In the Pacific Northwest the opening strains of summer feel hard won after months of cloud cover and atmospheric rain. We burst out of our houses with those first few bars of sunshine played in spring, thinking it is time for dinners under the stars (much of the time we jump the gun) and winter rains return with a vengeance. The beginning of Richard, Duke of Glouster famous soliloquy from Richard III comes to mind when the season finally tempers:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Opening the windows at night officially marks spring in my house. I welcome that early squawking of the crows in the park. By the time solstice arrives, the light and the crows have trained me and I am unable to sleep beyond the 5:30 sunrise. Heady winter pursuits are abandoned for it is time to move in the sunlight. You may recall that Richard was not meant for the glorious summer of peace — a victory hard fought by his brother King Edward IV. Born with a broken body, Richard carries wounds that will not heal. He doesn’t fare well socially which leaves him to brood as he sharpens his contempt for the court:
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,

The looping mind makes trouble. Rather than adapt to court-life, Richard pushes away. He plots, manipulates, until he eventually brings England to war. The disconnection between his mind and body drives Richard toward conflict. So let’s bring in our writers, here. At one time each of them would identify more strongly with Richard III — the plotting, the gaming of the system, the ill-fitting suit of one’s life, and the solutions found through anti-social behaviors. As we come to the end of our exploration of near and far, the writers pull us so close that we are reading about their interior landscapes. These self-reflections, prescriptions, remembrances, and groundings are the antidote to bringing a nation to its knees. Unlike the villainous Richard, our writers draw us near.

Mirror by Ian Lohrman
I have lived the most beautiful life.
I have failed miserably.
I have deceived and hurt people.
People have deceived and hurt me.
But, I have been loved unconditionally.

Nothing Could Touch Us by Jacob Sopher
Our sins were private matters
Whispered to a priest
Not scarlet letters printed on
Newspaper pages and shaped
Like steel shackles about our wrists

Tear It Down by Brett Pruett
Can you walk a mile in my shoes
Can you take a sip from my cup
I got beef with bullies
Who try to press a line

Insanity’s Response by MDSK
I have lost everything in this life,
My money, friends, family, and myself,
My home, children, and my wife,
Lost, but not forgotten upon that high shelf.

Why Do I Lie to Myself? by Jazzy Jeff
I like it when I lie to myself,
I don’t have to face my hell.
I don’t have to hear my destructions you tell,
I like it when I lie to myself.

Assumptions by Michael Wise
I assumed I had to become hardened so
I would be accepted.
My many traumas helped create many masks,
I assumed I had to wear them,
with each mask I transformed into their
perception.

Time Passed by Marcus Standing Crow
I wake up in the same frame,
different metal, different soul,
Am I the same?

A few of my near and dear have suffered some health setbacks; the summer we anticipated (swimming and hikes and long bike rides) has shifted. This season will require patience, hunkering down, and the slow, steady work of mending. Meanwhile sunlight dances across the room and the boisterous summer sounds pass under open windows. The busy mind needs to stop spinning to the next activity and settle, because wounds require rest. And my friends, there are more summers ahead. Let’s end with an excerpt from Amir’Whadi Hassan’s Far and Near, a prescription for finding peace. | TDS

Completes the Journey to Self-Love.
Step one: Mental Health
Step two: Emotional Intelligence
Step three: Spiritual Health and Enlightenment
Step four: Self Respect
Step five: Value of Self (Self-Worth)
Step six: Self-Acceptance
Step seven: Faith

What seems so far, yet it is so near
once you take the first step
toward Self-Love.
Saalam

“Love is the only reason for living. Love is the basis of all life.”
— Frida Kahlo

I have lived the most beautiful life.
I have failed miserably.
I have deceived and hurt people.
People have deceived and hurt me.
But, I have been loved unconditionally.

I have been on many adventures.
I have worked hard and I have dreamed.
I have known fortune and loss.
I have known many wonderful friends and lovers.
I have been inspired by many mentors and muses.

