. So why are all blacks locked down?

Someone needs to step up and speak up and look into this Jim Crow treatment. Black folks in prison are still being hung from trees.

Happy Birthday

A shout out to Peace G's everywhere and to all my realness people of love and forgiveness. Please send your realness vibes and thoughts in to me. Happy Birthday February 21, a special shout out to my brilliant acting buddy, happy birthday and continuation day to you! I am with you and thinking of you. You are a blessing to Mother Earth and everyone and all Peace G's. Your smile bring light to us all. Stay real forever glowing and growing. One love, One world. 
From the African Swede Spoon.

Peaceful waters

Looking out of the thin thick plastic window where the rain has washed away the paint the prison put on the window so that we can't see outside. Thanks to Mother Earth and her tear drops of happiness and sadness. I can see two geese lying under some high thick piping, just chillin' and enjoying the morning. I wonder do they know how they free my spirit this moment? They free me to soar away from this Jim Crow lockdown. They passed out a memo and the prison is determined to get rid of all the geese this year. They are my peaceful waters inside.

My Reality

As a teaching artist, as a human being, I would be lying if I did not say I would love to travel the world, to depart to unknown places to infuse my work and to share my art. There are a host of warm hearts in Sweden and France I would treasure meeting. 

But I am an artist confined physically by concrete, steel and electric wires for 35 years. Sometimes teaching artists must stay put by choice or circumstance, yet their hearts, minds and spirits must still travel. Somewhere I read you don’t have to travel the world to know the hearts of man. These days I am not even able to travel past the bars of my own cell.

An officer told me today that a pair of geese came up to the art room fence, honking for me this morning, as loud as fog horns – their voices echoing throughout the corridor. But I will not be there today, at least not physically, because we are on lock-down for I do not know how long. 

There was a riot yesterday(*), on the big yard, between some black and brown prisoners. I will not be allowed out of the cage to run my classes... Read the whole essay at Alt/Space


(* the riot referred to is the one in November 2011)

Lockdown update

New Folsom C-facility still have black prisoners on total lockdown during Black History month. This is a Jim Crow lockdown. No other race here is on lockdown, although prison official boast of a race riot that happened last year. The prison officials, like after slavery was abolished in the south, have made an evil unjustified way of locking only black prisoners down and say it was because of a race riot. When in reality the majority of blacks on C-yard were in their cells or at work. The few that were on the yard were victims of a hate crime that the administration knew would happen. They are able to distinguish one group or gang from another inside the white or brown races but supposedly are dumbfounded when it comes to black prisoners. This side of C-facility did not even have programs that day of the incident.

So it's over two months now that only black prisoners are denied basic prisoners programs that other races have. The prison don't seem to care or have any plans to fix the problem. Please send your blessings realness people. I send mine to you!

At Night I Fly - Thank you

Congratulations to my Swedish brother Michel and all the folks involved in creating the realness documentary on Arts In Corrections! The film just won the The Guldbagge Award, the “Swedish Oscar” for best documentary. I am honored to be a part of it and to have the film named after my poem “At Night I Fly”.

Thank you for showing our realness around the world, while USA is stuck on hating and non forgiving. Thank you for beleivng in me Sweden! Stay real!

At Night I Fly 

I go where the wind hides
When it's not blowing.

I watch the clouds gobble
Up the moon.
I see my thoughts, my feelings,
My love crash
Like seas on ships.

I stand on top of swords and spears.
Iwalk up on endless staircases and mountains
On the tips of giant nails
Drinking spirits out of huge goblets.

My heart pounds against no chest.
I know not what to tell it
Crowded in solitudes.
Too many souls alone to be
One body.

The moon's a defaced minted silver dollar.
It sleeps alone in its own universe.
No longer a star.

Today I died.
I died yesterday and tomorrow.
At night I fly.

© Spoon Jackson

Buy Spoon's poetry book Longer Ago at lulu.com

Nothing Human

We big banged our love into the world.

