PRISONER EXPRESS

Soft unintelligible whispers begin in the courts of condemnation where guilt by association cuts the social threads of one’s being. The inner voices grow louder and louder as every loved on and friend vanish into the last vestiges of the living light, leaving me in what has become a never ending darkness in the catacombs of social conscientiousness where all is forgotten except that one single fall.

The county jail, walls of dark blue, dimly lit by the hall’s small lights. Light that fell upon ghostly images of humanity’s civility. Ghost within a tomb, living yet dead, beaten daily with self indignation and regret. Completely aware of misdeeds and shame. And the thunderous facts of society’s unmerciful prejudices. The three stone walls were lifeless yet more merciful than the iron veil with its crash gate. The iron veil, seemingly passive, screamed death and disaster every time the gate was slammed. The harsh metallic clank reverberating with endless proclamation. The barred wall severing all traits of what it was to be a human being. Beyond the wall, life, liberty, hope, love, dreams, compassion. On the inside, reality’s cold palm forever slapping the face and soul with endless regrets. Each soulful assault resounding in the roaring silence. Little of the physical and mental world would change from county to prison.

From a dark jail cell to that dog eat dog world, all four walls were of concrete. The light? I learned to hate the damn light, four one hundred and twenty watt bulbs that pierced the flesh. The darkness was more friendly, even more comforting. I had three ports of interest; a three inch by four foot window at the top of the back wall. It was situated so that you couldn’t see out and even if you could, the glass was weathered beyond a milk glaze. The later two ports were in the crash gate itself. Two three inch slits running up and down, covered with iron mesh.

Beyond those mesh screens, the cocophany of voices calling out to anyone that could hear them in hopes of striking up a conversation. From this, I learned to identify voices be they friend or foe, voices without faces. Within the cell, it was just me and my heartbeat being ridiculed by time who painted my picture everyday in the mirror. Time, the thief of all mankind, one day I was young, then one day, I was just old. The red-blond natural wavy hair became dull, almost brittle. The blue eyes that once twinkled became bottomless pits where the soul, baptized by regret, eventually drowned. The spirit now dead just gazed at some vague image of a man. But you learn to survive the silence and confinement. I’d cover the light so that the night was never ending. I slept for days. When I woke, I drifted off into the “what-if lives” had I made the right choices. In isolation you quit paying attention to the abuses; guards who spit or masturbate in your food, the smashed rat carcass buried under the gravy. I quit listening to their words of detestation. I accepted my plight as that of being anything but human. And to survive, I had to accept one social standard, “it’s me against the world.”

I’m entering into my eighteenth year. For the past eleven years I haven’t been subjected to total isolation except for nine months in 2003. But I don’t have to be locked in a cell by myself to be isolated. In prison, you survive by accepting the inevitable; I am as much an enemy to society as society is my enemy. Society, in turning their backs to the deliberate mental desecration, has denied themselves to be exactly what Texas prison personnel, to include prison chaplains, call “my enemy.” Complete isolation from a people makes a person a complete stranger to those people. One quickly becomes insensitive to the tragedies of strangers and the enemy, which are in all manner the same. A greater founded fact is that the deliberate application of total social isolation is approved and financed by those strangers and enemies; the American public.

Prison systems exploit this one control mechanism. In entry to isolation, the first antagonistic offense by the system is in severing all free world relations. This begins with law enforcement, pigs, lawyers and self righteous godless judges instilling the “guilt by association” upon family and friends of the condemned. The second assault is in denying or greatly restricting personal contact. This brings us to the point where mail service is interrupted over and over until the isolated and second party become hostile, angry and bitter. The letters and visits stop and the bureaucracy has succeeded in completing the cycle of isolation which will keep the felon in and out of prison for the rest of his life. A felon is a product of careful government legislation and prison programming to insure “public outcry.” IN my own experience of isolation, these truths have come to life like so many others. In this world of society’s, they believe in love, God and hope, but I know these are all social illusions. There exist none whom know love. There exists no such entity as this God. There exists no real hope for humanity. In isolation I have been liberated from all false doctrines and frauds preached by men and women.

Many times I long for complete isolation. I prefer it. In isolation there exists no prejudices among men. Life becomes simple with complete isolation. You aren’t frustrated by so-called loved ones and friends lying. In isolation one needs to only confront one’s pain, loneliness. It really isn’t hard however, since I accept the fact that society in whole is your enemy. You know there is no God, and if there is, this God is not just. You know that love, happiness, joy and hope are only “prospectors’ dreams,” noting but vain quest to grasp the wind.

This essay is supposed to help people understand the effects of isolation and how to overcome endless seasons of silence. The truth is, no one survives isolation. I have become an animal able to adapt to any situation or world. The animal mirrors society’s image of insensitivity, indifference and mass cold-bloodedness without true allegiances. For if society possessed the ability of their false doctrines, the cycle of isolation or anti-socialism would be broken. Yes, I prefer isolation and separateness from all the things of this and the free world, for I have learned to accept our futile perspective for existing.

It is night, most bodies sleep, but the screams echo in my head. Somewhere deep within my being I head myself reasoning; “Is there anyone out there? Can anyone hear me? Am I alone? Who am I? Do I even exist?” The lights are out. I lay in my bunk among a hundred. No one hears me but me, and I have quit listening. I am mentally isolated from me, this world, the free world. My mind separated from the shadow of a dead soul.