Everyone I meet is an angel. Everyone I meet is a devil.
Everyone I meet is my teacher. Everyone I meet is my guru.
Everyone I know is a mirror.
Everyone I know is God.

I am nothing and I am everything.
I am one of many lenses learning to focus.
I am an antenna receiving and transmitting, communicating in Spirit.
My words contain infinite power and possibility.

I am the sincerity of the mountains, the forests and the seas.
Earthy desire burns cool and steady within my belly.
I am the morning star of mystical beauty.
I am the moon’s reflection in every lake and stream.

I am a pendulum hung between shadow and light.
I am the gentle truth, perceptible yet inexplicable.
I trust in the virtue and power of my own existence.
I am the still ness at the center of an infinite circle.
I am a being of boundless Love. | IL

I went through life with so many
assumptions,
I assumed I had to become hardened so
I would be accepted.
My many traumas helped create many masks,
I assumed I had to wear them,
with each mask I transformed into their
perception.
I was lost,
I assumed I had to be that,
I formed a relationship with God and my
world changed.
I put a mask on,
I didn’t recognize it,
I assumed prison did that,
My journey with Jesus did that,
I found out those masks don’t fit anymore,
My assumption of love was distorted,
Being accepted by the wrong ones was a
lesson hard learned,
Being free from myself I was able to break
the chains I enslaved myself with,
There is no more assumption, I now know
love and freedom. | MW

Destruction — Tear it down
Construction — Build it up
Can you walk a mile in my shoes
Can you take a sip from my cup
I got a beef with bullies
Who try to press a line
To impose their selves on others
When others are friends of mine | BP

I like it when I lie to myself,
I don’t have to face my hell.
I don’t have to hear my destructions you tell,
I like it when I lie to myself.

Every morning I wake up in my cell,
from a dream, I’ll never be able to tell,
Because of the many times I have fail,
so it is better, that I lie to myself.

Through my day here I fake my smiles,
while I hide my frown deep inside.
And the pain I cannot bear to show
because then you’ll see the truth of me unfold.

So, I count the days and months to the gate,
but there’s many instances, where I lose my faith.
So to see reality, I must fantasize my wait,
but in the meantime, I’ deal with these idiots I hate.

So, I like it when I lie to myself,
I am the greatest pretender, can’t you tell?
I live in a world, that’s bound for hell,
and the only escape, is to lie to myself.

Now you know, why I lie to myself. | JJ

I’ve felt the time pass,
as well as the pain,
It also passed me strength in the game.
I wake up in the same frame,
different metal, different soul,
Am I the same?
Maybe, maybe not.
It’s all time, and thought,
only God knows my heart,
gave me the spark.
I’m litty, like a rave,
ready for the grave,
but I’d rather stay,

feeling the vibration of time
moving away.

One day with God
is as a thousand years.
So how is it only 24 hours in a day,
Calendars fall,
I’ve picked up each day.

I’ve felt time pass,
as well as the pain,
that same time,
passed me strength to maintain. | MSC

We were young once
Wild and free
Unbroken and full of grace
We filled our worlds
With laughter
And nothing could touch us

Our sins were private matters
Whispered to a priest
Not scarlet letters printed on
Newspaper pages and shaped
Like steel shackles about our wrists
We were free and unknown
And nothing could touch us

We had survived the hells
Of our childhoods
We were all alive and well
In countless revelers we
Danced in defiance of
Responsibility, gods, support groups
Even love itself
And nothing could touch us

Drifting in the desert
Split seconds from disaster
Driving to the castle by the sea
The ocean waves lap the shore
By my one side and you
My beauty on the other
Read Angela’s Ashes out loud
From the paperback
We were young once
And nothing could touch us | JS

The days are going by even faster,
This path that I’ve begun following,
Is leading me ever closer to disaster,
But I dare not consider slowing.

