1/19/2009

Book Wish List
Title	Author Last Name	Author First Name
500 Manga Characters	$13.95	6233317
Beside Still Waters	Kasimow	Harold
Brother Odd	$5.95	7061447
Connected Discourses of the Buddha, The ($95 HC)	Bodhi	Bhikkhu
Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The	$8.95	7280246
Dexter By Design	Lindsay	Jeff
Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters	$6.95	7321988
Essence of the Heart Sutra	Lama	Dalai
Forever Odd	$5.95	7061528
Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript	Laufenberg	Cynthia
Freaks! How to Draw Fantastic Fantasy Creatures	$6.95	7322100
Fugitives And Refugees	Palahniuk	Chuck
Haunted	Palahniuk	Chuck
Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists	Habito	Ruben L.F.
How To Write Attention Grabbing Query & Cover Letter	Wood	John
I, Robot	$5.95	7164416
In The Buddha's Words	Bodhi	Bhikkhu
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	$9.95	7204388
Into the Silent Land	Laird	Martin
Long Discourses of the Buddha, The ($45 HC)	Walshe	Maurice
Mammoth Book of Best New Manga 3	$10.95	7328311
Manga: Masters of the Art (ADULT)	$6.95	6240933
Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the Worlds	$11.95	7120249
Meaning of Life, The	Lama	Dalai
Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, The (HC)	Bodhi	Bhikku
Monster Book Of Manga: Girls (ADULT)	$16.95	7229216
Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Dogen	Dogen	Eihei
Odd Thomas	$5.95	7062060
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Volume 1, The	$11.95	711690X
Prayer of Heart and Body	Ryan	Thomas
Snuff	Palahniuk	Chuck
Stranger Than Fiction	Palahniuk	Chuck
Sweeney Todd	$7.95	7020163
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy	$24.95	7009321
Watchmen	$13.95	7220197
William Shakespeare's Macbeth	$9.95	7213905
Witches of Eastwick, The	$9.95	7211112
Year's Best Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga	$4.95	6096336

1/17/2009

I think a vital piece of me has definitely died since coming to prison. This last week a young native inmate lost her sister to suicide. She left behind two kids and isn't the first to kill herself in the family. I watched this kid bawl and sob as he talked to his mother on the phone. Later he was given a portable stereo and some Native American music CD's and given the privacy (except for cameras) of his own room in the prison chapel. For two days he wept and mourned in private. It should have been gut wrenching, touching, or something ... but I felt nothing. Well that is, felt nothing until I saw the same inmate back in the cell hall yucking it up with his gang friends, talking the usual gang violence and acting out the same gang pseudo-macho behavior. Then I felt like digging my fingers into his brain and forcing together the synapses to make him recognize his twenty-three year behavior of bullshit violence and the connection to the tremendously high suicide and other violence found on his reservation. But who am I to lecture about how to deal with anything let alone a loss of family. I can't even deal with my shit.

The other thing that happened this week is I found out that I don't have the right to die. A 60+ year old man had a heart attack while working in laundry. He's a lifer and has been here a LONG time. They (prison staff) actually did CPR until the ambulance came and used the paddles on him to shock him back to life. Then sped him away and had to use the paddles on him twice more. Well, long story short, the old fart lived and is back in population already. I made the comment that I should visit with the prison lawyer and make sure there is a DNR (Do Not Recessitate) on my meidcal recoreds only to be told that the state owns me and is liable to do everything in their power to save my life. Not only do I find this silly since this state has the death penalty, but I'm appalled that a base right, a human right of DNR is thrown out the window. What the hell is wrong with this state, country, world?

1/13/2009

I was totally going to be dishonest and write in fake dates to fill in all that has happened since the 17th of December. I wrote a long time ago that this journal or whatever you call it will be always honest. The truth is this writing has remained carce because

1. I've been busy with work, studies, reading, etc
2. Nothing really different or exciting ever happens here
3. I can't seem to shake the on again off again depression.

So there you have it. Don't get me wrong there have truly been some wonderful moments in the last month. I had a ton of visitors over the holiday which is a huge blessing. I had the opportunity to meet my brother's girlfriend and she is wonderful! Stolte visited which is great and my mother brother and aunts visited. I'm so grateful for my friends and family for taking the time out of their holiday cheer to come to this dreary place and make me feel normal for a little while. When they leave it makes a love vacuum that seems to fill with melancholy. We took lots of pictures and I'll be sending them out soon. I found out my ex-wife is engaged to be married to one of my good ex-friends. It's weird and I hope they have a healthy happy relationship, I just wish they would include me, at least to see my son. I've made New Year resolutions to teach myself to draw, read the entire Bible, and to wake up in time for breakfast every morning. So far so good (well it's only the 13th) except the drawing part. I'm patient though. I'm looking forward to some new luxeries like a digital TV and some paints and other art supplies. They should be here in 3 weeks or so. I received some great books from my loved ones and am tearing through them. Well there is other stuff to discuss but I'm tired of writing. Later.

