Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
ZacharyBaca Jun 2017
I'm jealous of that needle in ways misunderstood,
how close it got to your heart and why I never could,
I'm angry at your tattoos in ways that un attract -
how each day that black and gray can lay across your back,

fearful of this metronome's consistency with our weather - patters.
All the clock seconds we never spent together - after.
I never sent this letter, yet I wonder if you hear it,
And if time is non linear then how I feel you in my spirit.

projected memories with postured prayers of approval,
the contrast of a Compass and cascades of confusion,
I dream of you waking up to tell me that
you found your destination and you made it past the illusions.

and please tell me that, you did what you had to do because you made our mother cry; for that I'm mad at you,
you went to sleep forever and not once felt it
and I ask myself why? Why you had to be so selfish?

Who am I to judge though? I am anything but perfect,
explosions in the sky sometimes I try to find a purpose,
that same sky at night I lay awake in search
but the overlaying clouds are closing in distortion of observance

Black holes tugging at your life force, love sick potion would you die for it? La di da ride or die party through the night, if Heaven was for sale would you buy some more? Let's hurry up because were running out of time let your souls  ascension extend on the dotted line, Silver lines in our eyes I'm mere disguises, it's like we're always missing something running out of time
My brother died of an overdose and this is one of the things I've written reflecting that.
ZacharyBaca Jun 2017
I woke up this morning pretty thankful.
Just a few years ago I was put into maximum security prison.
Today I had the best coffee of my life with a beautiful woman.
Things were really put into perspective and in that moment...

I said hello.
ZacharyBaca Jun 2017
I'm alone and I'm feeling stuck I feel the weight of an elephant sitting on my chest and  the pressure is unbearable. I'm in a different place but I feel like I see the same faces. I feel like somebody is after me and wants to **** me but I feel like that person lives inside of me. My stomach hurts because the pressure is building so I let out a yell from the very bottom of it. I can feel a hot rush to my eyeballs as my brain decompresses. I can feel the pressure agai Yelling is the only thing that helps. Still, I grab the first thing that I see and I throw it, it just happened to be a backpack through a windshield with a laptop in it. I want to hurt everyone who's ever hurt me and then I realize it was me hurting myself this whole time so I inflict another wound upon myself.



How did I wake up in prison again today when in last nights dream I got so far away. I love running away in my dreams because though I know I should be tired I never run out of breath so I'm able to cover quite a bit of ground when I run away from this place in my dreams. I also like to  breathe underwater. Right before I went to prison I was still flying freely in my dreams I could literally run and jump and fly from place to place but after three years in, I can't seem to get off of the ground. I'm wondering if it's some subconscious thing going on.



The guards yells "stand by for chow!" With elongated syllables and his voice travels down the run with purpose. This old prison has the classic looking Steele prison bars you see in cartoons and movies growing up, it's actually quite eerie. I throw my sheet over my bed and tuck the blanket into the edges so it sits tightly around the mattress and fits snugly in the 6 foot steel soap container type mattress frame that is attached to the wall in a way that you can for this frame up and ******* to make your 6' x 9' space a little bit bigger . I only do this after I put my books in a stack at the end of it because they were spread out with no organization like sub group of war refugees. I turn off the TV, click the desk lamp,  press stop on my tape player, but I let the fan still run. I fold up the drawing I was working on into my dictionary of symbols along with a couple of the poems that were simultaneously being worked on - it's like I have to work on 10 different things at a time to keep my mind occupied. I'm stuck in the cell 23-24 hours a day with ADHD and I was the type of kid to wonder the city for 16 hours on my bike.  I like it because I feel like I'm getting good at 10 different things at once and though I know i it's pretty much impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time I set aside small focuses for each thing in bits and pieces and then go to the next thing, it's quite refreshing to be honest.



I throw some water on my face brush my teeth and I comb my hair back  after I put on a fresh T-shirt, some new pants and my new shoes . Even though I'm wearing all orange I want to look the best I can because it makes me feel good. On the walk to the chow hall we have to go down the stairs and central unit in Florence, Arizona. We all squeeze shoulder to shoulder on the tight run of cells and have to walk Down five flights of stairs and everybody is in a rush but still acting like there just walking casual it's pretty funny to see people do casual speed walks. Everybody's cracking jokes and excited because   Tonight we get pizza and we only get it a couple times every six weeks for they have the menu on a six week schedule. It might taste a little bit cardboardy but who cares it's been years since we've actually had a real slice.  And if you bring some salsa with a little bit of your own cheese you can actually fix the pizza up to where it's quite delectable.  



We pass through the old metal doors and you could fill the air blow from above where the door fan is. As I walk into the chow hall, I can feel tension among the other inmates - it feels like when the lowest frequency on a sound scale with a bass comes in really deep at the bottom of your stomach and a high pitch of the top of your ear that is out of tune and doesn't sit well. You can always tell when something is about to happen because everybody gets quiet and you can feel it in your stomach it's almost like the same feeling of fear and anxiety because the guy who's going to get gotten never knows it's him. I give the guard my last name and I get in line to get my pizza. The food trays come out of the hole in the wall  pretty fast -  inmates that work inside of the kitchen have this down to a science and their muscle memory and pattern recognition is that of an expert sous chef.   Pizza corn jello and a cup for the potent artificially sweetened juice they give us. I'm going to sit down in the middle tables because they have the tables sectioned off for people of different color the white boys sit with them white boys the black people sit with the black people usually closest to the door. The paisas (Mexican national)  sit with each other, the Chiefs have their own tables among  the Mexican Americans. I never sit closest to the wall because if you sit at the back table closest to the wall that means you're striving to have prison political ties and that is something that never interested me because though I am doing five years that is still a temporary stay and I did not want to join a prison gang. But when you're on the higher yards like central unit everybody is pretty much down for the cause so sometimes I will sit back there with homies. Once seated I grab my squeeze cheese from my right pocket, bite a  small piece of the corner off the packet and and squeeze it onto my pizza. I  also apply  some hot sauce and I get o have my friends pizza because he owed me from last nights 49ers game with a bet he lost. This story was probably believable up until the point I said the 49ers won.



