Three Published Poems by JC in Prison
In the somewhat distant past, I've had probably fifty poems, some not bad and others not good, published in various journals, magazines, etc. Well... tonight while digging through a box in my attic, I discovered an undated poetry journal entitled Inner Voices 6 (ISBN 0-9653634-5-7) which (I'd completely forgotten) published three of my poems in the mid-1990s while I was in prison. I even discovered one of these poems ("Random Access") in an old diary last year and posted it in a MySpace blog (click here to read that slightly different version) without remembering that it had ever been published. (Must not have been that memorable... lol.)
This photo of me was taken (I believe) in 1994, less than a year after I began my sentence.
The poems were written about three years after that, although I don't feel like digging through my diaries right now to ascertain the exact dates. But this picture seems to go with them - if only because it is nearly as half-cool and half-embarrassing as the poems themselves... LOL. I don't consider them my best work, by any means. But they provide an intriguing window into that place and time in my life.
The final pages of Inner Voices 6 feature a section entitled "About the Contributors." The entry about me there made me chuckle (and not only because it takes the liberty of being less than entirely accurate about my nationality):
"[Jesus Crisis], born 17 Sept. 1966, of Irish/Cherokee/Mediterranean descent, is serving a 7-to-25 year sentence for a crime he swears he did not commit. He was a student of eastern religion for several years before becoming a free thinker. He earned a degree in history outside, and is now majoring in English through Ohio University. He believes in love, pacifism wherever possible, the inherent beauty of the world, and personal liberty."
Anyway... without further ado, here are the three poems that appeared in Inner Voices 6:
* * *
Random Access
(read the lines in any order you like, but never in the same order)
Greedily
I am
Housing holiness
In a state of undress
A state of the union address
Snaking wearily
Living eerily
Noisily
Casting diamonds
Before lions
No crib for my bed
Indelibly marked
In the closets of life
Embracing living
Strife
Above all
Needing a needle
If I am
Torn
Scorned
Forlorn
Unborn
* * *
Prison Scene
Steel nightstand
On cold concrete floor
Painted beige like
cinder block wall,
nestling.
Flakes reveal black;
Gouges, rust.
Three drawers;
Handles, chrome,
accidental beige
(Top one burdened with magnet glued to plastic mirror)
Containing Hanes, Hilfiger, Fruit of the Loom,
turquoise toboggan,
black sunglasses.
Lined with butcher paper.
* * *
Casting Bread
Cutting scraps from
A magazine,
Saving the past;
Taking diamonds
In the rough from yesterday's
News, and
Goading it into the present.
Believing in the
Rays of a sun that has set,
Earning your pay,
And wishing you
Did not have to spend it tomorrow.
This photo of me was taken (I believe) in 1994, less than a year after I began my sentence.
The poems were written about three years after that, although I don't feel like digging through my diaries right now to ascertain the exact dates. But this picture seems to go with them - if only because it is nearly as half-cool and half-embarrassing as the poems themselves... LOL. I don't consider them my best work, by any means. But they provide an intriguing window into that place and time in my life.
The final pages of Inner Voices 6 feature a section entitled "About the Contributors." The entry about me there made me chuckle (and not only because it takes the liberty of being less than entirely accurate about my nationality):
"[Jesus Crisis], born 17 Sept. 1966, of Irish/Cherokee/Mediterranean descent, is serving a 7-to-25 year sentence for a crime he swears he did not commit. He was a student of eastern religion for several years before becoming a free thinker. He earned a degree in history outside, and is now majoring in English through Ohio University. He believes in love, pacifism wherever possible, the inherent beauty of the world, and personal liberty."
Anyway... without further ado, here are the three poems that appeared in Inner Voices 6:
* * *
Random Access
(read the lines in any order you like, but never in the same order)
Greedily
I am
Housing holiness
In a state of undress
A state of the union address
Snaking wearily
Living eerily
Noisily
Casting diamonds
Before lions
No crib for my bed
Indelibly marked
In the closets of life
Embracing living
Strife
Above all
Needing a needle
If I am
Torn
Scorned
Forlorn
Unborn
* * *
Prison Scene
Steel nightstand
On cold concrete floor
Painted beige like
cinder block wall,
nestling.
Flakes reveal black;
Gouges, rust.
Three drawers;
Handles, chrome,
accidental beige
(Top one burdened with magnet glued to plastic mirror)
Containing Hanes, Hilfiger, Fruit of the Loom,
turquoise toboggan,
black sunglasses.
Lined with butcher paper.
* * *
Casting Bread
Cutting scraps from
A magazine,
Saving the past;
Taking diamonds
In the rough from yesterday's
News, and
Goading it into the present.
Believing in the
Rays of a sun that has set,
Earning your pay,
And wishing you
Did not have to spend it tomorrow.
I LIKE THE SECOND AND THIRD ONE. I SEE KNOW REASON TO POKE FUN. YOU WRITE NICE.