He belongs to a community of darkness,

where robbers, liars, cheats, assaulters,

war mongers, politicians, bomb makers, business men,

preachers, pimps and stock market chasers,

way layers of hearts and souls,

dream killers of the spirit.

He belongs to the same community you belong to

where you shade your one foot in darkness.

A community of realness

where all the people walk

in their own shoes

and come together in love

peace and sharing regardless of sex, color,

gay, straight or criminal.

Seeing all peole as one people

A blessing to Mother Earth

My community believes

in freedom, hope

and forgiveness.

I belong to a community

of readers,

of scolars, a community

of healers

activists, artists and thinkers,

dreamers and lovers.

A community of the broken hearted

a community of humans

a community of knowers

that nothing human is alien to anyone.

© Spoon Jackson

Lockdown 2012 - Medical

Lockdown, Jim Crow lockdown continues, at New Folsom where only black prisoners are on total lockdown.Still no end in sight. Now the prison medical has taken me off diabetic treatment in the mornings. I don't know why, they just stopped handcuffing me and taking me out of the cell for treatment.

I have not seen any doctor to have my treatment altered. But, the Federal government have left the California state Medical prison system, so treatment of prisoners health has begun to revert backwards.

No matter, I drink a lot of water and eat sparingly. I'll keep reading and writing glowing and growing. Blessings to all realness people. Peace and one love! We are love!

(written on February 1st)

From a letter

"...Yes, still on lockdown and no end in sight so far.  We don't get anything other than the garbage food they serve. So glad I had some package and store food. Eventually they will give packages and food back, probably after three months. No phonecalls or visits until lockdown is lifted. 

Sometimes I don't say anything in my letters about negative things going on that direectly affects me because I don't want to give it energy or more energy with my friends and family knowing about it. It was time to speak about the cell situation because I was getting out of it. I often need the public and people to know what's going on so that the administration cannot set me up with lies. People can call in and check on me and make sure I'm okay. 

I'm going to write something soon about the cell situation in general, how they force people into cells together that don't get along and if you don't go inside the cell the administration officials and wardens make your life miserable and sometimes they try to set you up in a bad cellie situation on purpose. One prisoner got killed in the cell recently on this yard. Don't know any details but they were black and on lockdown. More people should have cells to themselves, but the state and the courts don't care even when people in cells kill eachother. 

I'm doing fine and enjoy creating those little essays. It seems like more folks are becoming aware of my writing..."

Eternal Spring

He doesn't smile anymore

because when he does

not long before sadness

comes like a flash flood

in the desert

and takes it away

Every time, everything he is,

every time he is happy

some one's head gets chopped

off or a goose or pigeon

gets kicked around

He doesn't smile anymore

until he gets a kiss

that awakens eternal spring

and summer

© Copywright 2012 Spoon Jackson

Peace G

At Night I Fly

AT NIGHT I FLY won the prestigeous Swedish Guldbagge film festival award for Best documentary of the year!!
Winners in English at The Yellow Affair
and the thank you speech in Swedish.

The last letter writer

Can you imagine a world without artists? No composers, no painters, no actors, no writers, no sculptors, no singers, no musicians, no film-makers, no dancers, and no poets. What is a world without hand-held, heart-written, letters? An unnatural, barren landscape, a touch of lips instead of a kiss.

People in prisons might be the last letter writers in the world, like the Dead Poets Society or a lost ancient language. Some folks in the free world have never received a letter, not a sad or happy letter, not a real love letter that touches hearts and souls. Some people have grown up without ever having written a letter or even knowing how to address an envelope because the art and the soul of letter creating has become truncated, abbreviated, and high-tech. But you cannot replace the stars the sun or moon with a pen-light, flash-light, or spot-light.
Emails and tech-mails and whatever mails in space will vanish over the years, but the written word stands strong like a mountain. Letter writers create words in their own unique, beautiful and ugly way — the hand, heart, and body language on paper. The connection that each letter writer creates will be lost like Atlantis or the Fountain of Youth. Letter writing, like a delicious dance gifted from the goddesses, may then be considered only a dark art, practiced by just a few people.