while all this is happening in the back of my mind I know something is about to pop off because I could feel it in my stomach. once you know you're good then you're good as far as not being the one about to get stabbed or stomped on but there is always a lingering thought in the back of my head like I hope it's not me that they're about to get. I know it wasn't going to be a prison riot because we all would have known we all would've been prepared with knives ready.



I started eating. Yup cardboardy. Now a little bit faster because my gut told me something was about to pop off and about 3/4 through my second piece of pizza I heard it.



Attacks are usually really quiet in prison usually you hear the stomping of feet, grunting and groaning or slamming against walls so you can feel the wall shake. unless the person that is getting attacked by anywhere from 1 to 4 people starts screaming for his life and begging the guards for help.



This particular attack started with hoofbeats feet on the ground and punches landing and struggling breathing heavy and grunting. You never really want to look directly at what's going down because you don't want to draw attention to the situation or yourself if the guards aren't  paying attention. Attacks like this committed in the middle of a chow hall typically indicate that the person being attacked has to go and is no longer allowed to stay in the general population with us.



I'm Going to say which particular race or who was attacking who because specifics can get a little bit sticky if you are journaling your experience I would hate to offend any particular race or be considered a snitch. three men were stopping another man and it happened really quick. I didn't realize that they had knocked him unconscious and he was breathing really heavy and snoring as if he were dreaming of a beautiful place and had a stuffy nose at the same time.



In what seems like is forever or at least a really long time only just a few seconds have gone by before you hear the guards rushing in. four now eight now twelve guards with fire extinguisher sizes Mace cans, Spraying the men on the face both attackers and victim.



It's crazy because when you're in a room and they use those mace canisters on one person in the whole entire room gets clouded with Mace or Pepper spray  and everybody goes down on the ground and  starts clinching their throats and gasping for breath. some men cannot bear it,  though they typically don't die it seems like they're right on the edge of their last ****** breath.



I just felt bad for the person who didn't get their pizza in time because they're  going to be hungry while we're  all locked down until  the situation re-centers itself. then again the other part of me was a bit jealous because I'm sure the Mace served as a hot sauce and they got to enjoy a little bit of that.  



As I lay dying, I put my face in the ground in my arms and take the smallest breaths possible because it feels like I can survive these breaths and when you breathe deep it stings so bad that you can't help but to gasp for air and cough and perpetuate the struggle.



  I drift off to the beach... Here I am with my feet in the sand at the ocean. I hear seagulls flying above overhead and their calls are panning from left to right like the cleanest headphones you've ever heard. I can hear the waves crashing in and I can feel the sea breeze on my face.  it's one of those days when it's not too hot out but you feel good in the sun with the cool wind on your skin just enough to add A balance. Kind a like a sweet and salty sensation. I love this.



I'm really thankful because last time they maced the whole group it was inside of our living space and we had to sit there for 2 hours and cough but it was only the first 45 minutes or so that felt unbearable. The first time I got maced or actually experienced mace in a really bad way it was when they maced my neighbor inside of the shower because he didn't want to get out of the shower and I thought I could be tough and not feel the effects that much and I was eating crackers while I could smell the mace entering my nostrils. A few seconds later I was on the ground holding my throat because I felt like I was going to die and I couldn't even swallow the crackers I was gasping for air and hating God for this pains existence.



Now again we rise  up on our feet moving back to the run  where our cells are located and I can tell that a lot of the people who have been in prison for a long time who are not in the political movement Are really upset by this because they just want to do the rest of their life inside of these bars at peace.
ZacharyBaca May 2017
Three men put Steele in his body and drained it out,
Draped him over the top rail like a rug and they hanged him off of it.
His last breath was deep and could be heard down the 100 yard stretch of concrete walls and cell space.
He kicked until the last ounce of energy was finally released from his body into what one would hope to be heaven.



We just want justice and a little bit of sustenance,
Forced to hate ourselves they call us a suspect.
The substance of colorful minds in a dangerous town



The new wisdom of ancient civilizations Produced in a slave ship
Concret walls embedded in the thick of a desert -
I used to get  anxious
Chalk it up to the theory of natural selection

I'm the product of my enviornment but who’s the supplier
economic redistribution  and product exchanges

Open source the government for growth and development
Enlightenment is just becoming reunited with the mother ship
Paradoxically I went to the Darkside to find this convenient
Mash up of asatru, Egyptian archetypes and Aztec brother hoods

Im the type to get lost in the stars
while they'd rather have me masked up in the back of a cop car

this is not poetry
Tactical plots and pre calculated attacks on geographical  chalk boards.
this is not poetry this is math
geo logical rock wars
This is not poetry
Striped up and tattooed in patches we fought for.
I did five years in Arizona's state prison and this is a reflection of where I was in some places mentally.  I am not a writer but I hope you enjoy it.

— The End —