An excerpt:

In prison they own your life. You’re not your name, you’re not your family’s name, you’re not your age, not your color, not your lineage, not your hometown.
You’re 30583-012.
Your daily life depends entirely upon the largess of the prison staff. The playing field is tilted in their favor, and if you fuck up and they catch you— and they always catch you— you’re going to lose out. You’re a pawn in a field of queens— an analogy that would be lost on most of the staff, who’d think you’re accusing them of being queer. They’re a reactionary bunch. The primary difference between cons and screws, besides the color of the uniform and the hourly wage, is a divine directive of control. Underneath, everyone’s just people.
Losing privileges like the weekly trip to the commissary is bad enough. Having visits canceled, phone calls revoked, mail call held— these are things you come to rely on, and when they take them away, you feel like shit and there’s nothing to break up the press of time. But for things like fighting, talking back, stealing, getting caught with drugs— the punishment is orders of magnitude worse.
The hole.
You can’t imagine what it’s like if you’ve never been.
Panic sets in. Closed spaces with no escape. Sweaty palms, trembling, chills. The walls close in. The food slot grins like a jack-o’-lantern, mocking— always mocking.
Solitary is one of the worst punishments you can get. Officially, anyway. Sometimes a convict who really gets on the wrong side of the corrections staff will find himself with a price on his head. And then it’s open season. There’s no surviving that kind of sentence. But mostly when you break the serious rules you wind up in solitary for a little while— just until you cool off, pal.
No contact with the other prisoners. No contact with the outside world. No fresh air. Limited contact even with the screws who only come by to fulfill mealtime duties.
It’s just you. All of you. Every one of you. All alone.
The food’s the same— just less fresh. The mattress is hard. The molded bed is even harder. The fluorescent lights colder. Bars replaced by stamped steel and rivets.
The funny thing about solitary is that it’s also known as protective custody. They put people in there who’d get mauled in the blocks. People like pedophiles, celebrities, snitches, cops. For them it’s a thing of survival. For everyone else the hole is a reminder of why it’s best to behave.
At first it’s a relief to get away from people for a little bit. There’s so much goddamn politics and games in prison, it’s exhausting. But after the first few minutes, when you count on your fingers and toes, and lose track of how many more hours you’ll be alone with barely more than a wingspan from wall to wall, awash in the sterile light of purgatory, hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling nothing but yourself, your yammering mind; it starts to eat away at you, and you lose track of the silence, silence broken only by the thud of your heart, the sound of your thoughts the rasp of breath, the drumming of fingers, the grinding of teeth, the crawling of skin, the periodic clatter of food trays; as you listen to your hair growing, scratch a thousand times across the same patch of beard, calculate how many cubic centimeters of air are in this sixty-four square-foot room, wiggle your ears until they hurt, brush each tooth for a fifty-count— and still not pass more than a few minutes of what turns out to be the longest thirty seconds of your life, repeated ad infinitum, a series of moments with no beginning and no end, all strung together, all so badly the same in their emptiness that you have to fill them in somehow; maybe counting to sixty sixty times; once… twice… three times… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen… fourteen… fifteen… sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… nineteen… twenty...twenty-one… twenty-two… twenty-three times, noticing how odd it is that the words for numbers have no quantitative consistency in structure or sound— like something you’d read but not yet understood in the Theory of Relativity about patterns and relationships of things and nothings— or maybe having the same dreaming moment over and over and over and over until the edges of everything blend together, or maybe puzzling through chess problems, writing letters to long-dead friends, fantasizing about burying your face in some tail, doing pushups and sit-ups and just pacing back and forth two and a half steps at a time until… hell, just doing it, just doing something, anything, everything to escape the nothing, and always questioning, always wondering, never ever ever ever quiet, as you sit there in silence saying nothing, voice cracked like old leather and impossible to regulate with no volume difference between thinking and screaming, thumbs aching from twiddling, toes tired from tapping; bored of breathing, bored of pacing, bored of thinking, bored of listening, bored of counting things, bored of being bored, trying not to think about the walls closing in, leaning in, reaching in; counting cinderblocks and wondering how often in life does a person ever spend more than a few hours at a time alone with thoughts, alone with himself, and there are moments of self discovery and inner peace and even something you might call enlightenment— according to the Dalai Lama—the awareness of being aware, the consciousness of consciousness, the soul soul-gazing outward, recognizing the body for what it is, and thoughts for what they are, and Being the entity behind the body and underneath the thought, and discovering that the inner voice is not You, but just an internal facade and a cloak of habits worn to protect your true self from drowning in the sensory saturation of the universe— but that it’s actually choking your experience— and that is terrifying until it’s uplifting, mystifying until it’s clear, impossible until it’s recognized; and Einstein’s ghost joins up with Jesus to explain that there is no white-bearded, robe-wearing, staff-holding Man in the Clouds, no sandaled ego sculptor with a mysterious name and omnipotent wrath— or compassion— no celestial control tower directing things; that there is only what comes out of and goes into the space between your eyes, that almost everyone has missed the point, and that prayer and meditation and self-reflection are three of the many words for the same thing, and it turns out this is heaven and hell in the same room, all contained in uncountable electrical pathways burning their way through some gray matter, a transaction conducted through a few gallons of the same stale air, and energy is matter and matter is energy, and while you breathe it in and breathe it out and breathe it in and breathe it out, you become the room and the room becomes you, until the circulation is visible like fingerprint whorls, and the spirals of the airwaves start to dance before your eyes and the whole cyclical nature of the universe becomes visible tangible audible olfactive tastable knowable, and you sink into it, riding the waves of awareness, not so much floating above your body, but flowing into the body so completely it disappears, joining in with something bigger— or not bigger, but a reality so microscopic it’s only theoretical, taking away the limiting factors of time and space, breaking down the elemental into its essential, and loving the Being loving the membership loving the absence of form, loving where, when, and how it takes you— until you snap awake—or rather drift off again— and your brain renews its filters for your sensory analysis, and you see only white-washed cinderblock, poured and painted concrete, a rolled-up mattress used for biceps curls, a splash of some food dropped decades ago, the nuts and bolts of incarceration; hear only the echoes of footsteps; smell only the heavy air and a perfume from long ago; feel only whatever you’re touching; taste only tongue and teeth like steaks and croutons, and this continues on and on, back and forth, forever and ever because there are no clocks down here, not even the count, count, count, count that serves as the slow pendulum of time upstairs, and just when you think you’re going to lose it again, a new idea that you’ve had before occurs, and the whole damn trip repeats itself— and you’ve exhausted only five minutes wallowing in the sentence.
You’re stuck in a picture. Twenty-three hours worth of eternity. Then escorted down the hall in silence for a solitary shower. Which is the only thing that goes by fast. And then more eternity. When you crunch it out like that, even a few days turns out to be a long time.
It’s possible to get years.