The magic of a pen or pencil melting into paper, embraced in your hands, shows the  tension and the depths of your spirit, shows how excited or relaxed you are. Letters are the footprints of your soul, like no other‘s. They are the body, heart, and spirit language, showing the truth of a happy or wounded soul. Words huddled together on paper, molding letters in one‘s own way, in any language, is an art form that has been passed on from cavedwelling days. An art form as old as poetry and story-telling.

Letter writing is vanishing like the polar bears and their melting homes. Prisoners may be the last letter writing communities in the world. I‘ll start The Last Letter Writers Club. The last letter writers united in the struggle to keep letters alive. So, write someone and be part of the last letter writers! We are running out of people to write.

There is something freeing about creating letters, something that nourishes and replenishes even the most stubborn, hardened, and often the most unworthy hearts and spirits. Letter writing offers unity of the mind, body, and soul, and sometimes gives the shadow side of ourselves a way out of the darkness, a way to share that dark energy in a harmless and creative way. So, write a letter and be part of the community in the struggle of the Letter Writers United.

First published at The Advocate, www.sjra1.com
Reprinted with permission of Barbara Brooks, SJRA Advocate monthly prison newsletter 

Lockdown, still

About the lockdown that followed after the riot at New Folsom prison in the beginning of December 2011.

The riot happened on C-yard over a month ago, and still no word on when any Black prisoners will be out of lockdown. The blacks, the few blacks that were out on the yard, were the victims of a hate crime. Most of the blacks that day were confined to cells or at work. Still blacks are the only race on total lockdown. The officials said it was a race riot. So why are blacks the only ones on lockdown? Why, since the few blacks on the yard were victims, why are they on lockdown, while no other race is? This is a racist Jim Crow lockdown, since the blacks have attacked no one.

Moving past hostile classes

In 1988, after I performed Pozzo in Waiting for Godot before international audiences at San Quentin State Prison, my confidence and belief in myself as a poet, artist and human being rose and flowed with inspiration like a thawing creek in spring.  I wanted to share openly and freely whatever gifts I have as an artist and, hopefully, inspire others to share their gifts. 
I became a teacher’s aide.  I ran small writing, reading and acting groups in the 1990’s at Donovan State Prison and at California Men’s Colony Prison.  I remember going into hostile classrooms to recite poetry and Shakespeare and to read my published work.  A lot of the cats in the classrooms did not know what to make of me.  I could see who in the hell do he think he is in some faces.  When I introduced myself and told the class how long I had been in prison, some of their masks fell down. Some students.....read the full essay at tajaltspace.com

Art Room: Guest Poet

A poet came inside from Sacramento Poetry Center to do a reading and run a workshop. Whenever I have a guest artist, I step back and assist them, and listen to his or her presentation. I give them the floor to impart whatever realness and insights they can conjure up and share.

This guest poet usually speaks to children in elementary school so his way of relating to children carried over some into his presentation to my class. Some cats thought he was being condescending my co-workers, a teaching artist also thought the guest artist was talking down to the group. I freferred not to jugde for that moment. But when the the guest read a nursery rhyme type poem and recited it in a goofy unhip way, I asked him to recite some of his own work.

He had assumed we had no knowledge of any classical poets. He brought up Robert Frost in a way as he was introducing us to him. When in fact I use Robert Frost's work in my class as a lesson.

This guest kept reading other poets work and I kept prodding him to read his own text, so that he could connect to the group and break away from his regular elementary school presentation. A presentation that was blinding him from seeing how deep our group was. It was his first time inside prison. Towards the end of his class he finally got it, after I had a student or two read some of their work. He read one of his poems and connected a little.

