Why Reentry? some may ask
A waste of time, a too big task?

They committed a crime, let be what will be.
Lock them up and throw away the key?

It’s not that easy as you will see
Because they eventually get out and neighbor you and me.

The deck has been shuffled and we don’t always choose our card
Some of these inmates weren’t raised, they grew up, and life was extremely hard.

Some call it dumb choices, others youthful
indiscretion
Some were forced into these positions by the
culture of oppression.

Now, there’s no place for pity, but many of the
stories are untold
With firm and consistent direction, we can see new lives unfold.

Some have never had a checking account or paid a legitimate bill
These are basic everyday functions that each of us can help instill.

It’s the ones that want the assistance to get back on their feet
Those are the ones that we prepare to identify their needs and meet.

That’s what reentry is… preparing them for another chance
To try and make better choices, and in life have a better stance.

None of us are angels; some could’ve actually caught a case
One more dumb decision could have landed OUR butts right in their place.

Can you imagine life without a job, no way to pay a bill?
Can you imagine no money for medicine if you child or spouse was ill?

Unable to get a car to take you from place to place
Unable to pride fully look another man
directly in his face.

This “second prison” hinders them as a result of their crime
This second prison should not exist once they’ve done their time.

Their families and children need them, it’s hard enough out there
These fathers should be taking care of their family’s welfare.

Children raised without a dad are at high risk to offend and fail
By helping their fathers do better we help the children stay out of jail.

Care and custody is what we’re tasked to do
The examples that we all set is what they will look too.

We can’t do it all by ourselves, resources are what we need
Volunteers and community resources help US help them to succeed.

We have to make them better then when they first came in
For some it’s a fresh start for their improved life to begin.

With hundreds of thousands of  inmate releasing year by year
Reentry increases readiness thus reducing public fear.

So inmate is their title for now, but one day they will be out again
We can increase the likelihood that they do not reoffend.

Let’s rally behind reentry efforts, we have much to give
Let’s help secure our own safety and the way that we ALL live.

One black night
thinking about reality of life
she, unknowingly let her mind
wander
in the forbidden land
ruled by darkness,
the place where demons lurk
and attack every thought
trespassing the territory
the next morning
she found her thoughts
wounded
bleeding
dying
at that moment she realised
this is the reality of life!!
But it was so late
that nothing could be done,
she now was the
prisoner of the forbidden
kingdom...
and that was her
EVER AFTER !!

When he asks you to purchase a gun for him-
one he is not permitted to have,
say no.
When he asks you to help him saw the serial number off of said gun,
say no.
Hand back his sweaty, clenched-palm, ******* tainted money.
Do not deny him in words,
this will only force him into a blind fit of rage-
One where he throws glass at his apartment walls;
the apartment he pays for with the crime drenched money of his "clients."

2. Do not tell him of your weakness(es).
Do not tell him about the men who touched your inner thighs
when you were waiting for a ride home from the bar
you were never even supposed to be at.
Never ask him for help.
Do not let yourself owe him anything.
When he tells you that you have "daddy issues" written on your face,
play kind.
Do not utter the word pervert aloud.
Do not make it clear that you know he touches you
when he thinks you are drunk and asleep.

3. When he asks you to tell him how you really feel about him,
deny your obsessions.
His emotions will not, can not duplicate your own.
Do not feed his already overflowing ego.
When he tells you "do not touch me", let him pull from your grasp.
Do not take it personally, fight your feelings, quiet your desires, shrug.
Laugh it off, check your phone.
Play coy, know that even a woman like YOU cannot pull off
desperation with a simple smile.

4. On the occasional nights he texts you at 12,1,3 am
and asks you to come over, say yes.
Allow him to take you, make you moan, swallow him.
Touch him, taste him.
Mesh your bodies like a woven basket and feel his sweat pool
on the bone between your *******.
Do not make it personal when he smiles while deep inside of you.
Never take it personally when he holds you close,
your naked flesh touching in a way that almost makes you burn.
Smell him, let his scent linger.
Press your face into his tattooed back, curl your fingers around his
chiseled arms, his thick black hair.
Feel him, but do not make this personal.
You are just another empty thing in his bed.
You are not quite sure how much is left of you,
but you both know he will **** it until it is long gone.

5. When he asks you to keep a safe of his product in your apartment,
bat your lashes.
When he offers you money to do it, smile.
When he whispers he might be getting followed,
when he tells you he will be murdered soon,
when his tires get slashed,
do not laugh. Do not say anything.
Remind yourself that this is all rhetorical. This is his game.
When the city comes creeping, comes knocking,
pretend it is normal.
When he triple bolts his doors- even his bedroom door and windows,
do not comment.
When you feel knives under your pillow and a gun under his,
pretend you didn't. Roll over. Ignorance is bliss.

