"...the fear of prisons
The fear of strip searches leads to
The fear of being naked in front of other women
The fear of keys leads to
The fear of chains
The fear of small spaces it leads to
The fear of tears, the fear of dreams, the fear of loneliness
The fear of being forgotten, it leads to
The fear of time, the fear of lies
The fear of metal doors leads to
The fear of dark empty corridors
The fear of insanity leads to
The fear of separation, the fear of isolation, the fear of segregation, the fear of being a statistic."
Spoken by a female prisoner at the final minute of short film, "Beautiful Sentence"
Not until I wrote this did I understand the double meaning in the title...sentence. What phenomenal beauty there is in the regeneration of oral storytelling through writing. That is my key literary focus this past year, as I reflect on my greater literary ambitions. As I re-watch this humble documentary on an oft-recurring subject, the impact of poetry on prisoners, I think about the unique predicament I'm in this year, in relation to the subject of the above-quoted poem. I won't be departing or arriving in airports this holiday season. I'm staying far away. Although I am not incarcerated, I can feel the fear that this prisoner speaks of in her poem on the blatantly unjust quality of airports, and remain ever thankful that I have the option, and freedom, to not pass through, at least for now.
_________
In light of not remembering the narrative arc of any dreams as of late, I am posting original photography from my waking life in relation to the initial topic instead of spontaneous prose and historical art
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| Crashland America by Rusty Kjarvik |
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| Skeletal Cockpit by Rusty Kjarvik |
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| No School by Rusty Kjarvik |
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| Crash from the High Plains by Rusty Kjarvik |
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| God-Awful Rhinoplasty by Rusty Kjarvik |
__________
of intention,
a bruised nation
and the stir-crazy polity,
struggling
with the sad gift
of only one humanity
a shipwreck beauty,
gleaming with the light of the ancients
over star-crossed paths
circulating through the veins
of an unbroken galaxial unity
evolving beyond one heartbeat to the infinite
blending of colorful awe
in the transitional being’s destiny
as wormhole wanderer
...
neck-tipped wheels edging naively on the backs of extinction,
Buffalo Confederacy of the western mage
playing tricks on white society beneath a rainbow cloak,
bundling rain and the boom of truth in our drum’s not-forgotten flower mask, straying now from pleasure and hate
in the unborn seat of quiet yearning
with English tongues of grotesque neighborly wick,
suffocated and pouring
over the tea-stained talk of elder medicine
healing beyond death
...
'knowledge in space,
as verbal structure,
passes beyond inert caution
to a stimulated dream-law,
intelligent yet nude'"
excerpts from "Epic of Intention"
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