One More Set
By Eric Sandefur
“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.” – General George S. Patton
I am afraid of dying. I’m afraid of dying in prison. I’m afraid of being beaten down and afraid of being beaten in court. I’m afraid of lots of things. But I’ve also been through a lot of these things.
Courage isn’t some kind of immunity you get after catching the right virus. However, if you pay attention or search your memory, you will see yourself overcoming things you may not have even given yourself credit for. Each time you get through something, you find out you can go a little further.
For me, working out is a great reminder of this. In order to get the most out of exercise, I have to do it almost every day. And the cornucopia of life’s bullshit that I’d rather not deal with happens just as often. When I start to reach my muscle’s limit, I have a natural response: this sucks – I should probably stop. Fear is also a natural response, according to one of America’s greatest military leaders; and fear becomes its opposite – courage – when ignored for just a minute longer.
Each time I feel my body telling me to stop but I do one more set of burpees, I feel an iota of courage. Each time I feel like taking a day off but I work out anyway, I remember that I can keep going.
A tiny bit of courage is better than none, and if you go out and grab just a little bit of courage every so often then it adds up.
Life’s bullshit is just one more set of burpees.
I Love You, Kaki
By Eric Sandefur
Life is a mirror pool
Beneath a starry sky
Empty and invisible
Until in a ripple it dies
A million miles on a million trains
Through a million mountains and a million rains
A million drops of dew on a million wings
Of a million butterflies in a million springs
Life is a recollection
A fading, torpid scene
In the tenuous grip of memory
Of a vivid fever dream
If I wrote a million million words
They’d all just say one thing:
To my late, beloved Queen
There is no equal king
The Lost Island/The Biological Internet/The Unknown Space
By Eric Sandefur
What is the difference
Between sharing a sight that’s seen
And sharing a link on a screen
When both are outside us
When neither can be shared absolutely
When nothing can be known beyond the self…
…so to speak
The structure and behavior of our brains
Describes our feelings, thoughts, and senses equally
Yet when the body dies the brain may live on
– and vice versa
There are brainless animals with thinking bodies
And fragments of emotion in our flesh
We caress or we itch at the past and we sniff
at futures that we’ll never see
If anything’s too far to be a part of what we are
Then everything to which we can refer
Is unknown space
The Three-Minute Challenge
By Eric Sandefur
“If you only had three minutes
to give the world a message,
what would it be?” – J.D., former cellmate
There’s so much to talk about in this world – so much going on, so much that needs to be said…so much on my mind. But for some reason I had made a split-second decision when my now former bunkie suggested this fascinating idea.
If all I have is three minutes to talk, I might as well talk about love. Motherly love, grandmotherly love, such that nothing the recipient does can squander it. Brotherly love, that among men there would be no liars but only good will, respect, admiration.
For his love of freedom, a little-known Chinese student allowed himself to be crushed mid-protest by the literal tank of oppression. For his love of an infinite God, a Christian astronomer was burned by the Inquisition for suggesting life on distant planets. Love hits harder than war; teaches deeper lessons than swords; and sets starker examples than torture, rape, and murder.
Love is precisely what I don’ want to talk about in prison. Love is all I’ve ever wanted every time I didn’t get it.
Am I not hot enough? Am I not smart enough? Do I not have enough? And when is love enough?
Love is a dangerous haven, a favorite yet smelly shoe. It is that which hurts so good. It defies, it deceives, it defines, it decrees.
Love is what I’m talking about for my three minutes. Love is something I know just enough about to spend the rest of my life learning more. Love is closer to a scientific fact than a work of art. That is, it can be discovered and rediscovered, by anyone who is persistent, but it can seldom be kept to oneself (if at all).
Love is a four-letter word. It’s a whore with her heart on her sleeve. It’s the sum and total of our lost ambitions and our wounded pride. Love is what our hurt turns into when we look for something else.
Love is what there’s left to live for when there is nothing else.
Refrain (or an Homage to Amanda Gorman)
By Eric Sandefur
A wise woman once told me
She couldn’t save me
Though she didn’t know
That I had heard.
She told this to a light listener
That self-described dark girl
That I could save myself
With something that we both adored: language
That prophetess worked magic
Not on me, but through me
Because I did as she said
I listened
Even if a person doesn’t help you up
You can still cling to their hems
And climb their charitable presence
As if seeing them standing makes you desire more
You may already be, like I had been
Flailing about for purchase
Daring just to hope
That up still exists
This goal is a physical echo
Of what exists in language
Nobody can give it to you
But when you hear it, you can echo it yourself
In your own sorcery
Inevitable
By Eric Sandefur
In my dreams I’m in prison
Even though sometimes the walls
Might be too far away to see,
My surroundings might appear just like the streets,
Or the people whom I meet I know are free.
Sometimes I am aware;
I used to practice lucid dreaming.
That is, until the line between
Reality and dreams began to seem
More and more like a poorly stitched seam.
So I try to just enjoy it
When I find a pleasant scene,
If only in a dream within a dream.
Waking up from that is hard enough
Without realizing that I’m still asleep.
Most people think that “waking” to the truth
Is the hard thing, the sought-after thing;
They think the truth will free them from the tomb
It built around them.
They have neither looked behind their eyes
Nor had to forget what’s in their hearts.
Some dreams are far more vivid than the others.
Last night I saw the war on crime turn bloody
In a vicious, murderous crackdown on ex-cons.
I barely escaped a hungry beast the cops unleashed
By stumbling into another dream.
It was another time, another space,
Where the triumphs over the past had been hard-won
And the problems of the present long undone.
I marveled for a time at all their peace.
That is, until I saw the peace’s keepers:
Each and every armed to the teeth.
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