For all of my past may surely catch me,
That eternal, terrible, black, and lonely despair,
Tears are making it so difficult to see,
Nearly impossible for me to even care.

I have lost everything in this life,
My money, friends, family, and myself,
My home, children, and my wife,
Lost, but not forgotten upon that high shelf.

That pedestal that holds all my memories,
Of a wonderful life I used to lead,
Those memories who leave me to my miseries,
No matter how hard I dare to plead.

My pain renews with every hellish sleep,
In a heart shaped maze of razored walls,
Holding onto every emotion that I keep,
No matter who may choose to come to call.

I no longer know how much more I can take,
Each day only serves to bring me more pain,
My smile now fails to be so effortlessly fake,
As I continue to be slowly driven insane.

I feel a true victim of fate,
In a long tear filled flood.
Once again this boiling hate,
Beginning to feel that angry lust for blood.

My love has become a living, seething, rage.
A story I wish had never been told.
Locked inside an ever shrinking cage,
A warming rage and a heart stone cold.

These days continue to blur together,
Everything is different, everything the same.
These things I feel may last forever,
Alongside an endless ocean of guilt and shame.

There is no end in sight to this race I run,
To the sharp pains I feel, these tears I cry.
This hell, I fear, has just begun,
And I’ll live it until the day I finally die. | MDSK

The distance seems so far, although it is so near.
A transition of space through time.

First step: Is the thought to move forward
Into the vast distance.
Second step: Movin’ further into the distance
a step away from which I began
Third step: Draws me closer to the realization
that in order to reach my destination.
The fourth step: Must be taken in order to reach
The fifth step: and be nearer to completion became after
The sixth step: The final step

Completes the Journey to Self-Love.
Step one: Mental Health
Step two: Emotional Intelligence
Step three: Spiritual Health and Enlightenment
Step four: Self Respect
Step five: Value of Self (Self-Worth)
Step six: Self-Acceptance
Step seven: Faith

What seems so far, yet it is so near
once you take the first step
toward Self-Love
Salam | AH

HAPPY JUNETEENTH

We came in hot to our workshops these past two weeks reading more Galway Kinnell, this time the poem Memories of My Father. Written in seven sections, Memories exacts scenes from a life that span generational transitions: father to son, son to father, father to son. As we read the poem, our writers found this central question, “Can a father give his son/what he himself never possessed,/ or lacks the courage to wish up from his own deprivation?”

The men dug deep for discussions about intergenerational trauma, lessons taught by imperfect men, and the conflicted sense of gratitude they felt to their fathers. From Snake River, Richard Simms writes: They say when our parents pass away, we inherit a portion of their spirit, and any item which they possessed still holds their energy that you can feel any time you are near it. A light whisper in the wind from ancestors, calm your breath, ease your thoughts, and you will hear them. Though my father wasn’t around much, I sense the healing of his touch, a magnitude of forgiveness…

Richard went on to tell us about the man who took on the role of father — a person who said what he intended to do and then, had the inexplicable will to follow through. This trait seemed remarkable to Richard when he was younger. He swells with pride as he describes this man who anchors his life. Through his description, we feel this remarkable father enter our writer’s room.

Jesse Jay Jimenez expresses the intricately knotted lessons that may contain a boy’s pain and anger, shame and maybe even a sense of betrayal when those lessons are harsh: A father must make a man out of a boy so that the boy can continue to make men from boys. The making of a man does not always look nice or safe. The world is as a complex wilderness — as raw and violent as the Jurassic era … The boy is a man possessing gifts only a father can give. Only if the boy is strong enough can he possess whatever can bestow upon him. The world is also sophisticated, complex and organized but shrouded in cowardice. The boy must be strong. He must be quick-witted and patient. The living is not fair as opposed to death which cared not of age, value, size, or desire. Life is good and death is bad. How is there then that life is unfair and death is most fair?