Art Room: Walked up

Now that the most vicious and outlandish bird hater has been transferred to another prison, I hope to convince my geese family pair to stay again on the small yard to nest.

Yet there are still a few bird haters around, so a native American brother and I are trying to get the geese to nest in their area, sacred grounds where the bird haters cannot go. I'm trying to figure out how to communicate to the geese that just 25 yards away from where they nested the first time, it's safe for them to build their home. Just this moment my geese family walked up. I must go.

Art room: Peanuts

Today it rained all day, a lovely sweet rain. My bird friends came out and shared food with me anyways. I found out all of my bird friends, crows, black birds, cowbirds, sparrows, pigeons and sea gulls all like peanuts and will venture out in the rain to partake in the treat. The peanut butter pouch was in a puddle of water yet the black birds fished chunks of it out over and over again. The geese were the only ones that did not care for the peanut butter. So I fed them the fruit and bread I had.
The weather folks had predicted a slight chance of rain after noon. Yet it had been raining all morning. Mother Earth doing her thing.
The blues band played in the art room today and practiced a batch of new songs. I think blues and jazz is perfect for a rainy day. After blues there was the R&B band, but they still have not gotten any songs down in years and seem directionless.
Tomorrow is my poetry class and we shall have a guest singer song writer come in. So we shall do a poetry/song sharing session. Perhaps, I'll even read a poem.

Prison food: Breatharian

Another new essay by Spoon, who is now writing on a regular basis for both SJRA's The Advocate and Teachers Artist Journal's ALT/space.

Yes, I know, who cares what food you feed the animals? To look at the prison menu and how the food is described, you think you are getting delicious and real food. Only what is served is nothing like the menu. It is like getting a big bag of chips with a pretty picture on the cover, but inside, only air. The so-called cheese they serve does not even melt. The chicken, beef, fish and turkey are all 99 percent soy mixed with...Read the whole essay at The Advocate monthly newsletter, SJRA1.com

Deadlines

Today I prepare and gather my wits, thoughts, and hopefully wisdom to write an article and to teach my poetry class. I have two deadlines. Despite how dense the tension is in the cell block, I must still prepare to go out and run my class. Despite almost getting into a fight with three other prisoners, only moments ago, I must create an article for the Teaching Artist Journal.  I have a deadline...Read the full essay at ALT/space

No Winds

Mighty strange how the dust

appeared in the desert

one day, no winds

under an orange sherbert sunset

The dust did not trickle down

from any mountains

or circle down

from the sky

It did not come

from the Dust bowl

or Grapes of Wrath

or Mother Earth

The dust appeared

from unseen places

it slows down your breath

and marchmallows your heart

There is no sense of time

no sense of speed

no sense of space

you think you are moving

when you are not

you think you are seeing

when you are not

You think you are stronger

than you are

that you could shimmy

through stone

and stroll through

cactus high flames

You think you could fly

The dust did not come

from angels

or alien ships

The dust was created

to kill

the poor and fill

the American prisons

with black and brown people

The dust was brought down

to the desert

from the cities

from white, black and brown gangs

Dust that had been

dropped into their hoods

out of no where

like manna

© Spoon Jackson 

(for Michka and Gil Scott Heron)

Bird Blog: Pure White

New post on the Bird Blog!

Struggle to be

I don’t want to give loneliness freelance to do its thing, but ultimately, sometimes it happens anyway. So long it has been since my body has been where it wanted to go. I read, write, and I long for a hug, a long walk down the beach, a hike up a mountain path, and to plant and watch a garden prosper in spring. I long to go to Sweden where I know people care for me. I ponder, I dream and wonder.

I struggle to be — yesterday, today, and tomorrow, not unlike what came before. The days seem to run into each other, like merging clouds and only yesterday, a moment ago, it seems like I was nineteen.
There was a place inside me back then, an unknown area, I went to when I started this time in prison decades ago. A place inside I did not know existed, or know now how I naturally went there each time some new prison horror, rule, or behavior required me to go to this spot.

