There is a blog that will change me...

On September 23rd I was out on the rec yard here in prison playing handball. It's close to 1800 hrs (6:00pm for non-military types). I'm playing with"Peanut"...aptly named for knocking off (robbing) the Planters factory that he was employed many years ago. No matter how long ago the things you did out there, in here they seem to attach monikers as if a jacket welded to you was easier to slough off. Our opponents are two Hispanic men...good-natured fellows that have a wicked game of handball. "Kiwi" for smuggling birds and "Coffee Bean" for sticking up Starbucks all over California. Me? I got a whole bunch of 'em..."Preacher boy"(my love of witnessing for CHRIST), "Magic man"(previous adeptness with being a magician on the streets..my ex-wife telling all who'll listen that my best trick was disappearing), true dat, "Coach"(a persistent fervor for all that is softball), "Dougie Fresh"(not a rapper, but I do sing...certainly not well), "Safety Man"(it's where I work here)...there's a few more that we'll get to later...this digressing is quite a habit of mine please bear with me.

These guys are beating Peanut and I pretty handily as we go into the fourth round. Out of the corner of my eye I catch some men huddling up over at a corner of the fence. This is not too unusual if it were not for the fact all were wearing the steel-toed government issued boots, and we're in the rec yard where sneakers are the norm. Several were being a shield from the eye in the sky for a few which were digging up, like a chicken scratching out corn, something catching sun in that all too familiar glinting promising itself to be soon imbedded in a man's side, eye to a hope that he would die...shanks. Since we have a move on (an activity where if you want to go somewhere in prison now's the time) in about 5 minutes; I plan on taking leave from the rec yard...if I can get out of here.

Then all of a sudden as if called for a long awaited visit, Kiwi and Coffee Bean walk off from our match and head over to where other steel-toed men are gathering like those ominous clouds scudding about and dropping out the fang of a tornado funnel. Peanut and I look at each other with the sudden realization of what we know is fixing to happen. Snatching up our stuff we make a beeline to the exit gate...and I don't mean a slight jog...full out sprint less we get caught behind enemy lines. The Sword of Damocles is just as tenuous in here as it ever was back in the medieval times.

Our main objective is to get back to the unit, into the shower, visit the "storeman"...so named because he stocks up on things that one runs out of before making the once a week trek to commissary...usury has got nothing on these guys! But you know that if things are going to get to  "jumping off"..(I'm using these quotes because I'm not sure how prison savvy some may be from the faux vernacular that tv land brings your way)...then a lockdown is imminent. Plus along the way to the unit you do your convict duty by letting many know that things are heading to the south quickly (denoting that the Mexican rivals are at it...again) giving heads up to those in the know. When a seasoned veteran of this tattooed landscape makes an effort to give you a privy look into that hindsight you'll be regretting once ensconced in that 80 square feet..with no coffee...no "zoozoo and wham whams"...(sweets)...then you should take heed to the utmost...we usually have a feel for these types of things.

I was able to get my shower, pick up an extra bag of coffee...thank GOD...oatmeal pies, honey buns, a couple bags of M&M's--it was all he had left or I would've bought 'em all!--and then word started coming in droves through our officer's walkie talkie..."secure the compound! secure the compound! all inmates get down on the ground now!...get on the ground now!"...followed by the loud explosion of flash grenades.

Now the inmates are frantically searching for a safe haven. A prison riot is one scary scene let me tell ya...so many variables from which you can get hurt in a bad way--from convicts and guards alike. After all the guards are outnumbered and just as freaked out as...or even more so...I'll go with more so--especially those that are absolutely bereft of compassion for the prisoner's plight...and some prisoners deserve it it's true...but picking and choosing should be taught from the perspective of training prison personnel. That way if something of this magnitude comes your way as a guard, and you find yourself cornered by...say 150 men that you have made it a point of making it more miserable for all along, then the sphincter muscle will get more of a workout than you would've thought possible...and that picture is rather ugly. Some institutions are well prepared to handle these outbursts of gangland strife..hence the exploding of grenades...but to the credit of fighting men everywhere some men are just hard to put down.. and we got our share I can tell you that much. Once I witnessed a man getting stabbed repeatedly...and I'm into double digits here...but he kept coming, dying in the arms of medical staff only after choking out his assailant. Such is the eye beholden to things once looked upon can never take away from memory.