And still, we read gratitude for the life a father provides, and acceptance that this is necessary rite of manhood. He recognizes that the boy must be taught to survive in a world that tips the scale toward a son’s demise. Osmus Garfield writes on a similar plane: The push that a boy needs by his father — the good or bad, the whippings, the rewards, the words that he said that went in one ear and other the other… now wishing, I just listened to what he said, knowing his spirit lives on through me.

In Thoughts on My Father, Phillip Luna writes: I’ve always thought my father was indestructible — impermeable to pain and unbreakable. He had some sort of inherent ability, some built-in capacity that I would never have.

My dear friend Becca once said to me that parenting allowed her to redefine the parent-child relationship. She’s right, the hands of the clock point to different circumstances, new models. We pull forward the good we recall from our upbringing and remodel to meet the moment. Here, Phillip Luna parents from prison, showing that he indeed has a built-in capacity that he never thought he would have. When we were with Philip last, he said his son would be visiting this week, the first in-person visit in eleven years, from Dust:
My son, barely a teenager then, wanted to learn. He played one of my old guitars that I had left behind. I bought him strings on his birthday. I wrote and mailed him tabs and riffs I’d made up.

What impacts me daily is fathering through a phone line, writes Chris Lewis in his essay Father Away: The Voice of a Parent Behind Bars. For several years, I have peppered Chris to expand this essay and so every Father’s Day, I hold it back waiting to include the insights he has shared with us in person. Chris has now become a grandfather (twice) and I’m certain that he brings to that role his great curiosity and kindness. As he’s coming close to the end of a long sentence, he has been transferred to a prison where we do not run a workshop, and so I am releasing this at last. I plan to ask him write a piece from home about what it feels like to hold his grandchildren for the first time.

Andrew Morrow’s Son Shine carries fatherly instructions in the form of a love poem:
I want to hear a smile on your face, coming through the phone
Daddy’s always with you, even though he’s not home
Another first day of school, how’d you get so grown
God’s there with you, so you know you’re not alone

Taking a broader view of family, we have included Healing the Blood Line by Jose Luis Sandoval and finally, Family by Kevin Clay: Family from the start looks like a village that holds you, feeds you, cleans you, teaches you. My family is a hand hold, a shoulder to cry on, words of encouragement. My mother cares, my dad is strong, my sisters follow. I’m a brother who leads.

Those of us fortunate enough to benefit from the steady love of a father recognize the profound place this person occupies in the mooring of our stories. When I read the work of this group of writers, I recognize the courage they bring to their role and the effort they exude be present in absence. The phone calls, the letters, the short in-person visits become concentrated reflections of their best selves and are filled with a promise to return home as soon as they are able.

And to my dear dad, I love you. I’ll call home! | TDS

I want to hear a smile on your face, coming through the phone
Daddy’s always with you, even though he’s not home
Another first day of school, how’d you get so grown
God’s there with you, so you know you’re not alone
I’ll be back before you know it, in the blink of an eye
Hold your tears back soldier, you can’t let them see you cry
Protect your mom and your sister, they’re the reason you’re alive
You’re the man of the house, I hope you know it gives me pride
Be proud of yourself, you suffered through the storm
I knew you had it in you, since the day that you were born
You my heir to the throne and the kingdom is yours
Make sure you do your homework, remember your chores
Don’t forget I told you, take time and pray
Family’s heaven on Earth, you my saving grace
From the day I get out, I’ll make a change
So you don’t have to see your daddy being locked up in a cage
~fin~ | AM

Family is man’s purpose, and women’s desire. It’s like a good movie that has the power to make you laugh, enjoy, suffer, and love.

People who don’t have a family wish they had one, and those who do complain about their family. In fact, we’ve all heard a friend or sibling criticize their family. The reality is that all human beings tend to criticize based on our experiences or points of view. Luckily life allowed me to know both sides of the coin on one side was a united family full of love and mutual support on the other side was a family in which heartbreak and disunity reigned. One afternoon in July, when analyzing the emotions and feelings I felt during these two stages of my life, I realized how important it is to have a family that understands you. When you grow up in a healthy and united family environment that promotes love and mutual understanding, life becomes easier. For example, when you were a child and you have a father or a mother who teaches you and guides you, it is much easier to be a good student. When you have family warmth, you feel secure and capable of achieving any goal this principle of cause and effect applies to all members of the family parents siblings children spouses etc.