Like everyone, everywhere in the world, upon awakening each morning I struggle to be who I am. I try to avoid the omnipresent thoughts of loneliness, boredom, death, and aloneness that are enhanced ten-fold in prison. But the thoughts keep coming.

The graying grass and dwarfed flowers have been cut and rolled under by pounds of steel. A few bees are busy seeking to pollinate the remaining damaged flowers and bring them back to life. They suckle out what is left in the bulbs.

From a barred, thick-thin, plastic window on the backside of the cell, I can see rock doves, geese, turkeys, and a couple of huge black birds — crows — poised on the edge of silence. There are only marble -sized spots in the window I can see out of, and then only if I twist and strain my eyes and body. I see out of the window where the rain has washed away some of the paint that darkens the window in the colorless wall. I hope there will be an angle for the sun to blink in through the window and share some hope.

Why can’t we live our dreams, each being in their own niche? Where loneliness and despair are like far away stars, a million light years from here. Where love, peace, and kindness bloom like sunflowers. Why must life be a dream, a moment, a utopia, a puff of smoke? Oh why must a wildflower wither and go away when the sun forever shines?

Standing in the same spot each morning, I struggle to be who I am for a day, for a moment. At dusk, the red-headed black turkey vultures appear circling closer and closer, like soft flowing kites, not once flapping their wings.

Still, I am in awe of small things: baby sparrows, crows, geese, spiders, black birds, cow birds, rock doves, and baby flowers. They make me smile, like the lovely spider’s web in the corner of the art room window and the daddy long-legs spiders in the cage outside the art room where I sit and play my Native American flute.

The sweet sunrays of winter, summer, spring, and fall warm my heart. Looking at a transparent moon in a daylight sky makes me hope. It all makes me wonder about nothing in particular. No language is required and no reason.

Published in the SJRA Advocate October 2011. Reprinted with permission of Barbara Brooks, SJRA Advocate monthly prison newsletter available free at www.sjra1.com

Swedish premiere of At Night I fly

The Swedish premiere of Michel Wenzer's documentary At Night I Fly, Images from New Folsom is November 25. It shows at Folkets Bio, an independent cinema represented all over the country. It will later come up on Swedish National TV.

Pockets of light

As I headed out of the cell this morning to the art room for my creative writing class, I walked slowly and the families of geese on the roofs of cell blocks seven and eight started to honk and shake their heads as they caught sight of me.  Four geese, already on the ground, waddled over, lowered their necks and heads, mouths open with tongues extended.  This is a traditional geese family greeting, so I did the same thing.

A little over two years ago I helped the parent geese raise their goslings on the yard, many times pulling goslings out of holes they had fallen into.  I am accepted as part of their family.  My geese family knows that each morning I will be there if I can, and that I come in peace to share my bread and fruit with them.  I also play my Native American flute and I watch them watching me, and the soothing sounds of the flute make the geese relaxed.  We sit there together and gaze at the sun.

I am out of the cell at least one to two hours before my class starts.  I cherish that time to greet Mother Earth, the sun, my bird friends, and play the flute in the mornings.  Sometimes I create writing lessons as I sit there in the jazz of the morning.  In one lesson I’ve had my class write prose and poems from the point of view of a bird on the yard, or some other animal or plant friend from their past.  Another time, I’ve had my students write a poem about autumn, or the end of summer.  In my most recent lesson I asked my class to focus on “community” and to create prose and poems from whatever angle they choose to speak.

One of my most dedicated students, Wkiri Ologun, shows in his extraordinary essay and poem on community how our writing space of realness can be framed.  This excerpt is one of the reasons why I am a teaching artist, and why hope continues to flow from behind bars:

My interest, hope and aspirations are kept locked away in my mind in order to protect the most precious thing I have, my humanity, from the corrupting forces around me.

