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

Bird Stuff in August

Read seven new August posts on the Bird Blog.

Follow Spoon

Drawing by Spoon

Follow Spoon on Twitter. His tweets also appear on Facebook.

Back on lockdown

Unlock had lifted and I was just about to start my writing classes, but now all blacks on C-yard are back on race based lockdown. They say a correctional cop and a prisoner had a fight or something. Don't have any details. I have to go back to deep writng and reading.


Notice
This particular lockdown only lasted 3 or 4 days. No lockdown now, though the prison has cancelled all night programming. Given what's happening on C Facility, it's good Spoon (and other LWOPs) will be transferred to somewhat lower security prisons fairly soon.

Beyond I

Drawing by Spoon

Shakespeare said,

when sorrows come

they come not as single spies

but in battalions

The lion in me is roaring

this morning, alone

but feeling all the inhumanity

of prison

I am constantly embracing

sorrows and letting them go

inviting in sunshine and spring

inviting in sweet summer rains

But this year sorrows outnumber

the rain drops and keep coming

like run-away trains

I keep embracing the sorrows

and letting them go

hoping for the best

hoping for some rest

Space to keep dreaming

Space to keep being real

Time to keep healing

Time to keep being love

Beyond labels and names

I'll keep being

until I am beyond sorrows

and pain

until I am beyond heartache

and hate

until I am beyond I

The beast in me

at peace

a calm stream in a placid

valley

© Spoon Jackson

End of an era

Here at New Folsom Art room/AIC (Arts In Corrections) it's an en end of an era because they are making it impossible for LWOP to program here unless you are a trouble maker in constant trouble. They are changing C-yard to a non programming yard and transferring all long term programmers. So Marty, Ken, Spoon, Marco who run the Arts In Corrections classes, we are all up for transfer and probably all be gone by the end of the year. Not that any of us are indispensable, just that there wont be an Art room or yard to do art programs. So, I hope Alaskans and anyone else who has been a part of AIC/Art room and wants to see us together for the last time will come in as soon as possible. "Big C" who ran singing classes has already been transferred.

Bird Blog

Read new posts on the Bird Blog

Lockdown, ten months

They have eased up some on the lockdown only to unleash their next phase in their plan to continue making this yard a non programming yard. They are allowing some more blacks to go to work. Still I am denied work, visits and phone calls and still locked in cell almost all the time. There has not been any incident between blacks and south sider Mexicans since April, not even a frown and yet lockdown continues. I sit longing to go to work and close out my prose and poetry classes in realness. But New Folsom's plan is to not have any programs on C-yard and to bring in all the trouble makers they can, to foment continuous strife on this yard until they are ready to change it into a sensitive needs level four yard. Sad thing because this was once a progressive programming yard that rivalled most lower level prisons until the state decided to make it dysfunctional.

 

Lockdown, No Drama

Unlock seems to be working, they have been releasing blacks and south sider Mexicans to go to work, store, yard and medical and nothing has happened. Still they have not allowed me to go to work. Still there are no visits or phone calls. Yard has been very controlled with one building at a time and before this past week it was one race on the yard at a time. Yesterday all races was on the yard and nothing happened. So I hope they let me go to work next week. Because due to new criteria I and all LWOP's with low points will be transferred to lower level prisons, which isn't always a blessing. It depends on where you go.

The entire Art Room (formally Arts In Corrections) workers may be transferred. My transfer may happen in September. So, I'm looking for places to send some of my property out to the streets, letters and paperwork for safe keeping. They are changing New Folsom C-facility into a lockdown hole kick out yard with no programs. Soon even the Art room will be shut down. Shut down of programs seems to be a part of the new mission at New Folsom, and they are no longer hiding that plan.