On the opposite side of the coin, when you grow up in a family without mutual empathy or without love and care, life becomes complicated. On a mental and physical level, the nights become longer. Life becomes sad and insecure. For example when you grew up with parents who abused you physically or emotionally, it’s easier to develop feelings of resentment and anger. A lack of love have serious consequences.

According to psychologist Brian Tracy when family members hurt other members emotionally or physically, it is often because in the past they were hurt or abused. They are victims of victims. In other words, your great grandfather abused your grandfather. your grandfather abused your father. and your father abused you, creating this toxic cycle of upbringing or family curse, as I like to call it.

The reality is that first steps towards a happy family is learning to let go of negative emotions and learning to forgive. When I did this, my eyes opened to a new world. I was finally able to realize all the traumas and grief that my family carried when my mother was an adult. She still had a little girl who had been abused confused and hurt inside her. The same girl remains inside my grandmother’s tired body, and her mother, and her mother’s. The second step I discovered to counteract the problem that directly attacks the family nucleus is to develop high levels of compassion. Understanding compassion is feeling empathy for the victims, and being willing to try to understand the feelings and point of view of other family members.

Perfect families do not exist. All families are affected at some point by immaturity or a lack of experience. It is our responsibility to break family curses or parent toxic cycles. It is up to us to improve as parents, siblings, children, spouses. Remember that the best antidote to heal the wounds of a broken soul are love compassion and understanding. Today is your time to take action and to become the best version of yourself for your family when and where to start is up to you. | JLS

Being locked in a cage the size of a small bathroom 20-plus hours a day sounds detestable. After years spent living in prison, this is not what bothers me the most. In fact, I hardly notice it. Cell bars and metal doors have slammed in my face thousands of times over the years. I’ve been told how to walk and where to walk; what to eat; what to wear; and at times, how to speak. But there is a chasm that worsens over the years, it is the void I feel being unable to raise my children.

Humans are amazing. We adapt to even the harshest conditions. Our survival abilities are just one bristle in nature’s paintbrush. During my time down, I’ve been beaten up, pepper-sprayed, and left in isolation control units for months, even years at a time. I’ve been forced to live with strange dudes (mentally unstable men) — subjected to inadequate healthcare. I have eaten food that can “take you out, before you make it out.” There are no healthier options. Violence, depression, and anxiety permeate my environment. Nonetheless, these adverse aspects of being behind bars affect me less as time passes — it’s “just another day in the joint.” This may seem odd to those who have no firsthand experience or knowledge of prison. For those of us behind these walls, this is the world we know.

What impacts me daily is fathering through a phone line.

For parents, this fact transcends the stress of prison conditions: we know our children are out in society without fathers and mothers. Nearly half the people in state prisons are parents to children under 18. In the United States, there are as many children with a parent in prison as there are people in prison.*

As my daughters grow from babies to the young women, the chasm only widens, and the pain deepens. Phone call time limits (15-20 minutes) and scheduled time frames are completely inadequate to protect, nurture, educate, and apply one’s love as a parent. Visitations are almost non-existent; factors such as finances, travel time, and scheduling make it difficult for local families and nearly impossible for families that live in other towns, or states. Despite the “Interstate Corrections Compact,” I (and many others) have been involuntarily housed 2000 or more miles away from family and children for years (or decades.)

The pangs are intense in those moments when I call my daughter and she’s at a volleyball match, alone, without parental support. “Mom is working.” Or the last sixty seconds of a phone call when the system announces as much, I hear the noticeable change in her voice. There is an underlying sadness and confusion as to why we have to disconnect, and the jarring sound of the line going dead. This single puzzle piece of communication only temporarily and haphazardly puts into place the complete picture. The girls are left with the silence of the phone line and a renewed sadness accompanied by psychological pain.

