WEBVTT

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And so one of the things I
was able to do with the Poetry

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Center is sort of like
do some research in terms

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of books and other things.

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And so there's a series
that I'm working on--

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I worked on in terms--

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and it's called The
Importance Of A Book.

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And so each book that I
mentioned in these sections

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actually speak
about incarceration

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in some kind of way.

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There's a book by Robert
Hayden, [American Journal],

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and there's a poem
where Robert Hayden went

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into the prison and working
with these individuals.

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And so I talk about
Mitchell Jackson's book,

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The Residue Years.

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There's a few of them.

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And so one of the
things, I think books,

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especially for people
that's on the inside

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becomes a gateway to--

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really a gate-- when you talk
about literature giving you

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another world, but when you're
on the inside, it really does

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give you another world.

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And so these are--

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in each section, there's
the premise of a book.

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289-128 The
Importance Of A Book.

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One.

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"American Journal came in
a cart dog-eared to page 18

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"the prisoner," as
if to start there

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in media res, dear Hayden.

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The I in me no longer lives.

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It is gone, I confess.

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The collective we, too, is
no better, plus the walls

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are gray not green.

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But no, you are not alive.

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Again, I do not exist, comrade.

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I do between life and death.

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There is a space with no clock,
no marker of time, no calendars

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to strike out the day or days
running together after lock in.

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I think-- the pad then feels
itself with scribblings

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like ownership is mine
even in this cage.

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Brokenness dictated
by time is torture--

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writs, habeas corpuses,
motions denied in a house

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without doorknobs to turn.

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The cockroach
caught became a pet.

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At Christmas my cellie
snorted white lines

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to escape physical
torture of the mind,

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cascading in and on
itself, rapid then slow--

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a program of absence
and madness."

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Two.

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"Metallic reflections
reveal dull,

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dullness distorted,
the reflection a cell.

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A social silent critique is
always louder in a dream.

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Damn ricochets against
the walls in anger.

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Convicted in the womb ends
page after agonizing page.

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Is this really my
life, I question,

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not knowing who I was.

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In the light I sit now and wait.

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On yellow legal pad,
the protagonist.

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Guards flood his cell.

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I never knew said story as
contraband, yet risk is reward.

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In protean wilderness,
only the past

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ripples the dimensions
of guilt or innocence.

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And at balance by the
sea a list of tools--

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toothbrush, single-blade
razor, metal spoon,

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necessities for survival.

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Here the orange
are rising blocked

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by a fence, a
border, barbed wire.

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The grass grows
bare from optimism,

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thinks 289-128, the convict.

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Really, where is the marker
between good and evil?

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Or is it somewhere pressed
between the pages of history?"

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Three.

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"Half-wet the cigarette half-lit
a bugler rolled up outside

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walking to chow--

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a fine mist thin and neat
and picturesque almost

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halfway until rain implodes
into baptismal for sinners

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so think in un--

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so think in uniform,
COs lining the walkway.

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The Residue Years
on loan from cell 2

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came this morning,
the paperback version.

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Brought characters like
champ inside, a fool's dream,

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or set up by subtraction, too
many pleas, illegal searches,

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guilty at the thought
of life though

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innocent as the
mirrored-shaded bureaucrats

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based on subject this
American critique who chants,

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who praise in pentameter."

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Hidden in prim sail,
the skies is changed,

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but the broken man
without a visit.

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Dreaming family,
he draws wife, kid,

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dog in his head, time
measures mathematics

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that fail to reduce
mandate to logic.

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There are no empty
skeletons on wheels,

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limbs pulled apart
by a team of horses.

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The body is now instrument,
but tonight, a book

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may save his life
time after time."

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Four.

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"The paperback entered
through the slit.

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Makes me want to holler "account
time" after bag and baggage.

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One night in the
bar, all those images

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rush back over laughter
beneath a congregation

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of drunken voices.

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What did it mean
walking with ghosts

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unseen to the
nakedness dark demands.

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There is a scent lingering
that will not leave.

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Must stop.

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The clinking inside won't stop.

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Rottweilers jaw
jacking uninterrupted

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in the yard on Sunday.

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A circumference
around the track again

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and one airplane
fighting cumulus clouds

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breaks free steel.

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Chained to the past
a corrective measure,

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looking for salvation
in books I once wrote.

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Down these mean streets
save the self and sunny

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within the esophagus of
justice about prison.

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The protagonist returns.

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Through a window, the
sun set, a tragedy.

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Having seen skylines
etched in haze,

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there are walls packed behind
this freedom, yet undiscovered

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but too real each day.

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An electric fence
surround, the net echoes,

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metal rattling the
long hours stretched,

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either way subject to a
condition of has a dagger

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through the heart cannot kill."

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Five.

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"Anything can be destroyed
for the non-believers.

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Cupcakes was deflowered
one night after count time.

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Clearly this structure stands
obsolete by legal order.

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And I sit in darkness
expected to evidence wrongs.

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A witness to nothing on the
stand, but in fine print,

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forget guilt or innocence,
but it cannot be forgotten,

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a report from the inside,
irony or ironical.

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Writings on what plainly
has been prescripted

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as identical to the
blueprint overlook

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within the penal frame.

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You can't see.

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The backdraft's flashpoint
or raging fire--

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this suicide must be.

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I must commit to killing the
I in order to save myself.

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There is no logical recourse.

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Catty corner under the
door, it arrives sometimes

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one act staple at a time.

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Short Eyes, the place
lid on the cold cement.

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From cell to cell, Miguel
Pinero is perhaps the only one

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who ever gave us us, our right.

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Society flipped upside down.

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Imagine that.

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Color too this death as only
a beginning in what you knew.

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Come sit in the political
madness alongside the bad.

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Perception versus the
real occurs quite quick.

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Or of course it's real,
recording human violation."

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