(written August 10)

Go On

For Samuel Beckett

I cannot go on like this

but, I will go on

on and on even when

on is off

Something is stirring

in my soul, wanting

to burst out like a

hot spring in the desert

Wanting to come out

and I don't know

what it is, in the moment

I hope it's a poem

I hope it's a song

Something vast like Euripides

something wise and funny

like Aristophanes

something deep like Langston Hughes

so deep in the seas

where no light goes

I know what it is

I want to create my way

off this lockdown

and write my way

out of prison

They allowed redemption

once

but only condemnation now

I cannot go on

but, I will go on

on and on even when

on becomes off

Melancholic and sad

they are letting some

lifers go home

some, I have known for a lifetime

and that's a good thing

Yet, there is no end

in sight for me

and I don't know

anymore where to go

to get strength to go on

I don't know where

to go to leave

this sadness and pain

and make my heart sing again

and make my spirit soar again

Everywhere I look

there is a big sign

that says no

no forgiveness, no love

no hope, no second chance

no dreams, no romance

I cannot go on

but, I will go on

on and on even when

on becomes off

But, I have nowhere

to go

nowhere that says

yes

Yes, it's okay to dream

for some come true

yes, it's okay to hope

for freedom is free

yes, it's okay to love

for love can be true

I sit here in the moment

in melancholic limbo

why keep dipping into

an empty well

I cannot go on

I will go on

even when on

becomes off and

I have nowhere to go

© Spoon Jackson

Bird Stuff Suite in July

Drawing by Spoon

Turkeys

It's warm and windy out. The tall blondish brown grass is swaying on the other side of the razor and electric fences. The grasses, dancing to Mother Earth's song. A few blackbirds and cowbirds just outside the window. Looking out I saw the mother turkey and beside her the baby turkey I had seen weeks ago. It is about four or five times bigger. They cross the dirt road to the boulder field, where in the distance the hills fall into a drop, some kind of valley and more sky. It was so great to see the baby turkey is still striving and growing.

I don't know which side of the dirt road and fields the mother turkey and its baby lives on. I never see them walking up the road at late dusk near the fences like grown gobblers and turkeys without babies. I imagine they travel under the cover of tall grasses, there must be a route through the grasses and tiny hills.

Wait! Wow, amazing, moments ago I spoke about not seeing any mother turkeys and their young walking up the road towards where I imagine the turkey trek, looking out the window I see two mother turkeys walking up the road with about twelve chicks! I guess the young are quick and strong enough to bring out in the open now.

Early

The next day, after the rains I got up early and watched the grass outside my window to see if the brown grass had greened any since the night rains.

The sky over the fields, by the tree and small hills are filled again with swallows darting about. A true dove is back on the razor wire. The squirrel is in the shade under the tree on his second look out boulder, where weeks ago I saw the turkey hen hanging out with her baby. I don't know what you call a baby turkey. I wonder what the squirrel is watching.

Maybe there wasn't enough rain, enough wet for the fields of wild grass to turn green. I'll await the true dove and watch the dusk from the window.

Lime yellow canary

I waited at dusk again looking out of the thin thick window hoping to see the new geese family. The turkeys pass on their way home from the feeding fields. The gobblers follow the hens. The males hang out in groups of threes. Their legs are like long popsickle sticks. I wait and again the true wing-tail dove appear atop of the razor wire, only four feet up from the lethal electric fence.

I put a window cover in, but something keeps making noise and I take the covers out of the window and see a tiny lime yellow-green canary staring and fluttering up and down the window. We stared at eachother a few moments before it flew away.

Smile

A new day and the bushy tailed ground squirrel is standing tall on one of his look-out boulders near the shaggy evergreen tree. I was so blessed yesterday to see two wild mother turkeys taking a rambunctious group of baby turkeys up the road to the turkey tree. First time I ever saw that. It made my day. I suppose my day isn't hard to make. A smile can do that too.

Peace and realness

Bird feast

I see now what countless swarms of insects the swallows, starlings, cow birds, red winged blackbirds, crows, kill deer and some other kind of birds I don't know the name of, that spread their wings like a cape or umbrella to shade the ground as they catch something to eat.

I don't think the true ring-tailed doves or pigeons were eating the tiny insects. They are on the cell window right now. They hop and fly like tiny grasshoppers. They definitely have been the feast the swallows and other birds filled their bellies with. There must be tons of them, for more than ten days the birds have been feasting and yet at dusk today, I still see the insects boldly all over the window sill, darting about in the sunsetting sky and I think the birds must be sated or burnt out for the moment.

