Writing from New Folsom: Work by Spoon Jackson’s Students
Participants in Spoon Jackson’s writing workshop at California State Prison – Sacramento wrote these poems and other pieces. Jackson and his students are working on creating an anthology of their writing.
Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation is said to be a faded memory, a lost thought that no longer occurs.
But I don’t care what is said. And I don’t care what is thought.
Though it’s true that day after day and year after year, for years and years on end
they try to kill rehabilitation and creation, with condemnation and correction.
But year after year they still fail to obliterate the passion of an artist’s soul.
And I hear rehabilitation day after day and year after year.
I hear it in the scratching of pencils across paper, I hear it in the newly formed notes on an
instrument that sill remains, and I hear it boldly announced in the poet’s words.
To hell with rehabilitation is dead.
I and many other artists will not be denied the god given gift to create and to dream. To escape
the confines of correction on the wings of our passion.
So when there is a flute, a pen, a paintbrush, a guitar or any other artistic paraphernalia in our
hands we are examples of rehabilitation.
No longer in need of condemning or correcting.
Rehabilitation is found in an artist’s passion to create.
Rehabilitation lives. It lives in me and in every other artist
who, in spite of this place,
Still exercises the god given gift to be an artist.
--Rick
“…Do not judge me by the color of my skin, but by the content of my character…”
It’s the early 60s
The future is looking iffy
I see a million “colored” faces
How many are here with me?
The state of Alabama
Is draggin’ us down further
They say “peaceful resistance”
Where enemies commit murder
I got my rifle
I stand firm right here beside you
You don’t see the point
In killing for freedom, homie,
But I do.
Insightful still –
And there’s a time to kill
I’m like a Brown Malcolm Little
But now I find you real
Until the day
You hear the President Sing
At Capital Hill
“All men are created equal”
I will eagerly spill
Blood for the love of the people
Cause I believe too
Many of us have died
For the white side of the eagle.
--Glica
Poetic Dreams
Wake up!
Smell the coffee.
Dammit, take a nice long look at the world.
Look at the destruction of our nation.
Not the American nation, but the Afrikan nation.
The dominant structure of the human society.
They’ve fed drugs to our
Brothas
Sistas
Moms
And Pops
Causing them to forget their intended purpose
which is to
Lead
Nurture
Direct
And Guide.
Our nation is slowly diminishing to nothingness.
We no longer have teachers in our homes that we can depend on.
Hell no! It’s not just Afrikans
Who have lost the insight of our forefathers
Who shed blood for our so-called freedom;
Our teens are now focused on destruction,
territorial dominance and hate.
Instead of strengthening their minds
making rights out of wrongs
and allowing themselves to grow.
Seeing into the future
I see babies teaching their parents
the new world order.
In the new world, drugs are taboo
and leaving kids to fend for themselves
is punishable by social castration.
If being taught by our offspring doesn’t open our eyes
then it’s too late for spiritual and mental growth.
World War III has arrived and who’s fighting?
Not our moms and pops, but the offspring.
Trying to ensure that moms and pops can
continue to use drugs and abandon our little brothas and sistas.
The new world order is peace and harmony to all.
We are all brothas and sistas
Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow.
Unity, prosperity and a universal love for all.
Good night all…
I’ll see you all in my poetic dreams.
--Smokey
“The day begun…”
When the first hint
of early morning
shows its face
without a warning
when the eyes of fate
dance in first light
dreams spin away
with receding night.
When the first thought
turns on its wheel
casts its lots
in winter chill
When the first breath
is deeply taken
and webs in head
are outward shaken
Then and only then
has the day begun.
--R. Dean Morris
In the Way
When I feel what I feel
and I want you to understand,
all I have is words
and the words get in the way
of what I want to say
about the way that I feel.
Perception, intention;
your perception, my perception
what is the intention, no deception.
With consultation,
perspiration, limitation, frustration,
heart palpitation, precipitation,
purification, persuasion on occasion
and the words still get in the way.
When I feel, what I feel,
in passion, compassion
I want you to understand
all I have is words
for what I want to say
about the way I feel
and the words get in the way.
--J.B.
Dreams
Dreams I’ve had, dreams I’ve seen
Unrealistic, impossible yet time will reveal.
Mammals, insects and reptiles
cold blooded or warm
all will come to know one.
Speak, preach and seek to comprehend
the world at hand.
Cartoonish fantasy, unbelievably believe
open doors or shut
all leads to one seed.
How many steps will it take,
how many breath will one wheel?
Who knows, if not his own he counts,
Rough or smooth all will choose
still at the end none will comprehend.
These dreams is to be seen
by all who dares open
themselves to the unknown
for fear has no home….
--Vue
Three Strikes
I’m doing a life sentence
Behind the three strikes provision
I know what I did wasn’t right
But the courts were wrong for giving me life for stealing a bike.
America claims to be a free country
But that’s a lie
Just like this fake ass democracy
Because America incarcerates more people per capita than communist countries.
Someone challenged the three-strike law in the highest court in the land.
But them Supreme Court justices voted seven to two to let the law stand.
--Kirkton P. Moore
Sacrifice
This page mocks me,
daring me to give it the touch of ink.
Deriding my inability to interpret my own thoughts
and my total lack of experience in such things.
So I wrestle with this pen
in an agony of self-exploration
on cold white pages
that wear an empty expression.
But whatever thought it is I had planned to save
has once again failed me
and flown from my grasp…
No longer my own to hold
for ideas are a privacy I forfeit with a pen.
Still the black ink pours out and out in sacrifice
like a wound that refuses to be healed.
But no matter how many gallons of blood I spill
the pages will never get their fill.
Parched parchment swallowing my every drop of though
in delight at the torture I’ve put myself through.
To think that I could give voice
to the inexplicable self
in an embodiment of ink
is a useless task.
Every shade of emotion, though and perception
is proven false once I think it’s written.
As if I could continue my mind to a simple definition.
And though I’ve writhed under the labor
of failure for so long,
I refuse to let it be my epitaph.
I’ll continue on and on with my quest
to quench the thirst of paper for thought.
Even though I know that
it’s intimacy I surrender in ink.
With cruel pages pealing laughter
at the heap of hollow letters I’ve presented
as a monument and an offering
to the gods of self deception.
--Ben Winter
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