Is this the end??

I have word that DOCS wants to discontinue wants to end the dialogue programs at Otisville and GreenHaven because of an article I wrote in the Vassar publication "Tapping the Bars" in 2009. Is this the end? We cannot let this happen! Let's mobilize...mobilize...mobilize.

Going to the Green Haven/Vassar/Otisville Reunion on Saturday and the Fancy Broccoli Show on Sunday. See you there...

Floetry Friday Spring '09

Wondering why you come from there to here
From here to there.
Why take that van ride?
Thoughts in my head while laying in my cot 3 inches too short for me.

Why spend your best years in places with men that should be feared?
Caused tears. Nothing sincere.
Yet you're here.
Why aren't you scared?
Why take that van ride?
Thoughts in my head while laying in my cot 3 inches too short for me.

Why come where I can't trust all smiles by my peers?
The stares, glares, jeers, A-1's, murderers, burglars
Doing years.
Even my fam and best friends don't come here.
Why take that van ride?
Why come here from there?
Thoughts in my head while laying in a cot maybe 3 inches too short for me.

Why be where the blue coats indict you for no crime
And untrusting eyes suspect naivete in your thighs,
Objectified for your whispering eye
By conniving eyes of all kinds.
Why come here from there
And there from here?
Thoughts in my head while laying in my cot about three inches too short for me.

Why? Por que?
Why be where insincere thoughts invalidate your brains
for your perceived potential to give them.
Insincere smiles,
Grins and smirks in your faces
By those in quasi-safe spaces.
Why take that van ride?
Thoughts in my head while laying in my cot probably three inches too short for me.

Why be where hypocritical critics
Crack a smile in your face and
"Cracker" you behind it.
Why be where you're manipulated to contribute to my dehumanization by
NO HANDSHAKING.
Why fight to bridge gaps where planted engineers,
Ingenuine peers, and silent termites backbite.
Despite--
Despite--

Despite that three hour van ride from here to there and there to here.
Thoughts in my head as I lay in a cot that I think is three inches too short for me.

Why be where most don't care for fear of judgmental stares by fearful peers?
Why?
Why be where they do all they can to deter you from here by
BEWARE, BEWARE, BEWARE.
Never substantiated, but BEWARE-ILLUSIONS.
Probably internal vices and closeted BEWARES
of the days when they were your years.
Thoughts in my head while laying in my cot that is two or three inches too short for me.

Why do you come from there to here.
From here to there.
Where whispering campaigns reign,
Distrust plagues, and
Criminality reinforced
By subliminal blames.
Why?

Thoughts in my head while laying in my cot three damn inches too short for me.
Why come here?
Why take that van ride?
Why...

Answered in three simple words...

... Because you care.

TO:
Loyal Lucy, Hungry Hensleigh, Sassy Sara, Stupendous Shari, Dynamic Dorien, All-Star Alea, Energetic Eva, Yappy Yael, Ubulant Joanna, Laughing Lauren, Lively Liz, Stellar Stephanie. My BTG fam Spring '09 and beyond...

Thanks for "coming here" :)

More Floetry Friday poems

"Cliff of the Unknown" - By Katya

- Dedicated to my brothers at Otisville, who have inspired me and helped me on my journey as much as I have for them. From Katya, with peace, hope, and love...

I stand at the Cliff of The Unknown,
Tired toes curling over the edge,
I'm trembling.
A black canvas awaits me.
So empty and stark, I shiver at the vastness of it all.
What am I to do with this?
Have I learned anything?

Am I that same child,
Precise with her movements, but with her words wild?
Her mind filled chaos
Unable to focus, the unconscious takes over.

Buddha once told me
That my own thoughts, unguarded,
would harm me more than my worst enemy.

Can that be? I am my own prisoner?
A slave to my emotions, they tell me how to live,
they tell me how to be.

My thoughts circle hastily, incessantly,
wrapping around and around, over and under
suffocating my brain, till I slip asunder.

I'm slipping over the edge of the cliff now,
Slipping into that black hole of... what?
As I am falling, wind rushes past my ears
And I hear God whisper to me...

You are all possibility.
The infinite number of atoms in motion,
Of raindrops that fall and become the ocean.

You are
The infinite possiblity of lovers tenderly
entwined with dreams of the future as they fall asleep.