"Words of Encouragement From the New Prison Chaplain"

Cliched words of encouragement carelessly thrown at me
Starved for hope, leaning forward anxiously waiting for wise words
When they come they only enrage me
"Every cloud has a silver lining."
Fuck! That's it!
I bloody my fingers strip-mining the silver from said fucking clouds
I melt down the precious metal in my enraged black crucible heart
Forging a mammoth bullet worth a world's fortune
I fire it right between the eyes of Lady Justice.
But, but, but he stutters "When God shuts a Door He opens a window."
The dude can apparently only speak Hallmark Card.
Calmly I speak to him like he is a child.
He doesn't shut anything. He slams it and it is
The flinching cold sound of metal on metal.
The window opened is impossibly small
To fit through and its sucking out all the atmosphere
Out into the dead cold space of His existence and world.
Is the long righteous path so razor blade narrow that it shreds your feet
Leaving you amputated and bleeding
Asking why, and praying for oblivion?

"Longing"

In a world of concrete walls, floors and walkways, my feet ache to feel a massaging walk in cool spongy thick emerald fields of fragrant grass. I long to dip my hands into crystal cool waters and have rivulets tickling me all the way down to my elbows.

In a world of steel mesh and bars colored gray and concrete walls that are white washed, my eyes thirst to drink in flawless blue skies deep enough to lose yourself in. I long to feast upon rolling hills of flowers every color of the rainbow and watch them sway, dance and bow in the breeze. I long to gaze upon snow capped mountains that majestically defying time and stretching their grandeur to the heavens.

In a world filled constantly with lies, sarcasm, profanity and hatred, my ears strain to hear the whispering sighs of the wind moving through the trees, the soothing laughter of mountain streams and the quiet meditative sounds of nature surrounding me.

In prison I long for heaven.

"Visitation"

Just sit next to me please
Hold my hand.
No small talk.
Just our fingertip pulses
Beating out a wonderfully strange
Share rhythm.

"Am I Still Holding On"

Am I still holding on?
Could someone please take a look and whisper an answer in my ear?
I can't bare to peak, can't seem to muster the willpower to crack an eye.
Am I still holding on?
I would be forever grateful if you would take a gander and let me know if I'm still sane, that it's going to be ok.
Just a whisper.
A hint.
Anything?
Still nothing.
And still nothing.

"Grace and Mercy"

It only hurts when I'm awake and when I'm asleep, dreaming.
It only hurts when hearing the metallic clank of my cell door and whenever I hear a child's laugh.
It only hurts when I reflect on the good time and when I remember the not-so-good times.
It only hurts when no one writes or visits and when they do write and visit.
It only hurts when... It only hurts when... It only hurts when...
(shh) stop. Quiet - breathe in.
(shh) Psalm 46:10 - breathe out.
"Be still and know that I am God."
In a single span of breath
In the space between in and out.
Grace and Mercy
And my cheeks are wet with gratitude.

"Release?"

Purging dark emotions
Gut-wrenching boiling hot tar vomit
Extremely damaging and painful inside
Even more so to expel it
It scorches, disfigures everything it touches.
An absolute time-sucking chore to clean-up
After the cool-down
Alternative?
None.
(sign) Shit.

"Let Down"

Staring out my cell door through the bars
Gazing out the tick cubed security glass
I lose myself in the beauty of an orange sunset
Only to realize it's the sodium security light, just come on.
A trick of the light.
And on my sight.
With a sigh, I go back to reading.

"My Karma"

Having inhaled and digested all things beautiful, delicate and loving in my life,
I belch forth an regurgitate rot, disease and pain.
A howling noxious exhale of such magnitude that circles back
Whips me like a category five hurricane.
Left griping the edge
Hanging by my cracked and bleeding fingernails.
Hanging on to the rest of my
Pathetic self-destructive life.

12/17/2008

Again I haven't written in this journal for a while. I have been caught up in dark thoughts and distracted by worldly things. The darks seems so comfortable sometimes, like wearing your favorite jeans or indulging in your favorite drug or junk food. I don't know which is better for the creative process of ideas, is it the dark I've been in, the light from 6 months ago or the numb grey that was in between? Or is it all of the above? I'm curious if anyone in the past has such dramatic swings and cataloged it in writing or art. Not that I've done either, but curious. I'm so tired all the time. Yesterday was only a half-day of work and I told myself I was going to catch up on some reading and studying. I ended falling into coma sleep from 10:30am-3:30pm and went to bed again at 9:30pm - 7:30am and I'm still exhausted.