Do you want to know this part?
Okay, fine.
There is a sound that never goes away
or noises that you never forget,
like say the sound of handcuffs
as they clasp around your wrist
or the sound of a cell door as it rolls shut.
Trust me.
And trust that as crazy as this sounds,
and it does sound crazy,
there are people
who are destined for this
and yet, they act surprised
when their hands are behind their backs
and the door to the squad car closes
and next, it’s mugshot time.
No one talks about the strange addiction to jail
or the revolving doors at correctional facilities.
No one talks about the culture this promotes
and how kids will somehow think this is cool.
We celebrate violence and gangsters
and there is a promotion of this bullshit
roughneck culture because hey,
let’s face it . . .
no one picks on the badass.
And do you know what else no one does?
No one goes to visit them either,
in jail . . .
But anyway –
There are smells which you nose can never forget,
and perhaps there are items that touch the senses,
and they have an impact upon our sight or smell
or sound and feel, and perhaps there are old sounds
and smells, which may or may or may not remain dormant for a while
but when you smell them,
well?
Let’s just say
that you remember exactly where you were
the last time you smelled them,
and you remember why too.
And there are times when the world stands still
and time moves slow.
There are times when the clock
refuses to tick any faster than it can,
and there are times when you find yourself
caught in the aftermath of a bad decision,
and as you wait to find yourself in the face of your consequences,
there’s no where to go and there’s nowhere to hide,
and the 5×9 cell is your momentary confinement,
and next, you hear the sounds of hard-shoe footsteps.
You hear the jingling keys on the beltloop of some guard,
who seems to either love his job,
or find some perverse enjoyment
of clasping a man’s wrists together in handcuffs
and escorting him down a long corridor
before stopping at another caged door,
rolling the cage door open,
and delivering a man, like a package,
placing him in the cage, or his perspective place
and then unclasping the handcuffs of a man
whose hands are behind his back
and placed through an opening at the cage door.
Now, the cuffs can be removed and hence,
this is where you get the chance
to acclimate to your surroundings because,
unless you have a good lawyer
or a friendly judge, and seldom are there both at the same time,
but hey, this is you now, which means,
this is what happens.
This is part of the game
or par for the course, as they say, and sure,
you hear it all in the holding cells.
You hear al the jailhouse lawyer bullshit
and you hear about who is going to say “what” to the judge,
as if they’re line of shit is going to work
and somehow, this will change the legal system,
just because they “think”
they know what they’re talking about, and somehow
the judge is going to buy it.
I remember the cell.
I remember thinking at least now, something can change.
I remember being around the worst kind of people
and somehow, this made sense to me.
At least, I knew.
At least, I understood the pain
or the anger or the anguish, and then—somewhere
around 3:00 am, I remember hearing a drunk
as he howled into the stainless teel toilet.
I remember hearing a man crying in the cell
because he was facing a vehicular manslaughter,
driving while drunk, and me—I was puny.
I was sweating of an unthinkable withdrawal
in a cell
I was small. I was “too light to fight, and too thin to win.”
I was scrawny. I was in danger.
And yet, I was relieved because
at least the mayhem could stop,
and yes, good old Mr. Chaos, he was with me too,
perhaps not in the same cell, or maybe he was.
I remember my first time.
I was sitting with a man in a small cell.
And he was drunk and beaten up,
and all bloodied from the beatings they gave him,
before they brought him into the same cell . . .
with me
I could smell the liquor on him.
I could hardly understand what he was saying
but it was clear enough.
He beat his wife with a baseball bat,
because she couldn’t find the car keys.
He said, “You understand, right?”
I understood alright.
I was in the wrong place at the right time.
this was August, 1989, the end of the summer.
And almost the end of my life.
Man, that was a long, long time ago.
Do I believe when people say they are reborn
or born again?
Well?
I don’t know . . .
. . . to be honest.
I’m not one who goes along with organized religion
or manmade preaching from people
who believe that somehow, their way is the right way
and that because this is so,
they have the right to corner the market on God
and say who gets in, or who can be saved
or why.
I don’t know what I believe
when it comes to those sort of things
But, I do believe that we are reborn
more often than we think.
Am I born again?
Every day.
Have I died again?
One could argue that I day every evening
and that this happens daily when daylight subsides to night,
and though no morning is ever guaranteed,
I have the right to be born again, the next day
and should this day not come out right—that’s okay.
If I’m too tired and want to quit, that’s alright too.
I can end my day, or go to sleep
and wake up tomorrow
and try again.
Or, I can repeat the process
and find myself enslaved, once more,
and be nothing more than a guest at my own prison
a person who signs up for voluntary confinement
—of the mind, that is.
I’m no angel or saint.
I’m no more of a sinner than anyone else.
But, I’m far from what I was or who I used to be
and for now, I am about to face my day,
once again, and this time, Mr. Chaos,
you can keep your little tricks
because if it is up to me
and the time is mine,
then now is a time to do my time,
rather than let my time do me . . .
Understand?
To you, my old friends, and to the crew of my old group
called Breakfast with Benny,
at the county jail, I remember you all very well.
And I thank you all, for allowing me to call you my friends.
Just know,
we all have dirt beneath our fingernails sometimes.
Some people hide it well,
some wear gloves to hide their guilt,
and me, I’m just an honest man,
unafraid of my past an unafraid to speak up
about the sadness,
so I can keep a better future
and help others, who might be like me
and just want to be happy. . .
The Written Addiction 