But there is another side of prison that most people aren’t aware of: small pockets of light where likeminded people can come together and for an hour or so, once or twice a week, creating a community that is briefly insulated from the greater prison complex.  This for me has been the arts program here at New Folsom State Prison.  I currently participate in two writing classes (poetry and prose) with a small group of ‘diverse and complex’ inmates unified in the goal of fostering an environment of supportive understanding in order to cultivate craft.

This craft, writing, has been a saving grace for me, allowing me to be able to express on paper what I am not able to in my everyday surroundings.

Those pockets of light, they arrive to my creative writing classes from all the territories on the yard.  They stroll in with each of their cultures written in their walk, dress, tattoos, talk and hair styles; Latin, Native American, Asians, white, and African.  There is no other place in the prison where these men gather as one community, one humanity, and one group of writers who sit, write and converse together.

They are writers creating text they can humbly, proudly, and heartfully send home to their mom or dad, their sisters or brothers, their sons or daughters or their wives or girlfriends.  More than one student has told me how much their family and friends have loved an essay or a poem written in one of our writing sessions.

We greet, congress, and then we do our writing.  Nothing needs to be said other than: Gentlemen, it is time to write.

My Community is Safe
Away from the riff-raff and brouhaha that surrounds you; far from the interloper, the agitator, or the way layer.  My community shines with the sterling gleam of serenity; pure like fire with the warmth and comfort of an old friend.

My community nourishes the soul, with the light from above driving away shadows, rich fertile ground for my potential to grow.

My community isn’t quiet; it bustles with the vibrant sounds of life, flowing like a river roaring in my ears.

It drowns out the outside, uplifting my health.  My community is safety; a community of self.
 -Wakiri Ologun

Spoon Jackson

First published at Teacher Artist Journal's tajaltspace.com
Republished with permission from Malke Rosenfeld, tajaltspace

Prison Politics – Abolished

Should American prisons be abolished? I posed this question to some of my co-workers and students in the art room. I know a lot of free people in America and particularly in California who thinks it's just fine to continue building and filling up more prisons, and keeping prisoners who have decades in prison, and have more than served their time in any civilized society.

Some people are pissed off at being a victim of crime, and therefore think whatever happens to prisoners they have earned it, and all that is understandable.

Some white and black prisoners in the art room get pissed, when I must bring up race to show the results of a bias, inherently racist judicial and penal system, particularly in California.

One white prisoner tells me ”Spoon, blacks cannot keep playing the victim, saying they are in prison due to environmental, economical and societal reasons”. The white guy said ”Why am I in prison?”

First, I told the white guy, blacks are not crying victim and are just stating facts of a racist society, a racist educational, judicial and penal system. Racism is still so blatant now here in the USA, as if, they are still hanging thousands of black and brown prisoners on shade trees across this golden state.

It astounds me how those systems are able to turn black and brown people against people in prison of their own hue, when everyone, including the whites know that the injustice in the prison system and justice system and educational system are all race based.

Second, I told the white prisoner, every advantage, every condition in California and the USA is set up for white folks to succeed. White people are the majority in this country and set up the game plans and embed race hatred in the middle.

Conditions for failure for people of color, black and brown, have been entrenched into the American society for hundreds of years. Slavery in America has been channeled into the prison system. When the prison system was mainly white, the laws and sentences of prisoners were light and forgiving. Yes, prisons should be abolished. My co-workers say we should fix the system, because we cannot allow prisoners who have created horrible crimes to run amuck. Abolishing prisons does not mean that. You cannot fix a rotten penal system from the middle or the end. It would be like cutting the tail, the rattle off a rattle snake, you can still get bit. Prisons are made up of people, so fix the conditions that bring young people to the penal system. The educational, job, environmental and social conditions must be modified to prevent young folks from coming to prison in the first place. Prisons should be abolished and replaced with spiritual and mental establishments.

Lets start a true dialogue, pro and cons about abolishing prisons in America!