At times, I sense the anger and hear about the rebellion against their mother (over and above the normal teenage occurrences) — one of the many byproducts of my imprisonment. There is little I can do about it. The phone conversations are inadequate. Letters are more intimate and reassuring, but I wonder, are they filed away in a shoe box, never to be read again?

Those last sixty second of the phone call burn more than all the pepper spray and bruises combined. I worry for my daughters’ safety and health, and lament that I’m not there to provide it. My desire to support their happiness and life success is more present than any anxiety caused by the violence and stress of prison. When a tear falls from one of my daughter’s eye, or I hear her voice crack in sadness, my entire week is disrupted until we reconnect.

This void is always present, either in a large or small way. Does the term “father” even fit? Parent, yes, biologically speaking. But what am I? What are we as incarcerated American parents? What can we do to father or mother from the inside? | CL

* The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Survey of Prison Inmates did a survey in 2016 which was released in 2020 and published by the Prison Policy Initiative (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/08/11/parental_incarceration/ )

I’ve always thought my father was indestructible — impermeable to pain and unbreakable. He had some sort of inherent ability, some built-in capacity that I would never have.

And I know, now, that my father wasn’t built in such a way. Rather he was made and remade, broken down and mended to be impervious to all things, so it seemed.

He was broken as a child, a son of immigrants in a poor community as he struggled to fit in. He was broken as a teen, homeless and sleeping on park benches while he went to high school. When I was born, my parents left the California city life they knew for a small town in Oregon, because this would give me better opportunities than they had had.

But even moving to Oregon was a trial for my family.

My father moved an 8-hour drive away, weeks before my mom and me. He stayed in a tent on a friend’s lawn while he looked for work. His first job paid $4.75 an hour, but it offered him an apprenticeship as a butcher. He would spend more than 20 years in that career – work at 5 a.m., five days a week, sometimes more.

Growing up in small town Oregon, we were poor, but happy. I remember being happy more than being poor. He never seemed to mind the limited funds we had, so I didn’t mind either.

I never wished for wealth and nice things when I was growing up. I only wanted to be indestructible, like him. But I never struggled the way he had, and the irony, of course, is that his sacrifices shielded me from the life that would have made me like him.

And so it was that when my son was born, I only hoped to be a shadow of the father I had. | PL

Additionally, please read this article by Philip Luna published by the Prison Journalism Project, ICE Arrests Have Made My. Dad Scared to Visit Me In Prison

What does family look like to me?

Well, I have two sides of family that are super big. I’m named after my dad whose name is Kevin DeWitt Jackson Jr. I’m Kevin DeWitt Jackson the third. My mom’s family is the Clay family and I’m a lot closer to them. I also have the last name Clay. Family means so much to me. I like to spend as much time as possible with them. I want to protect, provide, and bond with them. Family from the start looks like a village that holds you, feeds you, cleans you, teaches you. My family is a hand hold, a shoulder to cry on, words of encouragement. My mother cares, my dad is strong, my sisters follow. I’m a brother who leads. We have a beautiful grandma who we miss, a granddad who we resemble. My aunts compliment with loving words, my uncle BBQs with a passion. My cousins have talents that inspire me. My in-laws who are old and new. My family is a group that supports me. I created my own family when my daughter was born on March 26th 2022, her name is Kecian Clay, she has the same initials as me and I named her. Family is a legacy. People who carry your name and remember you when you leave this life. | KC

The first guitar I played was an old dreadnought-style acoustic with warped and rusty strings that had gathered so much dust in my parents’ shed that I had to scrap, scrub and scour it clean. It was a six-string guitar, with only five strings. I named it “Ol’ Dusty.”

