The Opposite Sound

I haven't done much on this Blog since I started it, mainly because not much has changed. Lots of school kids out, but not as many as I would expect. Cable and personal computers are conspiring to turn the next ones into a generation of cave people. Doesn't anybody play pick up baseball games anymore?

Saw my man Cruz the other day. Just got out in Americus on a probation violation. We were talking about Joints in different states: Georgia, Carolina, Kentucky, New York, Connecticutt, Maine, Michigan and Oklahoma. Up north, they let you have a television set and street clothes. Some places you can get a job and make like $5 an hour or better, depending on the minimum wage. In those same places a free man can't get a job. It's logical. Inmates are highly motivated and work cheap and show up every day. Sort of like America's domestic immigrant labor. But if you have to do time it's the best way to do it. The way he described it with a smile and a near longing disturbed me. He's unemployed. A skilled roofer and painter. Living in the homeless shelter. He's about 40 something.
"I did 10 flat in NY state on an armed robbery. 3 in connecticut. 2 more in New York. 4 in Maine. That doesn't count Juvy."
"Gahddamn, Man, That's MOST of your Adult life!"
"Yeah, man. I'm gettin tired of that shit."
We smoked another cigarette and just sat in silence for a while. Then he asked "Where's everybody at?"

Some of us are back on "da skreets" some of us are back home in jail. Yeah, I said it. Back home in Jail. When the Jailers know your jumpsuit size, favorite cell and all your visitors by first name, then Jail is your home. Fuck it. No need to lie about it. If you've spent most of your adult life in Jail, then you're institutionalized and programmed to feed the system by letting these pigs and courts and prisons suck little bits of time from you like a clutch of polite Vampires. Oh they call you "Sir" and "Ma'am" and give you serial numbers with mysterious meanings (and ammunition to play Cash 5 when you get out) . They give you a schedule to live by and dates to look forward to. They take you aside and say "You're not as bad as so and so.." and "I was just like you..." and "There but by the grace of God ..." and a dozen other inanities designed to draw your attention away from the fact that they are paying mortgages, buying cars and putting their children through college on the back of you and the time you spend locked up. I can hear them now "I wish I was out of a job. I wish there was no need for prisons...". You're a Gahdamn liar. No Prison? No Job for YOU. Good chance you'd be in this cell with me except for that grace of god thing you like to throw in my face. God graced you but not me huh? Fuck you.

I'm not going to waste energy on a lecture about the straight and narrow path. You've heard it before. But dammit Your people survived Fulani traders and the Jihad of Don Fodio. They were led through Goree, the Door of No Return and the Middle Passage. We lost our names and the the names for our Yoruban and Yammassee gods. We ran away and formed Maroon towns and fought alongside Osceola. We survived the plantation, the klan, Jim Crow and Apartheid and got so good at surviving that we've neglected the art of LIVING.

So while you're on vacation from Blaylock or Jackson or the hundred other jails and prisons they've built for you to spend and expend your life energies, think about the traps they've laid to facilitate your return to those homes away from the free world. To make it easy and comfortable for you to let your life drip away. The last time I went to prison, I counted seven doors that shut behind me. Clink.clink.clink.clink.clink.clink.clink. I could swear I heard the rattles of ghosts and their chains. Shovels striking coffin lids and hammers on anvils and shackles. Clink is the sound of death and it's visitation. It is the opposite sound of Living.