What I'm going to do now, I'm just
going to read a little bit to you all.
It's funny.
What can I be thinking, right?
What do you think about when you hear the word "prison"?
I mean, some folks, they say violence.
They say bars.
They say time.
If they know somebody that's inside,
they think about how long it takes
them to get from where they are to hugging their loved ones.
For me, when I think about the word prison,
I think about books.
You got to understand that there is no bookshelf in prison,
no chance to grab something and hold it, take it back
to your cell.
No.
And to really get me, to really understand
what it means to live distant from books,
I got to take you back to the summer of 1998.
I should have been basking in whatever
celebrations come with graduating from high school.
I should have been thinking about my prom.
But the summer of 1998, my world was like this.
I was in solitary confinement.
I was 17 years old and I was learning how to bid,
and it was wild because men were yelling from 6:00 AM to 6:00
AM.
After a while, I got acclimated to the noise.
And every once in a while, you would hear somebody shout,
hey, yo, send me a book.
We were in cells that were parallel,
which is concrete, damn near ocean,
a concrete separating us.
And when you heard the call, you would hear soon after, swish!
And if it was a magazine, it sounded damn near
like birds swinging, like birds wings flapping, swish.
After a while, I got my courage up, right,
because I hear folks call for a book
and they say, where are you at?
And then the voice will say, cell 13.
Swish!
And I've realized that books were a contraband,
and these guys had created an underground highway for books
with a currency given for free.
So one night I shouted, hey, yo, send me a book.
And the call comes back, which cell?
And I say 19.
And I look out of my cell door, and I see an arm on the ground.
I know that man must have been laying on the floor
with his ear pressed to the concrete
as if listening for something.
And he's swish, swish swish.
He's so far away that I can't see his face.
And I can't imagine a book making it from his cell
to mine, but swish.
It drops into my hand like some kind of manna.
The Black Poets by Dudley Randall, you got to get this.
I'm 17 years old and I'm thinking,
who would imagine me in prison wanting to read poems?
I was desperate though, I had nothing else.
It was the summertime.
It was hot, I needed to read something.
And so I'm reading and I'm discovering Langston Hughes,
Sterling Brown, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni.
It got to the point where I'm just stopping on names.
Robert Hayden, that seems cool.
I get to this cat named Etheridge Knight,
and I stopped by his poem, not because I know who he is.
I stopped on his poems because then
and now, I knew nobody's mama who named them Etheridge.
I'm reading Knight, and he talking about 46 pictures
taped to his cell wall.
I had seven tapes to mine.
And I'm like, he got something there.
He talked about 16-year-olds in prison.
And I first came inside at 16.
I knew somebody would ask for the book
and I would have to give it up.
So I started writing the poems down in longhand.
Had to take it with me.
Later, I learned that Knight had actually served time in prison,
and it hit me, that's why beneath the poems
I could hear him singing.
Name a song that tells a man what to expect after prison.
Explains Occam's razor, you're still a suspect after prison.
And a wild thing is, 20 years later, I
had wrote my own thing, Felon.
It's crazy.
Because if you skip to the back and you
read my acknowledgments, you'll see
that I dedicated this book to men named Christopher
Tunstall, Terrell Kelly, Rojai Fentress, Anthony Winn, Kevin
Williams.
I did times with these dudes.
Some of their names, I only remember in dreams.
The writing reminded me of them, and I
imagined that I was writing this for them.
Then I realized the book is hardback.
And in most prisons in this country,
this thing that I dedicated to them cannot be slid under
their cell doors.
I had to figure it out, right.
So I got with some folks that had a little bit of money.
And I said, we need to make a prison edition.
I did 8 and 1/2 years in prison, and I came home
and suggested that I should make a prison edition of a book.
A friend looked at me and said, no, we
don't make prison editions.
We make freedom editions.
So we got together, right.
And I was like, you're right, we make freedom editions.
We made this here.
You flip the pages, it actually sounds
like birds' wings flapping.
An edition of the book that's just for men, women,
and children on the inside.
Me thinking that if I slide this thing under your door,
you read some of the poems, and you'll
hear me singing beneath them.
Name a song that tells a man what to expect after prison.
Is this Occam's razor?
Am I still a felon after prison?
Blur history, the things that abandon
you get remembered different.
The things that abandon you get remembered different.
The things that--
[SIGHS DEEPLY] I was in a cell with Juvie, at Sussex
I state prison.
And we was at one of these spots that ain't have hot water
or microwave.
So if you wanted to make yourself something to eat,
you would take some toilet paper and you would roll it
around your hand like this.
You cup it at the bottom.
And if you could see through it, you got you a winner.
We called it a stove.
You would sit it on your tin can toilet.
You would light the ball, and the flame
would shoot out through the center, all flame, no smoke.
You would take your soda can, tie it to a string,
and hold it over the fire.
