Okay, so there's been a bit more poetry lately than usual. It's where my writing is right now.

I don't know what's going on and really don't much care as long as the words keep getting strung together. Writing is writing. I'm frankly sick to death of writing about my life. It's boring as hell to me. the fire calls kinda string together these days and none really stands out. Things burn, people live and die, we pull them out of wreckage or help them through hard times. You've heard it all from me before. Occasionally something stands out but not long enough to write about it.

It also might be because of the medication I'm taking. I've finally faced the fact that I'm clinically depressed. That isn't much of a surprise to me or you probably. There's been too much crap flow through my life to be here and not fucked up somehow.

I'm taking Paxil and it doesn't take away the depression but it makes things hurt a whole lot less. we'll see where it goes. I'm feeling a lot less beat up, but that's at the cost of numbness in some ways. I don't much care about a lot of things, and some things I feel intensely about. It's weird, but a lot better than it was.

So anyway, I'm writing a lot more poetry these days. Get used to it, I'd say there will be a fair bit more.

This is one I wrote because I was asked by someone about prison life. For those who don't know I used to be a federal prison guard in a maximum security institution. Lots of people joke about what happens between the men in these places. Having been there and witnessing it and the effects it has on people, I don't laugh as much as some.

SIX AND A HALF BY ELEVEN

Six and a half by eleven
side to side
end to end

With the door locked all night
they slam and echo
another one there
breathing in the dark
sometimes sharing the TVs electric blue glow
cutting twin shadows on a barren wall

Tobacco smoke choking there in that concrete box
metal bar windows
airless
cigarettes, armpits and spunk

There in the night,
cries in the darkness
fighting, sweating naked male flesh
tobacco breath
pleas and entreaties
sometimes easier
always safer to just bend over
accept the pain
buy safety
with tears and indignity

Six and a half by eleven
steel chair and desk
two bunks on the wall
easier to accept the invasion
stay alive
wish you weren’t
 
 
 
 

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