Reply to this
Thanks, Dana! I think I like the first and second best. Although I see things I want to change in all three, I think the third is the one with the most room for improvement. It was hard for me to resist "fixing" them before posting them. But maybe at some point I will fix them and post the perfected versions.
Reply to this
wow john. random access is how my brain works. i'm speechless in its simplicity and yet complexness as well. i have felt all of this before, in all the different ways it can be read, for different reasons, but i get it. i'm kind of stuck on thisone for awhile, reading it in various ways. it all fits. it all works. we need more RAM.
Reply to this
I appreciate your comment greatly, mb. I do think the idea and the potential of the poem verge on brilliance - but my execution of the idea and realization of the potential fell sadly short. The piece works in a lot of ways. But the one way I think it works least is if you don't mix up the lines but simply read them from the bottom up. Maybe at some point I will dig into it again and make it work completely to my satisfaction....
Reply to this
indeed the idea and potential seem endlessly brilliant to me as well. it had not occurred to me to read it from the bottom up, i think i read it every other way but that one. *laughing*
hmmm this begs asking, do things ever work completely to one's satisfaction?
Reply to this
I read it every other way but that one, too... until last night. And then I was aghast. I guess when we're "randomly" selecting lines we naturally gravitate toward ones that work. But when we go from the bottom up, we see that the less liberty we have, the less the poem as a whole works. Seems like there's a political metaphor in that... lol.
As to whether things ever work completely to one's satisfaction... four quotations come to mind (one of which I've used in a previous blog):
"I can't get no satisfaction" - Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
"A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned" - Paul Valery
"It can never be satisfied, the mind, never." - Wallace Stevens
And the last I can't remember exactly, and I'm not even sure who said it (Twain and Edison both come to mind), but it goes something like this: "He who is satisfied with much achieves little."
Reply to this
i feel certain there is political metaphor as well, and think smith is the one to provide it for us *grins* or, herbert. hmmmm do you know herbert?
bottom to top it works for me until the end. perhaps it would be better if "greedily" was not an adverb. and what is it with me and adverbs?
it's too bad i do not know of a program that would randomize the lines the way we can now randomize friends on myspace, that might be an interesting thing to implement when published online.
love the wallace stevens quote.
i have not read any other comments yet as i want to form my opinions of the other 2 poems before i do that and am still lingering over the first one.
do you know if "inner voices" is still available?
Reply to this
.....good stuff, man.....i was surprised about the turquoise toboggan and black sunnglasses, though....i was thinkin' sunglasses in prison would be considered contraband......
Reply to this
Thanks, barbie! The first few years I was there, we were allowed to receive sunglasses. They were eventually taken off the approved package list - but those of us who already had them were permitted to keep them. They eventually changed the personal clothing rules, too, so that turquiose was no longer an approved color. By the end of my sentence, everything pretty much had to be plain white or boring blue. Clothing of other colors (and all sunglasses) then became much-deisred and high-priced commodities. I pretty much left all my belongings behind to my "friends" when I left - except for my journals and a pair of shoes... lol. And they were very grateful.
Reply to this
I was watching 20/20 last night and they had this topic of the unfairness of the sex registry and I thought that it won't be long before that's my friend, JC on the screen, leading the fight. You are going places. Then I read your poetry today and It hit me that I'll never understand you. But that's okay. I don't understand hurricanes either but that doesn't make them any less intense. So I guess that makes me the simple friend, but no less, a friend. I just hope that some day, you'll recognize me in the crowd.
Reply to this
We all have things unique to our lives that others who haven't walked in our footsteps can never fully understand. There are things I don't understand as well, despite my best efforts. In a way, those things make life more interesting. If we knew it all, there would be no more mystery, no suspense, nothing to learn, and little to achieve. Thank you, Terese... but I by no means regard you as a "simple" friend.
Reply to this
indeed! if we were all the same, god this world be dull.
Reply to this
Amen! (and Awomen! LOL)
Reply to this
That's cool. Maybe that's why I can't get enough of you!
Reply to this
lol
Reply to this
I spent the past few days with two poets, one is a veteran of the Vietnam War, the other was a soldier in Iraq more recently. Both have won prizes and are published, They gave readings to several hundred people here in Santa Fe. What strikes me about your prison poetry is the words, yes randomly chosen, reflecting the circumstances of your inner and outer life in a place where you did not want to be. Prison and war in your poems and the ones I heard the other night have similarities.
I find this very interesting.
Reply to this
Thanks, Elena! Perhaps that has something to do with the way prison and war touch our collective consciousness (or subconsciousness). Now you've piqued my interest in seeing these poems by your friends.
Reply to this
I love the poetry.. it's very reflective but real. Also a sadness that comes thru them all... understandably so.
But I'm especially intrigued by the "entry" about you.. wondering if you would say it still fits you today or how much of that has changed?
You should try to re-publish these.
Chris
Reply to this
Thanks, Chris! If I ever re-publish them, I will rewrite them first.
