"recidivism" poems
Every time people start to rise up, a whole buncha problematic mess gets thrown around regarding VIOLENCE.
So, what is "violence" really?... It's the use of force. Plain and simple.
What makes folks uncomfortable (who are otherwise comfortable in this system) is that UPRISING IS A SOMETIMES VIOLENT (read: forceful) REACTION TO SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE: Yes, just like the Hunger Games...
Thus, there are many types of violence...
The fact that we are paying taxes that are funding the genocide and ****** of people of color (here and abroad) is violence.
People with guns (former slave patrols and overseers, now cops) who come from outside our community and treat our folks as criminals on the daily is violence.
Capitalism, i.e. wage/property/ecology-based exploitation in the name of profit is violence.
The fact that LA County spends more $$ than anywhere in the world on prisons and police is violence.
The fact that the US locks up more of its own people than any other country on record is violence.
US aiding/funding the genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israel is genocidal violence.
From Congress, to the boardrooms, to the classrooms, from the gaze, to the unwanted touching, to the **** to the pay, Patriarchy everyday, is violence.
A few people jacking some **** at Walmart or breaking a window is really minimal violence in comparison.
A couple people throwing **** at armed cops is not serious violence.
The idea of owning property that other must rent to live is violent.
Systemic, chronic, global insecurity in the form of material poverty is violence.
Wage slavery is violence.
Gentrification is violence.
The War On Youth, i.e. the School-to-Prison pipeline, and, thus the War-on-Drugs with its attending 76% recidivism rate in the prison-industrial complex, whose populations are disproportionately black males, is violence.
The fact that people can't go to the doctor and dentist, or eat food every day is violence.
Deportations are violence.
Homophobia is violence.
The world's largest global military that vaporizes people without due process in dozens of countries violating their biophysical and national sovereignty is violence.
The United States government sanctioning the ****** of non-white, but especially Muslim bodies across the world... is violence.
So, when you condemn violence, do you mean resistance?
Because there is a whole lot of violence you should be condemning instead.
Adapted from Emilio Lacques-Zapien
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 11:14 AM UTC
Engaging oneself
Mental ************
Useless, yet intoxicating
No pleasure, but one’s own
The syringe of lies
Dripping slowly
Cerebral synapses
Mass-debating collective
Resources wasted
Wandering a wilderness of chaos
Loneliness
Pain
Piercing needle of utterances
Dripping
Doctrine enabled
Minds not our own
Fear
Control
Dec 1, 2018
Dec 1, 2018 at 3:05 PM UTC
A change of heart,
scraping at behavior,
a hope of better days,
not always so easy.
Reinvention of idealism,
rebirth of the renaissance,
a truth or a lie,
who's to say?
Love is right,
but not enough,
the world is cold,
and though the lines are connected,
this doesn't make it relevant.
An old man's dream,
fire in the bones,
future no longer two toned,
wrought with silver-screen,
and fed to the hearts of youth,
like me.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 5:45 AM UTC
At least there is consistency in emotional recidivism.
Criminality you can depend on.
Vacant words.
Hollow ***
Empty eyes.
At the very least there is stability in the pattern.
You can sense the hand of dismissal as it cuts through the tension to lay its mark upon your cheek.
Delivering the degradation of being hit with the indifferent truth.
Nothing more than a pillowed and silken chaise that cleans cooks and allows you to lay your every waking trouble upon her breast, upholstered in thin sinewy tatters, longing for mutual fortification.
Mar 17, 2016
Mar 17, 2016 at 1:01 PM UTC
upbeat chatter fills the computer lab
four story walk up, prison education floor
drab desk oversees outdated clients
slowly loading software
older than some of the inmates
attempting to facilitate learning
on canteen day
with call-outs for visitation
sick leave
cell-ins
bad attitude is the tone of the day
while I sit representing
the “what if”
a symbol for all those who would strive to be better
the station risers
busting the status quo into tiny hypocritical shards
used to metaphorically shank their past
and be new
fresh into a world that condemns them
turning a blind eye to the progress and prospect
recreating criminal thinking
altering recidivism rates
negatively
May 21, 2014
May 21, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
It is better to bark at the moon
than let speechlessness seep through the void.
Until the premise of the voyage is replete
can we know the cosmos
sayeth the wise on a chagrin of a day.
Clod and ash will be our bane
and only the heralded will remain,
two feet standing rather than
crawling, tantamount to recidivism.
Sep 16, 2013
Sep 16, 2013 at 5:01 PM UTC
encased in energy oozing with a combination of anger
and apathy
I smile and extend my hand
“sign here” I say
….with a grumble they comply
as life up to this point has given them no reason not to
a DR or daily fail can mean fourteen to 40 days
no more good time for the student inmate with a bad attitude –
Doing my best to have fans running and any available window open
I attempt to remove the atmosphere of daily prison life
with the exception of everyone being in the same dull blue
and carrying the same emotional strain
hardened faces contort trying to remember
why y=mx+b
and I all can do is watch the struggle –
elation fills one corner of the space
as someone has a break through
I smile quietly to myself while reading
one less for the recidivism rates
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 1:05 PM UTC
in late years, the incarcerated man becomes a vessel of facts not widely recorded. he puts them to paper for the daughter he’s imagined by. on the outside, the daughter settles into a calming routine with a perfectly good father. her mother abuses animals with such regularity the family name becomes synonymous with the fight to end recidivism. on the whole, the man’s youth is something he said once and forgot. a real wife was humanly possible.
Jul 3, 2013
Jul 3, 2013 at 1:57 PM UTC
you always had an affinity for the complexities of life,
clutching onto precarious thresholds
that you vehemently
refuse to call
a bereavement
you always had an affinity for
bodies of matter that refuse to take
care of you back,
an abundance of saturnine
sentiments is what you are
made of
you always had an affinity for
convoluted recidivism
that always seemed to mar
the ineffable reverie
constantly buzzing in
your head
you always had an affinity for
a jargon's mouth,
wanting to emblazon the
sporadic tribulation along
the interstices of your
deleterious wreckage
you always had an affinity for
everything quintessential
that your reticent heart
can glom.
Nov 15, 2017
Nov 15, 2017 at 5:55 AM UTC