PRISONER EXPRESS

 Two products of long-term incarceration are anger and hostility.  There really is no way to avoid this accumulation in the core of your being as long as there are officers who think punishment is part of their job and supervisors who allow misconduct. 
  	 Every time a prisoner is denied a basic need or some right he knows he has coming, a speck of anger joins the growing mass housed deep inside.  At some point, this becomes critical and begins to radiate hostility.  All act shocked when they are suddenly forced to reap the harvest from this field of sorrows. 
  	 For years, I've gone out of my way to bury this accumulated anger beneath shielding walls of courtesy and lock it away in a storage vault of kindness.  You'd think by now, it was secure. 
   	You'd be wrong.  It seems the deeper I bury my anger, the harder some officers work to uncover it.  Maybe they just begin to feel safe when there is no recent history of violence.  In recent months, lies have been told in retaliation for my grievance writing.  Guards have made choices to deny me too often as they cursed and accosted me when I complained. 
  	 The walls are holding.  Just barely.  Visions of mayhem come often.  And I can't say I'd be wrong to surrender to these fantasies.  Their surprised expression would be worth the punishment.  But no.  They'll have to dig deeper if they wish to see my anger lain bare.  I'll keep shoring up the walls with kindness and hope they'll give up and go dig somewhere else.

Part II: After Level-3

 They brought me a move slip tonight.  My level has been dropped due to a falsified disciplinary report.  The anger that we all share, though I thought mine contained, has boiled to the surface.  In an instant, I have decided it is time to teach an abject lesson in violence. 
   	For those of you who are not Texas prisoners, the level system is called corrective by the administrators when, in reality, it is a cruel system of punitive measures that punish beyond the scope allowed in disciplinary court.  A level-1 may buy what he pleases from the store and is allowed to have electronics, radio, typewriter, hot pot, etc.  A level-3, my new level, is allowed nearly nothing.  Not even books except for religious materials.  If I am to suffer this indignity for what I did not do, then I intend to give them a reason and make them wish they had left me alone. 
   	There I stood, back where I had fought so hard to escape from, prepared to use my body as a weapon.  No amount of chain can prevent that and it's what I'm known for, though they don't know me here.  
   	Once my property was sorted and packed, I placed a bag of coffee in one pocket of my shorts and pens and stamps and envelopes in the other.  There is always the chance they won't even let you have what you can have when they first roll you and a bag of coffee isn't too much to ask for moving the easy way. 
   	Much to my surprise, they didn't even strip-search me.  I hesitated to react hostilely with my coffee on the line and they were being more than a little courteous to me.  My level-3 property was separated from the rest, though I had been lenient in allowing myself cups and a book to read until I could get more.  They thought I was crazy when I showed them this and they placed it all on a cart and when they got to my new cell, they gave me everything. 
   	This, they didn't have to do.  It was an unexpected kindness from men I had no reason to expect anything but cruelty from.  They knew the rules and broke them for me.  My anger had lain dormant, buried under a façade of courtesy and kindness.  Circumstances had unearthed it and there was no way short of violence for me to rebury it.  Yet they had returned it to the vault themselves. 
   	They'll have to dig deeper next time to uncover my anger and the courtesy and kindness I show will have a foundation they helped me build.  It's still there; I know now I'll never be beyond it, but if we work together, anything is possible--even living a life in prison without violence.