Soon we were in our cells, with the men stranded out on the rec yard whether part of the gang war or not....hence the sprinting by Mr. Planters and I...my cellie didn't make it back...I almost feel a bit responsible because in my effort for self preservation...so contrary to CHRIST in my life but there you go...meism overriding Himism...I missed seeing if he were in earshot. It's a little before 1900 hrs and I am wondering after seeing (my cell faces the rec yard and although a ways off)  all the flashes of the crowd controlling grenades--as well the whole population of the guards running to the rec yard--that  this will probably be a good clue that this was a doosey. One to ensure a lengthy stay inside our 80 square feet. At about 2230 (10:30pm) they started bringing the men back...at least those whom were ambulatory. It was being done according to ethnicity..see Matthew 24:7...it says, (because the Bible is alive don't you know)"that nation will rise against nation..." and this word "nation" is where "ethnos" or the more common appellate: ethnicity derives its meaning.

My cellie...Sam...made it back at 0103 in the am of course. I was watching for him because he's shared these years of incarceration inside this cell, and you learn to look out for one another as much as possible...except of course if you are running for your life to get off the rec yard (still a stigma of my selfishness in retrospection). In he comes with all the info about what went down, further confirming what is fixing to happen to us over the ensuing weeks. He was glad for the extra bag of coffee..my handball opponent "Coffee Bean" won't be that ever again...  Sam tells me as he was involved in the thick of things...like espresso so one said later.

The weeks I speak of are over now as I sit here in another unit because they had to make an entire unit a lockdown community due to lack of space for all the malefactors involved...stretchers aplenty needed to clear away the human fall-out of little minds in big boy bodies...the malevolence meteing out its revenge as was its intention. Lost a few folks...not to death, but to maiming and transferring of these men to other places where the Bureau of Prisons hope to quell their thirst for violence by relocation. But their bedfellows of badness are wherever they send them--until change comes individually, there will be no salve in Gilead. I am now (as well as Sam) in a three man cell...5 extra square feet to accommodate another man.

The area is claustrophobic at best, but the reaping and sowing of GOD'S laws will not be denied. My poor decision making, which muddled about my mind as to what bank to rob back in the day, is the mainstay of my current living arrangements. I never want to eat another bologna sandwich for the rest of my life! They kept shoving  them in our little "beanshoot"..the slot cut out of our cell door. Oscar Meyer..I hate you!

One of the castles in this particular lockdown, (I always look for where they are due to the clouds that so often are brought into my periphery, begging the epic storms that were the rec yard as of late) was the opportunity to witness to Sam and I's new cellie..."Scar"...you could guess I'm sure once meeting him face to boxcutter from his ear to the corner of his mouth face as where his particular moniker originates. But it doesn't stop there, I can attest to, as removing his shirt to climb topside, he looked as if a gaggle of pixie sticks were strewn across his torso...both front to back. He's done 17 "calenders" and is gonna go back to the streets in 6 months.

Many things have changed since the now 35 year-old man was the then 18-year-old boy. Guess what he didn't quite have a grasp of as he no longer wants to deal in the atrocities that brought him here for so long, and that have ran the map-filled welts and trenches etched into his body? He has little knowledge of the saving grace of JESUS. Am I here for him in that capacity? Did GOD in HIS omniscient put him where at the last leg of a boatload of incarceration could give him the cure from what ailed him for years. I can hope so because he is very receptive to listening to all that the MASTER has taught me and is still bringing it ten-fold. Sam helps too as he has cast aside the hip-hop culture he was trapped in and, is himself a startling example of transformation done CHRIST style.

On a more somber note to wrap this incredibly long blog up...One of the men who was transferred over here with us has been struggling with a mental disorder that the lockdown wreaked havoc upon. Since we lived with him, as I'm sure all can testify to the quirks of a family's blacksheep...we got 'em in flocks..we were able to help him stay out of trouble in our unit. But once they let us out after two weeks, he was really in a mess and I dropped the ball as the men who were not aware of how bad off he was, starting laughing and making jokes at him (as I said earlier some men in here deserve it a whole lot more than others). I was so caught up in trying to not only get to the phone, laundry, shower (and of course I had to blog you all) that I saw what he was dealing with, ignored it, and soon they called in the goon squad to take him out. I should've done the thing that was anti-Doug and pro-Jamie...cuz now I won't get to witness to him again...perhaps ever. It was a lesson twice plucked that will forever be in the reels of me as I look around at what I am striving to be and what I used to be..as the projector life rolls on.

Okay folks this is quite a bit I know, and I sure appreciate those who take time out to pray for those men hurt, those who did the hurting, and those of us who could've done a little better during this crisis other than the all about mine mindset which is overtaking this society by storm, hook and crook...literally in some aspects. There, as always, remains a plethora of things, be it oddities or just a stretch of normalcy  that I leave out only to remember it as I lay in my cell...having to weep more quietly into the night as I have another soul in there that might take it wrongly that I have this love for all. Last night it was for Jamie because I didn't go to him when I should've...perhaps tonight will be free from that ...it's hard to say..still early enough for things to get rocking and rolling. I pray it stays as calm as possible.

agape furnished love fashioned from above...

later...dougie boy