Twitter and Facebook

Spoon is now on Twitter. Tweets also appear on the public Spoon Jackson Facebook page. These are started to try to help promote the blog and Spoon's books.

The Editor

Bogged Down (Jim Crow)

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

A lockdown for all the black and brown

in all the cities and towns

You have no keys to the doors

and no carpets on the floors

The walls are already closed

in on you chosen before you are born

leaving you no place to go

sometimes no place to feel

Cages are opened from the outside

but, transcended from the inside

Sometimes you must close your eyes

and the walls will fall

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

They bog you down

in the worse parts of town

low or no income and low

or no education

They tell you, you have no keys

to life, no value and no souls

that you are forever

criminals, gangsters, hustlers and hos'

Ghettos and barrios, starving,

homeless, hopeless, fatherless, loveless

places, with liquor stores, cops

economic faces and educational and judicial traps

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

You are deemed a criminal

and disposable in their eyes

even before you are born

and fodder for their mass incarceration farm

The new caste system to waste

the youth, while the one-percent

who owns the drug profits legal

and illegal, rich and poor

War on drugs war on crime, war on black

and brown youth is a pipeline to clown

suits, a smoke screen

to mass incarceration

Mass incarceration of young men

fathers and sons lives

who are having no other options

do what they must to survive

Survive in this society

where all they have to do

is see you as a criminal

that makes you expendable

A new caste system to waste

a whole generation of poor blacks

and browns, with no human rights

and a scapegoat for all America's woes

Mass incarceration for a whole

generation of the poor

so that the one-percent

can fill their pockets and soar

Why is the war on drugs

waged only against the poor?

Who owns no land, no ships, no planes

no ware houses, no barges, no stores, no trains

Mass incarceration of a whole

generation can set in motion

for all the smallest infraction

a lifetime of commotion

A lifetime of incarceration

no way to clean the slate

especially in California, the richest

mass incarceration state

No matter what you do

it's still your fate

in California the mass incarceration state

in California the mass incarceration state

© Spoon Jackson

Winter and spring gone

Winter and spring gone, all spent on lockdown. Now the seventh month, still only black prisoners are on total lockdown and still only because of the color of their skin.

My skin longs to be touched and blessed by the sun as I look out of the window and watch the warmth lay on the blondish grasses. On the other side of the two razor topped fencing and lethal electric wire, the grasses are taller and a more blondish tan near the squirrel boulders. No direct sunlight ever shines through these boney cell windows, although it's dusk and the sky is heavy with sun. I can feel none on my skin. My once dark skin is now high brown.

The Brave Six

Lockdown continues, going on six months now, so I don’t have my writing classes to teach. Fortunately, Professor Tom Kerr, who teaches writing at Ithaca College in New York, contacted me to do the Brave Six project with a new batch of young students at his school. Tom and I first orchestrated this essay/letter correspondence with his Ithaca college students and my New Folsom writing students in 2008. We have done this project now three or four times.  It has been an enlightening journey for both free world students and my incarcerated writing classes.

Just this week Tom wrote me with a new batch of questions from both his persuasive and argumentative writing classes. Because of the lockdown, I cannot contact my students, so I answered all the questions myself and sent them in.

The Brave Six projects started when my friend Margot, from Switzerland, sent me a printed-out copy of Tom Kerr’s web page and his address. She wondered why, though I had many projects going on with people in Europe (mentoring students as well as film, book and song writing projects) I had few in the USA and she suggested I write Professor Kerr. I read that Tom had worked with well-known writers on Death Row at San Quentin and that he saw them as human beings. I felt there must be some realness there inside Tom, some courage – an honest appreciation for the power of words, forgiveness, love, service, redemption, change, education and growth.

I pondered Tom’s information for about a year and then sent him my articles, “Speaking in Poems” and “Shining in Darkness.” I had no expectations and figured he might enjoy the articles, but that I would not hear anything back.

Weeks later I received a letter from Tom telling me how the two articles had inspired and primed him... Read the whole essay at ALT/space published June 12.

