Poetry by Eric Perez

Luna

We met by chance,
One October night
At the school dance
Beneath the moonlight.

Despite the dark
A coward one the side I stood
By chance, or perhaps on a lark,
You pulled me from my brood.

You took my hand,
Pulled me quite close,
I could barely stand,
When I felt your breath, your pulse.

You may have forgotten my name,
But I love you all the same.

To the Brave
(a poem inspired by Ukraine)

To the lost ones, the fallen ones,
To the ones who were lost on the fields
Of grain and snow. The ones who would not yield
Beneath the heel of the unjust ones.

I fear I do not have your courage,
Your strength, your will to rage
Against the tyrants, the oppressors.
To stand against the fright
Of their overwhelming might.

Oh my brothers, my sisters
How I pray to meet
The courage of your unyielding feet,
To stand my ground
To pay the reaper’s pound
So others may stand free.

To Imprisonment

What better way to learn to live
Than to be stricken of your freedom.
I committed no crime
OK, that’s a lie.
But how am I to recover
WHen given no reason,
No purpose to be something more?

But what luck, what fortune!
I do have a purpose, a reason
To help my fellow chatter
Look beyond the cowl of apathy
To the day when they will be seen
As beasts no more.

Diana

Diana
My lost love
What I fool I was
To leave your safe cove.

I ventured out
Naive in my desire
To seek untold treasures
In a world of mire.

I found
Nothing of worth,
Fool’s gold on a fool’s errand
And returned for a safe berth.

Alas
I was too late.
Gone was my love.
What a horrible fate

To learn too late
You were not the one.
The man of her desires,
As she’s found her one and only one.

Untitled Essay

Michael, Mike to his friends, sat on the back porch of his house. The porch was partially enclosed against the nastier bugs, and from within its dark shadow, he peered through the rusty mesh and onto the vast pasture of his life. He found himself grazing more and more among his old memories, finding comfort where Lela still lived.

It had been five years since his wife died, five years since he became a widower at 74. Six years since time had begun to slip away from him. There were times when he would wake to her warmth, to the scent of blueberry in her hair, to the soft hiss of her sleep apnea machine. It was hard to let her go after 60 years of being together, and his struggling mind made it even harder to let go.

Tonight, his mind had been as clear as the sky, and he followed the flickering light all the way back to the day he first saw her, at a school dance wearing her pink dress and white shoes. He could see her clearly, as if she was standing on the porch with him, but something wasn’t right. The image didn’t feel right. He played the memory forward and back, peering at her from different angles until he finally understood what was wrong.

Lela hated pink. Carol loved pink.

“Carol,” he said to the two dogs asleep on the porch floor. Old Chuck flicked his tail in angst,as if to say, “Of course,” then settled back to sleep.

Carol had been Mike’s first love. She had given him his first kiss, and would have been his first girlfriend had he not been such an ass. Mike had always wondered what would have been, and with nothing holding him to his work, and within the midst of his sorrow, he undid 62 years of regrets.

He took Carol on their first date, a midday trip to the park where they watched baseball and ate hot dogs. He did not know if she liked baseball or hot dogs, but in the microcosm of his mind, she did. She enjoyed most of the things Lela did, and a few things she didn’t like, and Mike took Carol on many of the same trips that he had taken Lela on.

Life with Carol was fun, but he had to end the affair in college because he wasn’t sure what Adult Carol would look like. He left her in that world that was and wasn’t, and he slipped into a new reality. He tried his hand at college, bypassed years of study, and became a lawyer. He was an exceptionally good lawyer despite his naivete of its complexity. He was right up there with Perry Mason and Atticus Finch, saving countless innocent lives from false prosecution. He saved thousands more as a doctor, fireman, and forest ranger.

In every dream, he was and wasn’t Mike. In every dream, he was and wasn’t living a real life. Some would call them fantasies, but to Mike, they were glimpses of his other selves. He did not understand how it all worked, but he did have a recollection that reality came from perceptions, simple electrical impulses that criss-crossed our bodies, sending sensations to and from our brain. He had heard of ghost limbs and false memories on 60 Minutes, and with his own failing memory, knew that the mind could not be trusted.

If a man could feel a limb that wasn’t there, then how could you be sure that’s what you were feeling? And if you weren’t sure what you felt was really real, then who’s to say that it is or it isn’t, for what you felt was not completely the same as what I felt, and if neither of us could say for certain that a pear truly tasted like a pear, then how can we be sure it doesn’t taste like an orange?