I played until my callous-free fingers ached; the indentions left by the rust-ridden strings were smeared with a red tint. I was 14 and the only thing I wanted for Christmas was an electric guitar. My father, knowing how expensive a guitar was, said I had to “prove it” first. This was how I came to collect Ol’ Dusty from the shed.

So I played. I practiced. I trained my fingers for months. Then, on Christmas morning, I tore green and gold wrapping paper off a brand new royal blue Fender Stratocaster.

After that Christmas, I practiced sometimes eight hours a day. I trained until my fingers bled. And at night, when everyone was asleep, I laid in my bed with my unplugged Stratocaster across my lap and gently worked through pentatonic scales in the dark. The little twang of string was barely audible and the dripping kitchen faucet was my metronome.

I joined a band that year and music became a bridge that allowed me to overcome social anxiety. It gave me friends. It gave me identity. It gave me purpose.

After graduation, I moved to Eugene to attend college. It was there — as an 18-year-old, slightly awkward music major — that I met my wife. She was a pianist and a vocalist. Music bonded us for a time.

There was a period after our son was born, after the divorce, under the weight of two jobs and co-parenting, that life became messy. Suddenly, playing music became a childish pastime I could no longer afford. I mounted my guitars on the walls of my living room, highbenough that my son couldn’t reach them. They were relics now – a childproof decoration from a childhood dream. I dusted them regularly.

Years later, when I went to prison, the first significant purchase I made was an acoustic guitar. I welcomed the wood tones that offset the concrete and cinder block walls. But in truth, it sat in the corner of my cell for many years and on occasions I found myself thinking how disappointed my father would be. I had spent a small fortune on something I never used.

Almost a decade passed before I picked up the guitar in earnest.

My son, barely a teenager then, wanted to learn. He played one of my old guitars that I had left behind. I bought him strings on his birthday. I wrote and mailed him tabs and riffs I’d made up.

Music became our desperate dance to stay connected when physical distance the confines of prison are the smallest hurdles to overcome. Although it is usually a topic of conversation for us, I still don’t play as often as I should. But I do reflect on how music has had many, and sometimes very different roles in my life. | PL

When one has lived a long time alone,
among regrets so immense the past occupies
nearly all the room there is in consciousness,
one notices in the snake’s eyes, which look back
without giving any less attention to the future,
the first coating of the opaque milky-blue
leucoma snakes get when about to throw their skins
and become new — meanwhile continuing,
of course, to grow old — the exact bleu passé
that bleaches the corneas of the blue-eyed
when they lie back at the end and look for heaven,
a fading one knows means they will never find it,
when one has lived a long time alone.
— Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell’s poem When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone explores the crags where the isolated disappear. I think of the supermax prison in New Mexico we visited last summer. The men live in cells with a food portal providing their only fresh air. They left the light on in their spaces to let us know that we were welcome to meet them through the slender plexiglass window of their cells. From those portholes, we could see pictures of sweethearts and babies, some laundry washed and hanging to dry. Their entire worlds are contained in white boxes, like human terrariums. We witnessed the life alone, held in a chamber starved for touch. Waiting. Waiting for a letter. Waiting for hope. Waiting for companionship.

In this selection of work, we feel the loss of intimacy that builds over time apart. The love letters and poems try to bridge the gap, but they can’t replace the private space created between two people. During our last visit to Deer Ridge in Madras, we wrote about the extraordinary, found in ordinary moments. One man spoke about the smile that is only intended only for him. Buck shared his free write about planting bamboo with his partner. They split up, started new lives, and then returned to one another, and set up housekeeping for keeps — those running roots of bamboo securing their devotion. As we share, members of the group welcome each example as if somehow it draw their own person closer.

Now I See You, Now I Don’t by OH!
The only way I could get this out was through my eyes,
I listened to my eyes today and they told me that
they missed seeing you up close and far away,
in the night or during the day.
My eyes missed seeing your softness and your strength
cuz now all they see are prison metal and brick.