Road to injustice

I was reluctant to read “The New Jim Crow” Michelle Alexander's book at first, being incarcerated myself, I thought what could I learn? How much more injustice in America could I stand to ponder and read about. I am living this moment in prison inside a race based lockdown and the courts and system don't care. I know and live inside the mass incarceration of black and brown people, and it's not hidden or a secret. I've lived it first hand as the prison system has grown in California and become more racist, program less, unforgiving and cruel since the nineteen seventies. What could I glean from this book?

Well, immediately, I looked into the mirror and saw and felt every word on each page of her book, and it broke my heart, but not my spirit. I saw how the courts, prosecution, law enforcement, politicians and American media set up this so called war on drugs and crime as a smoke screen for their true intention which was and is the New Jim Crow - - to incarcerate, bog down and enslave as many black and brown people as possible. Thereby marking, branding the young people for life. They may as well had gotten a branded iron and put it on the sides of the youth's faces. Even people who get out of prison physically are set up for failure.

The courts and government don't care if lockdowns or roundups of people of color are based on race and color of skin, it's as welcome as the morning sun. The courts say racism or race based actions are harmless error. Often the courts are saying in essence that if you don't use the word “nigger” out loud or say out loud an action based on race it's fine to lockdown blacks and harass them just because of skin color.

You may not see the hanging trees that line the roads of injustice across America, all the way to the Supreme Court, but hanging from those trees are black men, young and old. When a system of justice is shown over and over again to be racist and unjust and the courts say, well, just a harmless error, and prove it, it is like telling a man with both legs chopped off that they are still there.

Pipeline

Spoon is back with a new essay in SJRA Advocate.

When I was five years old, I anxiously awaited my turn to cross the field and go up the old wooden stairs across the railroad bridge to school, as thirteen of my brothers had before me. The older kids seemed happy to go and they stayed all day long. I thought the fun must be endless.
When I finally got there, I was slapped by the kindergarten teacher I had a crush on, Ms. Tereese, because of a fight I had with another boy. I was paddled from the second grade on and beaten with extension cords and water hoses at home. I failed every course e, from reading to math, and yet it was as though no one cared. By the fourth grade, I was told by the vice principal that I was no good and that I would never graduate from high school. Although I proved him wrong, I was passed from year to year even though I didn’t how to read or write. I did not know what a subject or verb was, or how to do simple fractions. I attended classes doped up, smoked out, smelling like weed and liquor. Apparently no one noticed.
I had choices I didn’t see growing up....(read the reaming part in SJRA Advocate)

Life is precious

Inspired by Marina Baric, student from Sweden. 

Thanks for your questions, I answer them only for myself. You asked, “what kind of insight and what kind of thing, dream or thought can make a man feel like he has the right to take another person's life?” There is no such right for me or any person, entity or government to take a life. I believe life is to be cherished and celebrated and nurtured.

I have never set out to take a life or dreamed of killing someone, but I did. And after, sitting here in prison almost 35 years later I can still say I have never set out to take a life and I do not dream of doing so.

There are some ignorance, unawareness and awful economic situations that contributes to the loss of lives and people justify the killings the same way the governments justifies the Death Penalty and Life Without Parole. For me anyway, trying to justify a killing is an excuse.

There are all kinds of environmental, sociological, religious, psychological and governmental reasons one uses for taking a life, all are still excuses. There are quick and long killings practised and sanctioned by most of these entities and yet none of those are justified in truth and realness. Sometimes one isn't aware of how precious life is and have not yet felt the truth.

There is no such thing as a just war or just killing. All life is precious.

Life is precious when we begin to see, think and feel in the moment and by seeing ourselves and our lives in other human beings or other creatures, dogs, cats, birds, horses, any plants or animals. Then we know that by taking their lives, one takes one's own life. So as you said, “a person that ever thinks about taking someone else's life, maybe isn't appreciating their own life”. If we know it's our own heart we are blowing up, stabbing, shooting or beating, perhaps then we can show love and how life is precious.

Vi är en klippa!

Spoon