psychoceramics: Rants from Death Row

["Andrew C. Bulhak" <a--@c--.monash.edu.au>]

This fine rant (as cited in Suck) comes from a condemned prisoner
in Texas.

 -- acb

[http://www.phoenix.net/~ksebung/17.htm]

>                                 I RANT
> 
>                        Michael L. McBride #903,
> 
>                        Ellis Stalag Huntsville,
> 
>                         Texas 77343 U.S.A.
> 
> What happened to all the political people who once were in school
> taking writing dictation from the teacher?  English class back then
> encompassed more than hanging participles, conjugating verbs and
> deciphering ablatives of Latin.  Does anyone remember the first time
> we were introduced to poetry as a participant?  Do we remember the
> wonder and awe that we developed when we learned we could do with our
> own minds, with stubby greasy fingers and dull pencils what we had
> heard and seen done by the inspiring professionals?  Do you remember
> your first poem?  It's the same as your last because that is who you
> are.  But sophistication in writing and the sophistication of our use
> of language also has punished our adult minds so much to the point of
> guilt that we deny the child who yearns for only poetry.  Politics, ho
> hum, I can speak better than you and say less.  I am a cynic.  I am
> cynical.  I am ashamed that I now scrutinize almost everything that
> comes my way because of the sophisticated blather that wears the lead
> filled boot I feel pressing me down.  Color commentary my plight.  You
> can't relate to my dire straits from experience,  but to talk about my
> pain as though it were your own in false commiseration with other
> people who think exactly as you do and, just like you, go into their
> bedrooms with their intimate partners and decry, berate and belittle
> those who you'd have testify in your behalf, those you'd have stand up
> for you when your perception has you feeling like a target of
> contempt.  But they are you.  You asked to be identified with them by
> the car you drive, the food you buy, the shirt you wear and the color
> of your hair.  There can be no love lost with no spark.  The only
> light you know you jumped into thinking heat first.  Sparks and
> flames, not brilliance and cold glitter.  That's friction, Baby.
> Friction.  Learn to reflect it.  Just as the sun is hot and bright,
> the mirror is cold and sheds only light.  there can be no other you,
> the mirror reflects only that which is before it.  What about you?
> Can you reflect the humanity you see in me, or must you constantly
> contrast what meets your senses with what your interpretation
> demands?  Do you focus on function, or do you digest the process to
> realize that if you would wait just a minute  each time before your
> brain releases the signal to your tongue, you'd soon learn it's been
> said before and needs no further blaming.  After all, it was that awe
> your childhood possessed that made you wait before, there was an
> instinct born with you that fed your patience.  Patience because you
> realized you were small in the world and not knowing that where your
> feet were kept you from moving them too quickly for apprehension you'd
> get stepped on.  That is, until you felt the deliberate boot stepping
> on you and you decided you'd step too.  But you lost it.  You lost
> it.  You suppressed that innocent awe with a false confidence you
> could continue to step either on or away from that which you
> confronted.  But you're still not knowing how dangerous the world is,
> if only because it's not yours and when you sleep all perception stops
> and you're just as vulnerable without implication as you were when you
> were yet attached to your mother.  This land is your land, this land
> is my land, bullshit.  We share in time space a possession of
> perception, not material, moral, corporeal or semantic grasp.  It's
> beyond your reach, beyond my reach and yet envelopes us.