Don’t talk about commissary on commissary day,
or the Lord of Hot Water will snatch that privilege
due to dues you have not yet paid with the makeshift
bridge of comfort afforded by municipal strangers
scrubbing trays
in Waterworld, or emptying pod bins in the trash
barracks, buffing sparkle paste into the loam of county
corridors trill with linoleum hinges of time-served,
suspended sentences or recognizance released into
the wilds of the streets like a dirty, old bastard, tryant.
When you write your man, don’t write another dime’s
name. Watch out if your bunky tends to hide, she could
be cooking Pruno or assaulting another female in there
when you at class, on your dayroom-game.
Read your book with one eye on the rec room, read the space
like a text, like a cipher armed with ominous nuance, like
scratch-ticket loot spent on roses, graduation bears,
gas-station sunglasses, and Lady-tazers.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
LOS ANGELES COUNTY JAIL SONNETS #10
Indict me for lurking and creeping, I find seven
copies of A Raisin in the Sun in the trustee book
vault. Eight copies more: we got a class set!,
an exalted salt that allows me to hear my students
boom Beneatha’s sorties
vis-a-vis Walter, tender Lena’s orders while nursing
a soggy, imaginary plant. Indict me for making my
students laugh heartily despite being in county blues,
2 days in without shower, scaly as croc. mocassins,
despite missing kids, husbands, baby-daddies.
Indict me for my nasty tongue while addressing
my undisciplined students; their failures in lexicon
inhibited by the model of exchange I had exhibited.
Indict me for doing project-based learning on the
Watts Riots and dissension over lies our Tio Sam
continues to dispense like lunches in crates in the pod.
Indict me for their squares are shrink-wrapped bologna,
two slices of sad bread and either oriental mix,
muffinroll, or rancid O.J. in little, schoolhouse-carton.
copies of A Raisin in the Sun in the trustee book
vault. Eight copies more: we got a class set!,
an exalted salt that allows me to hear my students
boom Beneatha’s sorties
vis-a-vis Walter, tender Lena’s orders while nursing
a soggy, imaginary plant. Indict me for making my
students laugh heartily despite being in county blues,
2 days in without shower, scaly as croc. mocassins,
despite missing kids, husbands, baby-daddies.
Indict me for my nasty tongue while addressing
my undisciplined students; their failures in lexicon
inhibited by the model of exchange I had exhibited.
Indict me for doing project-based learning on the
Watts Riots and dissension over lies our Tio Sam
continues to dispense like lunches in crates in the pod.
Indict me for their squares are shrink-wrapped bologna,
two slices of sad bread and either oriental mix,
muffinroll, or rancid O.J. in little, schoolhouse-carton.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY JAIL SONNETS #9
The school closes Outpost Twin Towers, after jump from
Men’s Central, citing hemorrhage via operational costs;
they’ve been in the red for two years because the school
thought pure stomach and hired too many credentialed
teachers. The school realizes client agency has no desire
to honor memos, or directives.
Speaking of directives, isn’t there a false positive?
Isn’t this simply a case of elective missions being fiercely
at odds. Jailers count inmates; but, we’re trying to build
leaders unafraid of beheading pipeline to jail, roadblocking
road to sleek, crystal streetcleaners, of ceasing County’s pithy
blueprint for min. ed. reqs. dredged from lectureinstrumentals.
The women, inmate-students, at C.R.D.F. eager their learning—
they don’t self-segregate, or sabotage more than they can afford to.
But, when there is drama, it is inevitable there are going to be tears,
a spigot of tears, a county spigot of tears with a gang of gnats
and chunks of sick on the side, and petitions on bunk from family
court, divorce papers.
And when they say they are doing something for their kids,
I tend to believe that augury more than men talking about Jesus
for when they get out they leave him in their cell
with that stare.
Men’s Central, citing hemorrhage via operational costs;
they’ve been in the red for two years because the school
thought pure stomach and hired too many credentialed
teachers. The school realizes client agency has no desire
to honor memos, or directives.
Speaking of directives, isn’t there a false positive?
Isn’t this simply a case of elective missions being fiercely
at odds. Jailers count inmates; but, we’re trying to build
leaders unafraid of beheading pipeline to jail, roadblocking
road to sleek, crystal streetcleaners, of ceasing County’s pithy
blueprint for min. ed. reqs. dredged from lectureinstrumentals.
The women, inmate-students, at C.R.D.F. eager their learning—
they don’t self-segregate, or sabotage more than they can afford to.
But, when there is drama, it is inevitable there are going to be tears,
a spigot of tears, a county spigot of tears with a gang of gnats
and chunks of sick on the side, and petitions on bunk from family
court, divorce papers.