I would say the entry is still true... although in a sense I've reconciled the "eastern religion" with the "free-thinking" in my mind and heart and no longer think of them as mutually exclusive. And for the record, I am Irish, Native American (including, but not limited to Cherokee), Scottish, English, Melungeon, and even a touch German - plus goodness only knows what else.
Reply to this
I dig that prison scene poem. Here's one by Smith about needles:
Junkie Luv
My eyes slither open, shut
In golum time my tongue
Rasps brown lizards
As I hiss my want of you
In careful solitude
O my preciousss
Sleep whispers soft leavings
On my lids my head nods
Nods my precious
These fingers numb in spite
The clash of needle
And the floor
Reply to this
Thanks, Kathy! I dig Smith's - it makes the face of William S. Burroughs appear in my mind.
I have about five versions of "Prison Scene" and I'm unsatisfied with all of them. This published version is the most minimalistic - after I cut out all the "unnecessary" words at the suggestion of a poetry professor from Ohio University. In retrospect, I'm not so sure that was wise. There was definitely dead wood that needed excised. But I interrupted the flow and perhaps cut out too much. At the time, I had also just read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. I think I was under too many competing influences (partly because my imprisonment had made me doubt a lot of things, including my own long-held convictions about poetry). So although my experience comes through, my own voice to aa large degree does not. The same could be said of all three of these poems - although "Prison Scene" is the one where my experience seems to come through most effectively.
Reply to this
"Housing holiness / In a state of undress" . . . aren't we all.
Reply to this
Thanks, Smith. That section is one of the few I like most from these poems.
The first two pieces could be good with a re-write. But the third is the one I find most disappointing. Without thinking about it too much, I could easily improve it (without sacrificing the first letters of each line that spell out "Casting Bread") by making it first-person and changing a couple of words. This turns it from horrible to okay:
Clipping memories from
A magazine, I
Save the past;
Taking diamonds
In the rough from yesterday's
News, I
Goad it into the present.
Believing in the
Rays of a sun that has set, I
Earn my pay,
And pray I
Don't have to spend it tomorrow.
Reply to this
Wow. Beautiful, and sad. The mixture of your writing and the intensity of your emotion is so profound here.
Reply to this
Thanks, Mandi! I appreciate you stopping by and offering your feedback here. Please check out my response to Smith's comment above for a slightly more satisfying 30-second re-write of "Casting Bread."
Reply to this
"it takes the liberty of being less than entirely accurate about my nationality"
"of Irish/Cherokee/Mediterranean descent"
??? so, the answer would be....
Reply to this
I think I ended up addressing this in response to Chris' comment (somewhat) at the same time you were submitting this. But to elaborate while I'm here, Cherokee is only part of my Native American-ness, and and I'm not sure Mediterranean applies at all. Although the Melungeons of Appalachia did claim to be partly of Portuguese descent, that's not really Mediterranean - although did once upon a time cover much more ground than it does now. And I didn't learn that I had German ancestors until around 2000. Part of the confusion stemmed from me not meeting and getting to know my biological father's family until after this journal came out. I always had darker skin and was told I must have some Spanish or Italian blood - but there were many unanswered questions. Since then, I've learned more about my ancestry on both sides.
Reply to this
well duh! now i see have read terese's comment because i commented on it already...
and have now read chris's as well, since you referenced it in this reply.
sometimes i wonder if i am the only person in american who does have any irish in her.
interesting about your father's family. i keep my last name intact because of my father, not because of his family. my friend stormy is similar with her mother's family.
thank goodness we can choose out friends
Reply to this
It has been such an interesting few days with poet/soldiers. I cannot write the poem in its entirety, much less the whole book called "Here, Bullet" by Brian Turner. But just to give you the flavor here are the first lines of the first poem called "A Soldier's Arabic" and it is prefaced by a quote from Ernest Hemingway: "This is a strange new kind of war where you learn just as much as you are able to believe."
The first lines of Brian's first poem are the following:
"The word for love, habib, is written
from right to left, starting where we would end it and ending where we might begin."
Knowing a bit of Arabic I find just this one thought exceedingly profound.
One does not have to guess for the meaning of these words.
You must read Bruce and Brian's poetry.
They both teach creative writing and have won the top prizes for poetry here in Santa Fe.
Reply to this
I will definitely do so when I have the chance.
Reply to this
The Minister has found that images from the second poem, "Prison Scene", have entrenched themselves in his mind, and resurfaced at odd and unexpected moments... the sign of a good poem. Well done, JC.
Reply to this
Not the Hanes, I hope!
Just kidding....
Thank you, my friend!
Reply to this
Actually, it was the Fruit of the Loom... hahaha LOL just kidding back at you.... No, to be serious, JC, it was the nightstand itself; for some reason, that image came through to me and imparted such a sense of loneliness and isolation-- somehow, it represented so much of the prison experience. I found myself picturing its battered metal, its rust, and feeling sad...
Reply to this
That nightstand was my sole piece of furniture, other than the bed and a metal trash pail.
Reply to this
...thingz that make ya go mmmmmmmmmmm............
Reply to this
Isn't that the truth!?!
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Trac.!
Reply to this