It’s a lot to think about while sitting on a porch with two sleeping dogs as company, but at the same time, it wasn’t much to think about.

Mike’s cell buzzed and he looked at the time. It was 10:01 p.m. He had spent the better part of five hours crossing back and forth between time and space like a frog looking for the perfect lilypad to sleep on.

“Hey, Timmy,” Mike said into the webcam.

“Hello from the future,” his grandson replied with a big smile on his face. “Do you know what today is?”

“Of course I do. It’s the day before your birthday.”

“Not here it isn’t!” Timmy giggled and swiveled the phone to show his alarm clock’s glowing red numbers. “It’s two minutes past midnight, which means it’s my birthday!”

“Well then, happy birthday, happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Timmy! Happy birthday to you!”

“Thanks, Grandpa!”

“You’re welcome, my baby boy. Now it’s getting late, you should go to sleep. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“I know. Mom said the same thing.”

“Well, tell her I love her and give her a big kiss for me.”

“I will. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t forget to connect at 10 a.m. your time.”

“I won’t. I have a reminder all set.”

“Good. Goodnight, Grandpa!”

“Goodnight!”

Mike put the phone into his pocket and shuffled inside. Today was still today, but in some places today was long gone, and in others, it was just beginning. Tomorrow he would be attending a birthday party that was over a day’s journey away.

It was all relative.

Please Help

The triad of rehabilitation is Education, Self-Help, and Healthy Social Networks. Unfortunately,we often find ourselves balancing on two shaky legs as the institutions that house us rarely provide us with the opportunity to advance our education and/or further our personal growth. While there have been recent improvements to educational opportunities in the state of California, the lack of reformative programs is creating an undue risk of recidivism in many of those who find themselves on the opposite side of the fence.

To understand the problem, you must understand how self-help and rehabilitative programs are run in prisons. First, you must sign up for the program, an easy process that simply requires the submission of a form through the mail. Once received, the assigning official, a lieutenant or associate warden, places the individual on a waiting list. The individual remains on the waiting list until there is an opening, which can be anywhere from three months to six years, depending on how the program is being run and the rate of attrition. It is not unusual for a “career criminal” to be placed on the waiting list at the beginning of his term, and after multiple years, to be paroled without ever setting foot in a classroom environment.

Once you are assigned to the program, you will be required to participate in its weekly or biweekly meetings, which are generally two hours long. A supervising state employee and an inmate facilitator will greet you when you enter. The state employee will check your ID and mark you off on their list, and will later input your hours to ensure you receive credit for your participation. The inmate facilitator will be responsible for providing you with the information and guidance you need to become a fully functional member of society.

Inmate facilitators may or may not be fully knowledgeable in the subject, as the only real requirement is a willingness to lead the group. Often, the facilitator’s credentials include nothing more than having previously participated in the program or a similar program at another institution. Another issue is that participation is optional, with many uncaring individuals using the program to pad their portfolio, or as one individual who was recently granted parole describes it, “playing the game” the Parole Board sets up.

You can easily see the problems with this format. It is why I saw no point in joining any self-help group, as my time was better spent working on my college work. I have earned multiple degrees.

My view of supposed self-help programs changed when the Prison Education Program (PEP) announced they would be offering courses at my institution. I’ll admit that I only signed up for the courses because they were being run by volunteers from Project Rebound, and I wanted to make a connection to the Cal State system before the Pell Grant kicked in for incarcerated college students. My family has graciously paid for tuition at Colorado State University-Pueblo, where I am working on my BA, but it is very expensive.

To ensure that I would not be stuck on the waiting list, I signed up for the less popular courses: Introduction to Autobiographical Writing and Soft Skills. It was a bit of a cheat as I have taken multiple business, management, and English courses and already knew how to communicate with other people. I figured I could breeze through their simple curriculum with ease.

I would not have understood this had I not signed up for a real self-help class. A class developed, organized, and led by highly-skilled professionals who knew how to lead us toward rehabilitation, instead of someone who just felt like talking that day.

A dozen business classes have taught me the importance of training and matching the job’s duty and responsibilities with the right skill sets. Self-help groups are responsible for rehabilitating damaged individuals. They should be designed to ensure that we deal with our issues and problems, that we receive the help we need to live proper lives, and that we don’t come back to prison. They need to be run by qualified people with knowledge and skills in social work, psychology, and education, because the job is too important to be left to chance.