6.When he spends days locked in his room and comes out smelling of
a box of magna champa incense and marijuana smoke,
stab wounds in his thigh, say nothing.
Patch his injuries, stifle his excuses.
Wet the rags, be ready with gauze and bandages.
When he calls you after a week of silence and tells you of his blood lust,
tell him of yours.
When he tells you of his pain, his sadness, his regrets, just listen.
Fight him in his kitchen with soft fists and deadened eyes.
Do not surrender, even when he pins you in a choke hold
a bit too long to be alright.
Stand your ground. Stare at the tiled floor.
Never take him at face value when he is like this.

7. He will tell you about his surely upcoming death,
how he is close to dying, obviously.
You will tell him how every time you pass the bridge on
your way home, you think of driving your car off of it.
he will look at you with poison in his expression.
Realize you do not know the color of his iris. Do not figure it out.
Know you are not the only, never will be the one.
You cannot change him, cannot fix him.
He has been a prisoner since he has been a son.
Remind yourself he has been behind bars for
longer than you have been alive.
He has no idea why the caged bird sings,
and he does not give a
**** about what Maya Angelou has to say.
He has fought too long and hard trying to break free.

I am a prisoner of the mind
Look deep in my eyes
I wear a smile
As my only disguise
Racing thoughts
Of the truth, and the lies
Trying to keep them together
Before they become my demise
Only time my mind rests
Lose my thoughts in music, my art
Depression: till death do us part

She hid behind a shiny smile
showing the world what they wanted to see
but always a prisoner inside her own body
chained to blood and bones

It won her praise
and it won her glory
Roses bloomed around her
while her soul withered inside

All the sparkly things lost their sparkle
when she stopped writing her own story
It was then in the moment of frailty
she realized she left herself behind somewhere along the way

The porcelain cracked and a brave woman broke through
stitching her heart and emptying her mind
of the stranger that had taken over
and the pain that had sustained

Beginning again vulnerable and naked
trembling with both excitement and fear
Praying that the world would accept her
as she introduced that girl that had been hidden for so long

Stones were thrown
and enemies crawled out of their alleys
attempting to drag her down
and crush her new found dreams

But a force field of love and acceptance
from those special souls that always knew who she was
carried her on it's shoulders
not allowing her to lay back down

A garden of confidence and self-love grew inside her
A hero was reborn
and so was the jolly
that had died with her long ago

Her smile is authentic now
and it shines brighter than ever before
A natural light that heals all who
are illuminated in it's glowing path

Merry songs escape her lips
and effervescent words flow from
her fingertips to the blank paper
as roses bloom inside of her

She's a prisoner no more.

Endless static rattles my confined domain
home to voices familiar--
always unwelcome.

Prolonged imprisonment; desperation
yields these chains not of mass.
Mere figments they are.

Are the screens and their unintelligible,
motioned illusions abstract enough
to conjure a new image
to obsess over?

Nay, I remain tranced, ridden
in dismay.  No fulfillment.

Every image I decipher
escapes with the last.

Will trickling like icicles
before summer's Sun.

Subject I forever am to
this sadistic therapy.

I wake up feeling regret
It stays until the sun sets
The same story every day
I'm wondering how I still feel sane
The visitors that come try to bring good news
But in my mind they only bring more blues

I'm not confined to four square walls
But all I feel to do is bawl
I see the hurt that's in your eyes
but do you see what in my disguise
I try to smile and try not to lie
but deep inside I've felt things die

I love you dearly
I swear I do
You just don't want
What I pursue
You **** my dreams and say their false
You're making it feel like thick square walls

You watched me grow
Reap what you sow
I'm who I am
I've got a plan
I wish you'd see it
But nothing seems fit
To what you want
So I'll just try not to taunt

I love you mom
I love you dad
Just please understand
That yes, I'm sad
I just want help
but not from you
that's why I wish
I'd never flew

I once had a dream where the darkness
Taunted me, where it encircled me,
Like a prisoner. I was in a cage never
To be released kept as darkness's prey.

Its power over me saturated my Immaterial
Soul, cracked wept with it putrid stench,
Enclosing me in this place of ill fate. it knew
Of the fears of what delved in this place.

I was the meat it was the vulture picking at
A carcass still living, Peeling the light and
Digesting my terror feeding its obscurity,
It hunger in this darkened nest.

It had an instinct to hold me, to keep eyes
Unseen, to grasp the darkness to keep all
Black,I was entombed in this chaos.
Was I lost never to find the path back.

My mind was lucid, falling beneath its
Crushing embrace, but when the moment
Lost, I woke up sweating cold terror, I
Was in darkness still till eyes focused light.

All but a dream, all but a moment of twisted
Moments of things not consciously seen, I was
Fine, back in the living, till my next sleep, what
Waited in the slumber darkness or light.

If a prisoner was given money
to customize her cell to her liking,
would that prisoner ever want to leave?
I'm sure the answer would be striking
For when people get comfortable in a place
change is the furthest from their mind
But when their number is close to being called
only deliverance do they want to find
Why wait to find the way out,
the plan to escape these golden bars?
Don't get comfortable! This is not vacation!
and No, we cannot escape to Mars.
We must call the One who can pay our bail.
To One, how can we repay?
By changing our life and working for our bailer
And thanking for the gift of a new day
Our souls were bought with God's blood
So no other should we commit.
Seek the Lord and follow His laws
It's the least we could do, you must admit.