Michael Stepina’s Tears of Joy:
I thought she had forgotten me.
Blurred from its formation.
I hadn’t noticed she was present.
Not until it streaked my cheek.
A tear.

Jai’s Montana Blue:
With the fracture in the seam of a breaking heart
They run and sputter and streak down
The rounded cheeks just past her eyes’ lashes
Which could hold them at bay no more
Becoming heavy and wet the lashes split and fold

Phillip Barron’s song Alone Awake:
I’ll never say I love you
And I’ll never get to kiss your lips
But the feeling I have for you is greater
Than things such as this

MDKS’s One in a Million:
You make me forget all my strife,
All my fears evaporate like morning dew.
I cannot sleep without you at night,
My nightmares begin their attacks.

Kula Paul Adric’s Stolen Connections from Life:
Come and see your own reflection in these eyes of mine. A thing lost to their so-called correction and lies. Lost time.

When one has lived a long time alone,
one wants to live again among men and women,
to return to that place where one’s ties with the human
broke, where the disquiet of death and now also
of history glimmers its firelight on faces,
where the gaze of the new baby looks past the gaze
of the great granny, and where lovers speak,
on lips blowsy from kissing, that language
the same in each mouth, and like birds at daybreak
blether the song that is both earth’s and heaven’s,
until the sun has risen, and they stand
in the light of being made one: kingdom come,
when one has lived a long time alone.
— Galway Kinnell

The arrow flies true in these writers’ poems. Through the writing, they keep the doors open to love and remain vulnerable in the face of great adversity. And when we come together to share their work, they show one another remarkable tenderness, space for tears, warm embraces. Their hands cup around the flame of their own humanity to keep it burning brightly. | TDS

[Verse 1]

Softly I look at you
Slowly I approach
To think of you makes me nervous
From my stomach
To —
My throat

[Bridge]

I’ll never say I love you
And I’ll never get to kiss your lips
But the feeling I have for you is greater
Than things such as this

[Chorus]

You’re my dream girl, you’re only in my sleep
When I try to get closer, something’s wrong with my feet
I think not much longer will it take
Then I’m in my bed alone ... Awake

[Verse 2]

There is a lesson our dreams are meant to teach
Bout things being close yet so far out of reach
Sometimes the paths untraveled are most blessed
Just like flowers unpicked are the very best

[Bridge]
[Chorus] x2

Then I’m in my bed alone ... Awake | PJB

The wetness of it.
Where it come from?
I thought she had forgotten me.
Blurred from its formation.
I hadn’t noticed she was present.
Not until it streaked my cheek.
A tear.
Not of sadness.
The tiny burn in my eye is from my lady.
Lady Joy.
I’ll always love Lady Joy.
But, I haven’t known her for a while.
We are not as close or in love as we once were.
But every once in a while, she shows up.
To remind me just how much I appreciate and miss her. | MS

Like rain clouds that form from the ether
Turbulent tempests born from deepest blue sky’s
Knowing nothing of where they came from
Or where they must fall down
Welling up at anxieties edges
Roiling just so at the dam of inconvenience
Finally breaking free and overflowing
With the fracture in the seam of a breaking heart
They run and sputter and streak down
The rounded cheeks just past her eyes’ lashes
Which could hold them at bay no more
Becoming heavy and wet the lashes split and fold
Like a willows branches in Denver
After a sudden spring blizzard
Unforeseen heaviness too much to bear
Now the tree weeps for real
As it cannot hold in its despair
These inhumane droplets scream
Down her face again running
Like lemmings to the edge of her chin
And off into oblivion to careen and splash
On a distant shore shattering splattering
Upon the most ambivalent floor
Cold and hard and made of stone
That was crushed and beaten finally
Drowned hardened dried and constrained
Never again to receive the rain
That drips down and dribbles from the formerly
Clear blue skies the brilliant open spaces
So wondrously reflected in her
Montana blue eyes which harbored my endless love | JM