Of how long the sun and moon will be
inclined to play their game of hude and seek.
You are already everything, don't ever quit.
Possibility is as wide as the space you create for it.

Then I realize, God is me.
The weight I have borne at the center of my heart was the universe,
throbbing, calling to me to acknowledge my part.
All my pain and suffering because I just
couldn't see that I, myself, can set myself free.

My eyes closed, arms outstretched
towards the world.
I am now weightlessness, wings carry me
upon the wind gently.

I fly away
towards possibility.

Poems from Floetry Friday Over the Years

"I AM!" - By Monte Massey, Esq.

First and foremost I am me
I am prosperity that engages adversity on
every battlefield and he who never leaves
the premises with nothing less than a victory.

I am music!
A sweet melody that resonates
melodically within the eye of a hurricane--
Don't worry, please let it rain.

Because I am shelter!
He who can protect you from the
harshest weather because my skin is
tough leather, but yet soft like silk.

I am a quilt!
Built precisely for you to rest your head
upon/when you for a brief moment are no
longer feeling strong and not because you are weak.
But!
Simply because you needed a rest.

I am restitution!
Paying back a debt to society that
refuses to create preemptive solution
towards issues that are drastically
afflicting our children.

I am the future, past, and present!
Symbolic to a petty peasant whose
thoughts were once reminiscent to the
foulest rubbish that could ever flow into
a gutter, but my brothers and sisters
have helped this pretty peasant to become
more effervescent so it's only destiny
that I now travel in a different direction.

Because you see, I am a vision!
A poet painting lexiconic pictures and
leaving fixtures of prisms kinetically
placed upon your wisdom so therefore you
can see through all of the lies that they
create within the walls of these prisons.
Can ya' feel me?
Good!

Because I am also love!
A manifestation of how each and every
one of you choose to define me.
But let me remind thee that loving me
temporarily is no longer satisfactory so
choose carefully when choosing to indulge
in me because...

I am addictive!
Similar to Tylenol/codeine/morphine shot
in the vein of your elite seal team in Iraqi land
Or better yet Afghanistan, I am frivolous
with my way of life so you can call me an
American
But please understand...

That my I am is genuine
A true composition of the man I am
God like I am
Made in his exact image I am, so original
I am.
Came into the world in the form of I am.
A born again I am, spreading the word of
love amongst the people who are in
desperate need just like I am.
The blood of my blood I am.
The flesh of my flesh I am.
Three days from now you can resurrect
these words into your mind and even then
in subconscious form I will appear before
you I am.
So!
In the end I am everything that I say
that I am.
The epitome of I am.
Because I am the I am of all I am.
The who, what, no matter where i am,
No need to ask how I am.
When I am performing at the best of I am,
and if you have to ask why I am the way that I am?
Then (psst!) you, must not have been listening!


"A Reflection" - By Heide Bruckner

Man, this is scary
Standing up in front
With all this anticipation.
Eyes big, wide open with grand
expectation of hearing an insight
Or some inner fight
That I have waged within my heart,
My mind, my body, my soul.

What I CAN offer is a few words.
Reflections
Of how my conception of what is
Wrong, right, violent, immutable,
irrefutable, secret
Has changed.
Is changing.

These big ideas rearranging
From one simplified puzzle of dualities
To the overlapping, overmapping, overarching
Themes of the human experience.

How mainstream thinking of prison
Has become in itself an "ism" --
A way of isolating and categorizing
And pretending that security exists
Even when inequality persists.
Violence not of the individual fist
But of a system which largely fails itself.
Fails to educate or empower or
address the root of this
Messy, gnarly, knotted overgrown shrub

Of personal, structural, community relations
That cannot be redressed
By pruning its "unsightly ends."
By thinking a sort of lock-up can
completely mend
The lack of water, poor soil, no sun
Which has caused the green from
these leaves to run
As far away as possible.

Come back, green life-giving
nourishment
Not rhgouh green pants or green
camo or other establishments
That the very balance
Can only be restored when the talents
Of all are recognized and legitimized,
Not marginalized , ostracized, or
criminalized.

By now I am less scared of reading
About the ways of reseeding
This shrub. It must grow tall and
Strong, interwoven, and supportive.

I am less scared because I am here
with you who are here
Like everyone class in Fridays past.
Because I'm in a room full of all of us
as peers,
Because of this, I have lost my fear.