11/1/10

The city erupts. A sudden rush of noise, cars honking, people screaming, sirens wailing, flashes and bangs.
The Giants have won the World Series.
Car horns, some held long and loud, some staccato, all jubilant, all communicating the same thing.
We won.
The uproar continues. A SmartCar toots through an intersection. A taxi beeps past, ignoring the man with his arm raised in the air.
Explosions.
Fireworks.
Screaming citizens
The city is roaring, alive and cheering.
United.
A man whips a sweatshirt around over his head. A truck roars with delight. Deserted streets are packed with noise. A woman whips a sweatshirt around over her head. Screaming affirmations, yelling gleeful nonsense. Shrill.
Empowered.
A crotch-rocket revs. Giants flags flap. Fireworks pound overhead.
Someone drains a foghorn.
Each new stream of honking cars renews the jubilant cries of the pedestrians. Waves of glee reverberate through the streets.
Driveby congratulations.
Whistles.
The noise.
Even the cop lights look happy. People clap fives, cars rev, bicycles clang, and motorcycles honk.
I'm reminded of the sound of Endor after the Death Star was destroyed.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
Songs.
Elated bicycle taxis. Elated vagrants. Elated professed non-sports-fans. Someone blows a trombone. An SUV answers in kind. Drivers honk melodies. Passengers hang out windows. Pedestrians run alongside shaking hands.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
But Right Now the noise continues. A crowd moves past.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A motorcyclist rips through, fist pumping over his helmet.
This is 50 years of waiting.
The Giants have won the World Series.
The noise.
The ebb and flow--but uninterrupted.
Ole
Ole ole ole
Ole
Ole.
The Giants have won the World Series. (and the 49ers stuffed Denver yesterday.)
Flags and hats and hands, horns and cheers and applause. United by sports. The team extended through the whole city. Joined in jubilation. Communicating through glee. Pedestrians responding to horns responding to cheers.
A high-riding pickup on fat off-road tires booms pas, open to the breeze and flying a huge SF flag on a tall pole. Groups cheer at each other from parallel sidewalks, hopping and skipping and cheering on the way home. A group of three stops in a crosswalk, waving signs and cheering at cars.
People share taxis.
Police allow rules to bend.
Everyone is happy to see everyone.
This is how is should be. The World Series should be every day. (But then it loses its power.)
Crescendo.
Fireworks.
A lull.
A truck blares through the intersection, renewing the noise. A Giants-decaled van alternates between gas and brake, simulating hydraulics. Nobody thinks it's lame.
It's awesome.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A cop waves to a guy cheering out the sunroof.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
Fireworks.
Horns.
A train.
A cowbell.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
Schoolnight.
Workday.
But Right Now,
none of that matters.

Two candles sit sputtering
on a short sheet of poetry
filled with longing
loving
craving
doubting.
The ticking tone
of a clicking clock
beats forth from the page
A rhythmic reminder
of achings past
The candles
seem immortal
and alive.
One tall and proud
One melted short and slouched
flickering with hidden drafts
Rendered visible
by fire!
And the cadence continues...
thump thump!...thump thump...
thump thump!...

The voice of the lyrical letters
whispers indelibly
inaudibly...almost...