PRISON / Captured but not Conquered.

PRISON / Captured but not Conquered.

By

Tim Jacobs

Defined as:

Pris-on;

1) a place where persons convicted or accused of crimes are confined; a penitentiary or a jail

2) a place or condition of confinement or forcible restraint

(American Heritage College Dictionary)

A brief understanding for a huge world within the world; a world of misery, frustration, regrets, blame, hate, fakers, liars, poker players, sadists, gang members, men with nothing to lose. Just as the world is comprised of the elements of earth, fire, water and air, prison is comprised of these elements; elements that are a trapped soul’s every waking reality. From when he opens his eyes, even chasing him into dreamland, prison is a place where a man is alive but life as he knew it is put on freeze; you merely exist more than living. You are trapped between concrete and a hard place literally.

Your reality is like a DVD put on pause – your only hope of hitting play being years out of reach. For me, in the year of 2003, my first chance at hoping to get out was 9 years out. For 9 years I knew nothing was moving but me from facility to facility – no home - just a cell, a bunk with a cellmate to call my home. For me as a young 20 year old child, adjusting to prison was confrontational. On the streets, I made my rules, set my times, chose when I hung out and kicked it, decided what to eat. Had the hand of power in my relationship, but all that changed when I was incarcerated in prison.

Now I had to be housed with men old enough to be my dad and telling me I left piss on the toilet that works as 2 in 1 shitter and sink. There was no escaping - every minute of the day someone else is right there or right outside your door (unless one went into the hole). Three meals a day in chow hall you’re forced to get in where you fit; weirdos, sex offenders, punks all as one. Whites, Mexicans, Blacks – always in a box and packed tightly together; food servings the size of preschool meals with the lowest grade of everything.

Phone calls and requests to my girl on her time and rules – no longer am I a factor to her but am a distant thought and liability. Lights and phones go off at 9 pm and then loneliness really kicks in. Only hours later do the doors slam open bright and early for laundry pull to begin a whole new repeat to start all over again. A new day brings the same actors, same set, same script and seeing the same losers day in and day out. It’s hard not to recognize the things in them you don’t like; magnifying your inner frustration on their shortcomings which lead to you looking for any reason to damage them.

Prison – a place where negativity is fed upon. It’s an incubator for hate where not giving a fuck is the general mind state, generally accepted, agreed upon and daily acted upon. Home to losers; in a world where society considers right gets flipped upon its head and everything is the exact opposite and the laws of the jungle apply.

If you can’t defend yourself you’re prey. Not prone to violence, you may be violated. You ain’t gang bangin? You ain’t connected? Perfect! Let me holler at you! You either get played as mark, crash dummy or a loner depending on where your levels of understanding start and end.

Game is always being run. There is a motive behind every action. When I say game, I mean action A is put into play to achieve desired result B and the game spans far and wide. From something as simple as keeping a con going to help pass time, all the way up to getting close to you just to steal your wife’s address. I’ve always related prison to high school; you’ve got so many actors playing roles to fit in and blend in – to hang. Crafty in their disguises, they7 could take their acts to Hollywood and maybe win an Emmy. None the less, they fool many but get recognized by the true. If you ain’t laced tightly, you’ll end up getting played.

Prison is a world where most are cut off from the world and live on nickel. A shot of coffee is nothing to you or me, but to someone who has no money coming in, a shot of coffee is a reason to befriend you and milk you until the well runs dry. In prison you’re forced to be housed with X amount of people. A cell house may have 3 pods of 120 people with 6 cell houses on a compound. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you are forced to see these characters – same goes for education, library, gym, yard, medical – you can’t escape them. By cause of a crime, you are now neighbors sharing microwaves and showers.

The sociology books say one becomes normalized to their environment so superficial friendships grow. Prison is where the blind lead the blind even further into darkness. Groups of aimless, brainless, time bombs appear. Ignorance feeds the ignorant. A good convo is as hard to find as a needle in a hay stack. Now and then you may just stumble up on one and hit the jackpot. But unless you’re blessed with good company, your only source of substance and brain stimulus is going to come in the form of a book.

Sitting in the dayroom all you get is football and grumpy complaints and sounds of misery. But when you’re in a cell 21, 20, or 14 hours a day, you don’t mind. It becomes enjoyable in a sense and just the movement of getting out of that box of a cell and allowing your senses to perceive some depth rather than feeling the 6x10 limitation is solace in the simplest of the senses. At home, just walking in and out is a given. In prison that is a privilege you have to earn over a long period of time. You to show good behavior to make it to a camp that allow you to come and go out of your cell as you please. That in itself is a mission and a half when so many variables of your environment work against you.