By the time the fire went out, your can was bubbling,
and you could make your coffee, and you could make your soups.
One time, I'm in a cell with Juvie,
and I got the flame going.
But I ain't holding a soda can.
I'm holding a sheaf of my father's letters, five years'
worth.
And Juvie watches me hold it over the fire,
and the letters turn to ash.
Blur history.
The things that abandon you get remembered different.
As precise as the English language
can be, with words like penultimate and persevering,
there is not an exact combination
of sounds that describe only that leaving.
Once, drinking and smoking with buddies,
a friend asked if I longed for a father.
Had he said wanted, I would have dismissed him in a way
that youngins dismiss it all.
A shrug, sarcasm, a sharp jab to the stomach, laughter.
But he said longing.
And in a different place, I might have wept, saying once,
my father lived with us, and then he didn't.
And it fucked me up so bad that I
didn't think about his leaving until I
held my first son in my arms, and only now speak on it.
A man who drank whiskey and Wild Irish Rose like water
once told me and some friends that there
is no word for father where he comes from,
not like we know it.
There, the word father is the same as the word for listen.
The plants we passed around let us abandon our tongues.
Not that much, though.
But what if the old head knew something?
And if you have no father, you can't hear straight.
Years later, my pop says to me, son, why you ain't give
your boy your name?
As if he ain't know.
Some things turn your life into a prayer
the gods will certainly answer.
March 4, 2005, I walked out of prison for what I knew
would be the last time.
I mean, I came home.
And I would be telling my folks, yo, I came home on March 4th.
I'm in my mother's kitchen.
There's a crowd of people around me.
And I'm like, I came home on March 4th.
March 4th, I came home.
And they look at me strange because you've
got to understand I only been home for a day.
So clearly, they knew that I had came home on March 4.
And my uncle, he's like, you mean yesterday?
And I mean, no, I came home on March 4th.
Shit is wild.
I went to prison as a teenager with other teenagers
who rechristened themselves with new names--
"Righteous," "Mathematics," "Wisdom."
My man, Chris, became "Juvie."
Rojai was "Fats."
Anthony was [? "Abso." ?] Terrell was "Born Star."
And me, I'm around all of these dudes rechristened themselves
for what they might be or become, and I said,
call me "Shahid."
I looked it up, and it meant "the witness."
What kind of fool am I, naming myself something like that
and believing that I could turn the first corner
without confessing where I've been.
Last four lines of a love song after prison--
prison killed you, my love, killed you so dead that you're
not here now.
You never hear your always, and brown liquor owns you.
Those cells own you.
And there is no room for me unless I
call the police, the state, upon my pistol, and set you free.
Dear warden, my time been served.
Let me go.
You promised that some of this I wouldn't
recollect after prison.
And my lover, my lover don't believe in my sadness.
She says whiskey and not time is what
left me wrecked after prison.
Maybe she's right.
My liver awash in oil, but the dregs of a charred old cask.
soaked in barley's amber, shadowed as blood,
dim as a cell in a hole.
Survived brackish prison water only to become collateral.
The things that haunt me still, drown,
now, friends say, in nearly 50 pounds of brick- hued rotgut,
spiritus frumenti.
A gallon of whiskey weighs eight pounds, and I am riven.
And all this becomes a man confessing.
My father, he took two buses, a train, and another bus,
and then he walked a quarter mile
to get to the law firm of Attorney [? McClement. ?]
He walks into the building, and he stops at the reception desk.
And it's a young woman there staring at him.
And he says, my name is Reginald Dwayne Betts,
and I'm here to see Attorney [? McClement. ?]
And the woman stares at him.
And he says, Reginald Dwayne Betts.
She says, I heard you.
And she's tapping on a desk, and she's like, I think, Mr.,
I think I'm dating your son.
He says, nah, my boy's been locked up
since he was 16 years old, and he's still in prison.
And she says, nah, I met him at this bookstore around the way.
And a few months later, we ran into each other.
You know he in college.
We ran into each other at the community college.
And I think I'm dating your son.
My phone rings, and I see it's her, so I smile.
And I answer.
My dad says, son.
You see, no letters distinguish my father's name from my own.
No signal for the mailman, the postman, my employer.
The man before them is me and not what follows after grief.
We are no goldfinch.
Instead, a kind of crow, a murder of us looming.
Search your history and find felonies and divorce
proceedings.
The online account of our background,
a song of tragedy and regret.
A dozen men with portions of our name.
Variations and fragments, evidence
of being called before a judge for everything
from domestic violence, to traffic tickets, to something
called jury trial prayer, and all
I did to land me in those prison cells.
There is no way to distinguish us
without a birth date, a social security
number, a witness, and the tatt along the inside
of my right arm.
Name a song that tells a man what to expect after prison.
Is this Occam's razor?
Am I still a suspect, a felon after prison?
Thank you.