practical peacehow peace in the moment can make peace in the world |
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Prison Years
Lovelock CaveI want— to mix, with the edge of my thumb, to reach out my vermilioned brush ------- Doing TimeFor more, click “Prison Writings” ANOTHER PLACE TO BE A prison is a place under the sky, a particular spot on the planet, with its weather, its wild air and wild light. In the fortress-like pink stone building in downtown Boston, where I was jailed when I first surrendered, my cell looked down on a single city tree, six stories below. When I was moved to a cell that faced nothing but the slab walls and reflective windows of another wing of the jail, I sat at the wood platform that was bolted to the wall for a desk, looked out at the intense blank blue of the October sky and wondered how I would survive. ------- My Ten BooksFor six years I lived in a prison cell where I was allowed to possess ten books. I could also have the books for courses I was taking in the prison’s education program, but only for the duration of the course for which they were assigned. My jailers were not particularly anti-intellectual; they had security concerns. They had to limit the amount of flammable material available in the event that we staged a riot and started burning things up. They had to rigidly control clutter in case we might be using disorder to hide a weapon, drugs, an unauthorized plastic container, or an extra piece of fruit. Some inmates defied the rules. They would accumulate extra books, counting on the casualness of the officers’ searches to slip them by. But I went to prison to give up being an outlaw, to stop spending mental energy wondering if I would get caught at something. ------- My Journey to Non-ViolenceIn answering the Page Five questions, I want to make it clear that my offenses include not only the events of 1970, when Walter Schroeder was killed during a bank robbery, but also my 23-year flight from justice and my defensive posture at the time of my surrender. I particularly want to acknowledge that the Schroeder family have been victims of my action in each of these three phases. Phase I: The Robbery and Murder ------- ChinaNow the writing is interrupted by a big drama on the phone—China has escaped from the locked unit of the psychiatric hospital where she was sent after her third suicide attempt here. She charmed one of the male attendants into leaving a door unlocked yesterday and is supposed to be on her way to some place in Florida that he set her up with. Of course he rolled over the minute they held the prospect of jail over his head. That explains this morning’s room raid—I am the Vietnam war radical, and she was the Cambodian refugee. There is a certain logic in thinking that I might want to abet her. ------- Washing the Bitterness OutFrightening to think that life could hang on a shred of garbage: on a spiral of orange and white skin uncurling from a fruit, droplets of orange oil escaping from the peel’s bruised cells under a prison inmate’s fingers. As I sat slumped in a flimsy tan plastic chair in the dayroom, the familiar, bleak inner fog weighed my face into heavy-muscled immobility, this dullness a final retreat from the sadness about nothing, about everything, that is depression. I’d gone to the prison serving room for dinner but eaten nothing, the bread like cotton and the peas like paste in my mouth. I lacked the energy to walk the rest of the way to my cell. Once I would have wondered how I would live through the night. By now I knew I didn’t have the drive it takes to defeat my billion body cells in their millions-of-years-evolved, organ by organ determination to go on living. Even in this heavy state some reflex of my peasant/chef sensibility rebelled at the loss to the trash of what, with a little sugar, contained the possibility of brilliance. ------- A Recipe for RadishesI used to write recipes for a living. Every day a half dozen culinary arts students would troop into the kitchen at the community college, tape up 8½ by 11 inch sheets full of my hand-printed amounts, ingredients, and procedures, and make lunch, including vegetables, for two hundred people. ------- Thanksgiving, 1999Last night, the night before Thanksgiving, I visited every supermarket and ice cream store in town looking for rum raisin ice-cream and frozen squash. I had planned to recreate the dessert from my final prison Thanksgiving, caramelized squash tartlets in flaky pastry shells topped with the rum raisin ice cream. ------- AfterwardsThe scoured tub and toilet bowl remind me that my hope in surrendering and going to prison was that when I got out, I would be able to hold a job and keep my house clean. ------- OctoberThis is not like a love affair— ------- Still Life, September AfternoonNight eats at the day from both ends. ------- Day 400 of the Rule "No Sitting on the Grass"In the camps they will tell you Someday will you lead me to the river’s edge, ------- The Poet's LifeI’m with you, Brodsky, ------- SeasonalityI suppose they must have exhausted themselves, I checked for them ------- Three Poems on a Prison SuicideI. You have to be really serious ------- Modus VivendiA bright young thing, I went off to make I was young, I was righteous, I knew it all; ------- DangerousI defy the rules ------- [My Sorrow Sits, Like a Strong Magnet]My sorrow sits, like a strong magnet ------- Exile, AprilAt home the daffodils have naturalized rhododendrons I do nothing at all for ------- Valentine'sNo zucchini flower, fecund work complete, ------- [for William Kunstler]Death But the sudden death of old men, ------- [The Swiss priest said...]The Swiss priest said, “Look He took the boys for ice climbs ------- GangRapeYour rage, indeed. You raped out your rage You say in passing that you sometimes thought I want to make my hand into a fist ------- Elegy for a CowboyThe December Death Certificate records AMI: acute myocardial infarction, heart attack The final rend in a heart that broke three months ago, ------- [As, one November, I split firewood...]As, one November, I split firewood in the heavy fog The old uncle remembers, ------- The Seven Year OldsTo her mother, Where are you going, Mommy? To her friends, She lives in jail. ------- Godwind__The goal of spiritual direction is to develop in the directee You lifted me up from my place and for an instant ------- DustSometimes we would argue over Where once we dried and tore the lettuces ------- LascauxYou knew You knew ------- [Snatches of Vivaldi show up]Snatches of Vivaldi show up ------- [Insatiable, my eyes]Insatiable, my eyes on the sidewalk, tannic Fine, bright new-growth grass ------- |
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About Katherine PowerI didn’t set out to be a terrorist. As a student activist, I moved from protesting the war in Viet Nam to waging guerrilla war to overthrow the government…. |
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