You have frustration raging in many shapes, sizes and colors at every glance which can ignite at any moment. You have mouthy, sadistic officers trying to provoke and disrupt your cool and looking to turn you into a story to tell of how they pepper prayed you and put their knee in your neck until you begged for God’s help. Those two alone are hurdles that only a pro can maneuver over. Snakes are in the grass and you have to keep a stride right past them without getting bitten. A hard task for a novice as their fear seems to send the attack signal. You have to stay played up to keep that hedge of protection around you.

In Prison, in jail, so many men find God in the hours of worry when time has to be on your side. So many promises get made in the name of the most high; some kept, some broken, and some going back and forth on. Without faith in a brighter day and things on one’s side, what is a man left with? A shell of a man, empty and a bomb ready to blow. Faith is a necessity of doing time. The more you feel you’re in the best graces with the most high, the more you feel you will get the blessing of freedom sooner than later. No one wants to have the variable of God being against them inhibiting their freedom.

But as a man’s heart aligns with the divine, the more peace begins to manifest in his atmosphere. The trying of a man’s faith produces patience and patience produces perfection so this is the greatest way of transformation of a refined man. Through the hottest flame is gold made purified and the same goes for man – the greater the affliction, the stronger and resilient and faithful a man gets. On the street, reading the bible, the Koran or any of the books of wisdom traditions is a lengthy process - making room for that to some is unquestionable but in prison where you’re in a room for endless hours, the task becomes tangible. What would you do in a room for 19 Hours? There is no WiFi in prison, no internet, chat rooms, Facebook – none of that. When you’re faced with big blocks of time in a cell, your only options are reading, writing drawing, watching TV and sleeping. You work out but a shower may be hours away and hopping into bed all sweaty is just dirty. For me, I read. I read everything that grabbed my attention that was non-fiction. I’ve never been one to live in fantasy or be entertained by it. The Gangsta novels were old repeats or farfetched stories so I never wasted time. Everything I dedicated my time to had to have a return in some fashion.

I looked at learning as adding value to my own self worth. With so much stand around, idle time, the normal answer to what’s up in prison is being bored. Dominos and cards pacify pod time and become life for some but for me, my 11 years was a university scholarship to increase my understanding to the highest degree. With so much of my day limited to being confined, I realized the choice was still mine. The choice to feed my life or let it wither away to the norm of the mundane; the choice was to sit in front of my old bubble TV and lust my life away or to keep repeating the same old convos about the same old tired scenarios of shoot outs and women. My every action and my clarity to my actions forced me to recognize the need for correction.

In prison you are forced to look at yourself in the mirror but as the old parable states, many are called but the chosen are few. Some adhere and work on themselves but most deny the need for correction and wait for the next time – hoping it will be a better time.

How does one find peace in prison? You always have someone a sneeze away but the craziest thing is peace comes once they get on their bunk and your mind can set them outside. A song might come on TV that will take you away and have you relive a memory. Night will come and you’ll throw your blanket over your head, settle your mind and peace will take you to dreamland. But it only lasts so long. Night sleep in prison is done in increments. If it’s not the stiffness from the concrete or metal bunk, it’s the third shifts’ flashlight in your eyes forcing you to move so they know you’re alive – not out of concern, more out of boredom for them because your discomfort becomes their game. The game of how long can they hold it in their face before they move. Many nights I have been awaken to their light and forced myself to lie still just so they would kick my door in frustration. I’d call it my win because I’d force their hand. Some would even cuss and open my door. Once again, I won. What was supposed to be discomfort to me backfired on them and now became unsettling for them.

Prison is where your family is captured in photos and memories in the mind. For them life goes on; for you as well, your settings just filled with monotony. Visit day being your day for once. Seated in lawn chairs for 5-6 hours, conversation has never been better. Most visiting rooms always tend to be ice cold as if they deliberately make your family’s time with you as uncomfortable as possible. None the less, 5-6 hours allow you to reconnect and stay intact but when that time is up, the reality of the situation snaps back in; time for them to go home and you to stay. The look in your loved one’s eyes never changes. It’s sadness from the heart; hurt you caused; distance you put between you two by your actions.

As they leave you’re to remain seated and wait to get stripped out. As you wait, the fact of the matter echoes to all the men in the room; some louder than others and soon your name is called and you’re handed your ID card and directed around the corner to a pack of C.O.s in latex gloves ready to look up your ass. Nothing is more humiliating or belittling than being forced to disrobe in front of another man then made to bend over, grab your ass and spread your cheeks and cough while he looks inside. In the eleven years of repeating it, I’ve never become dull to it. After your reminded of who’s in charge, you’re told and allowed to put your clothes back on like a $10 prostitute then directed to the walkway that leads to the opening of the yard.

As the gate creaks open and the horizon turns into men running the track, others lifting weights, some walkng laps debating trivial complaints, it’s apparent where you’re back at - PRISON!

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