And when they say they are doing something for their kids,
I tend to believe that augury more than men talking about Jesus
for when they get out they leave him in their cell
with that stare.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY JAIL SONNETS #8 (FINAL)
Let me hear you read aloud, but please speak
above the traffic on the 105 East, the sandblasters
and leaf blowers. Speak above the buzzard,
vectoring in glove of restricted airspace
a transfer or high-power movement under
riptides of wind by rotors.
Read loud enough so that the nurses must re-check
their meds. list. We are in the rec. room reading very
aloud a dollar-store edition of Frederick Douglass,
but the graphic depictions still stir heavy connection
tip in their remorse tills. It is hard not to fall in love
with the Douglass saying cavernous, gravity things.
Read Demby’s murder by Covey aloud in the rec. room
until silence indicts. Let me hear you read Douglass
deposition himself from our past-future, far-fetched ears.
Let me hear you read Douglass eyewitness himself
from a young age in this light.
The rage indignity breeds, the lack of laws to address
overseer standard-operating-leers. The whole machine
noise of it; how the jail hums with agents, how the gears
tooth upkeep, how even as you earn your keep, some
were just made to be noise-throttled.
above the traffic on the 105 East, the sandblasters
and leaf blowers. Speak above the buzzard,
vectoring in glove of restricted airspace
a transfer or high-power movement under
riptides of wind by rotors.
Read loud enough so that the nurses must re-check
their meds. list. We are in the rec. room reading very
aloud a dollar-store edition of Frederick Douglass,
but the graphic depictions still stir heavy connection
tip in their remorse tills. It is hard not to fall in love
with the Douglass saying cavernous, gravity things.
Read Demby’s murder by Covey aloud in the rec. room
until silence indicts. Let me hear you read Douglass
deposition himself from our past-future, far-fetched ears.
Let me hear you read Douglass eyewitness himself
from a young age in this light.
The rage indignity breeds, the lack of laws to address
overseer standard-operating-leers. The whole machine
noise of it; how the jail hums with agents, how the gears
tooth upkeep, how even as you earn your keep, some
were just made to be noise-throttled.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
WATTS SHADORMAS
(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)
Watts Shadormas #1
“Willowbrook”
Green, Imperial
Section Eight,
Plaza Mex,
busy-bee Long Beach Bull-vard.
fueling, fixing, please.
One oh five,
east eighty miles per
stitch in time
‘sixty-five
east of pass. or west of pass.,
big invisible.
Reverand
Pike’s candid report
card, effort-
lessly tells
Yorty, Parker they’re hiding
delicate praytells.
Frye Brothers,
catalyst-riding
Armyman
little ‘bro
two blocks from Ma’s casa
come out in rollers.
Public homes,
courtyard laundrylines,
fuzzy all-
eys and lots,
Crips, Bloods, mafia spinsters,
grizzly mattresses.
Compton Ave.,
east one oh third street
Alame-
da, Mona,
sticking in, out of city
line like jaggedshards (green).
(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)
Watts Shadormas #2
Pacific
Electric Comp-
any, gets
land from Watts
of Pasadena for rail-
loot combinations.
Overpass-
es and junctions, con-
verge pillars
flashing sign-
age and four way stops under
lonely extensions.
Garage-lawn,
oilrainbow vortex,
Willowbrook,
east one third.
M-L-K Polytech Mall,
guarded by half-cops.
Copious,
black plumes of gasfire
neglected
catalyst,
Utopia Cleaners and
Pastrami Burgers.
Cue ball helm-
ets and hipped shotguns
or roof fires
and peace tanks
never an in between, never
the ranch town it plays.
Shadormas
for your Spanish ghosts
quemado
sleep cycles,
blinds slicing white-hot coins, shade
from distant arcades.
(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)
Watts Shadormas #3
Lavande-
ria y café
de olla
Kaiser Perm-
anente, suavemente
free sonogram truck.
Chicken coops,
Old Slauson Tower,
May Day Dance,
perp. line-up,
Vermont Ave. stores, Jordan Downs
bungalow picket.
An immense
wave of years plummets:
Headstart Tent,
McCone Rep-
ort bullhorned Alameda
Ave., Central., Cent-ry (rhymes with Gentry).
Railroad roads
ringing barriers
silos and
cisterns and
Regional Operation
Centers and bum lairs.
Bungalow
stone, cottage prison
bars, over
the windows,
slippers and pajamas, corn-
er store door mid block.
Depth charges
lurk places din’s scared
to emit,
emote, re-
sound gruff decibels?
(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database)
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