To Jody;
My five years old friend and nephew

I put down the telephone,
entering a nap of elation,
till the echo of your sweet utterance
On the back of expatriation's wind
Swims away, dims.
By then, medusas of melancholy with their thick sorrow
fill up my throat
and my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…

With good and bad big wolves
tracing lost children or stuffing shaking goat kids into their paunch.
With ravenous bears, malignant hyenas
and crude giants,
garrulous  gracious squirrels, laborious ants
and active voracious hares.
With them, the two of us
had upholstered the land and sky of the wonderland,
and with their voices and whoops all,
we had irritated the dreamland's walls.

No matter how many times
we were building the villages for stories of straw, furze sticks and bricks,
I would only visit your house of mattresses and pillows.

Only for you,
I did revived the dead wolf
in order to revenge the "predatory" lumberjack.
With no regret I kept sending "wolfy" to the roasted chicken's shop
to defeat the hunger,
So that he won't eat the trapped little girl.
And before your smile,
the wolf in walrus moustache would play with the girl till daddy comes and takes her home.

And you are …
popping out, never closing the wide eyes of yours,
waiting for grandpa to take us to the village.
Up from the houses' roofs,
with Qarmeetlak's1 rabbits,
beyond the barbwires and in secret,
we stick the tongues out to the Turkish barracks.
Along with goat kids,
in tracking smugglers' traces,
we fool the landmines,
sneak to the other side of the border.
With smiley faces and hidden bleats,
We ****** the poppies and the grass that grow out from the edges of spring and the craters.
We hide from smuggler's ghosts who
in the  labyrinths of landmines
because of the unclaimed hands and legs are grabbing the collars.
We taunt the jackals' yowling and the patrolmen.
And in front of the rumbling sky, we do our best to look prettier;
Isn't  it "God taking photos of us"?
And like coward puppies we flee and go back to the safe village,
just before the dusk's winds could carry our smell to the angry spirit of Salan2
who is scouring the Kurmanj's Mountain3,
pursuing his endless vengeances.

Till the break of day,
with your slim clever squirreliness,
out of the branches of the most interlocked sorrowful stories,
you were shaking the attached laughs and guffaws
on the  hair of the deceiver Ashrafieh and the grumpy Sheikh Maksood's4 night.
Eventually, in taking its revenge,
the night would stuff you in a small basket and throw you away into the waves of sleep and dream
accompanied with all that eager to see the giants' kingdom and the mice's storehouses,
squirrels' village, their dances and bridals,
the departure will lead you to the waterfalls' cliffs of a dreamy sparrow's new day.
With the beaming love out from our eyes,
you dry up your tousled feathers and
take into the open.

Nevertheless, how simple-hearted the lies were when I kept telling you:
"Dog is a dog, a wolf is a wolf and the kitty is a kitty, and what are we, my Jody?
We are humans!"

I didn't want you to know
how in the world, could a dozen of
rabid armed dogs
smash down the door
and out from your eleven months old eyes,
with a persistent thronged barking,
they did take your dad away to the deepest liars of the ranch of malevolence,
introducing him to all kinds of animality.

How might I explained to you
why in the world, they reduced 'dad' for you
to that thing which every month
from behind a doubled bars
keep sending you a tearful laugh?
Why did they minimized the ancient capital for you into
both of the Political Security Branch and Siednaya's Jail5?

Your fingers had just started taking to writing and drawing.
You had just started
cantering your own stories
along with unsaddled breezes' foals
when herds of jackals with dark mouths
deported 'your Azad' into a fool refuge.
Again,
they
made
you
an orphan.

Inside the brushwood of the story and the wilderness of the epic,
since neither your fingers have become able to rise the sign of victory correctly,
nor could your throat match the letters of 'Kurdistan' properly,
whatever cave you step in,
no matter how shiny is the globe in the witch's hands,
she would never be able to tell you,
these lacrimatory mist and clouds,
with the emerging of every spring,
from which valleys of the ranch of malevolence  
did they come to overflow the Kurdish neighborhoods.
How did they vilely with no permission go up to the third floor
in order to join you in a poisoned feverish soiree.
And since when
the creatures of darkness
that they had brought
have been grazing their hyenas
among our fresh hopes.


Hence…
when I tell you that
I'll come back with the snowfall,
it is nothing but a lie!
When you ask me to come back in summer
in order to hang on my back
and swim together
along with the little fishes,
such an imagination!
When you are not sleeping in my empty bed anymore
Intending to let my pillow and blanket await for
my return,
only a childish dream!!
Yet, when you
in the sweet and soft Afrini accent of yours
say to me
'Ozod, I mithed you thoo thoo thoo much',
my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…

Azad Ekkaş
Roni_alend@outlook.com
Erbil: 3-1-2011