Poetry by Fernando Rivas

Shaken
By Fernando Rivas

Black bird perched on the flimsy branch
wind
a threatening sky:
the grackle’s squawk a frightened squeal
the shaking branch
so high, my friend
what do you see?
You, now solitary king of nothing
in this surging wind
dark storm clouds
easily toppled with a gust
fluttering your tail feathers for balance.

You, of course, can take wing
if things become precarious
as they undoubtedly will
and you are shaken from your throne
your lone
perch.

I am myself on a brittle and flimsy branch
but cannot take wing
am reduced to muted whimpers
or pointless outbursts.

My flimsy throne in this nothing kingdom
far less stable even than yours.

But you cling stubbornly
promote your presence.
This is MY tree, you proclaim.
And no fool better claim it.

We are all animals staking out perimeters.
We all squawk and squeal and sputter and shriek.
But the wind
that wind
remains impervious
uncaring
and the branch shakes and shakes.
And soon, inevitably
we are forced
to take wing

and fly as best we can.

Worlds
By Fernando Rivas

So many worlds:
the one we’re taught to see
the one we think we see
the one we’d like to see.
And then
the real one.

Through a glass darkly
is that the erudite expression?
So many erudite expressions.
So many words for all the worlds.
And so many worlds
clashing.
Too many.

They clash in my head.
They clash on the news.
In galactic telescopes and electron microscopes.
Everybody thinking their world’s the one
decrying all the other worlds.
Until they all burn each other down.

What is real
epistemology
truth
still human words
what is real to whom?
Some realities are drug-enhanced
or biologically contaminated.
Confusion abounds.
Is vision only chemical?
An interaction of molecules?

Welcome to my world, an old song says.
But you cannot own a world.
There is no property deed for
such.
You don’t even own the world
you think you see
or live in.
There’s nothing to own.
Owning is an attitude
senseless
and welcoming someone into your
world
is an absurdity.
They are/are not in it.
Erwin Schrodinger’s quantum cat (could’ve been a dog or a cow)
dead or alive
nothing is real and nothing to get hung
about
was the song:
that last century’s Strawberry Fields world
now dust.

All worlds are terminal.
All worlds are temporary.
Forever is just a word
Eternity is time without time
and without time
there are no worlds
and without human perception
what is left?
Life before life
Death after death.
Perpetual cycles
Worlds without end.
Worlds without words.
Worlds without worlds.
Within and without.

Old
By Fernando Rivas

Bouts of amnesia
occasional doses of Milk of Magnesia
fear of pending death or
maybe
Alzheimer’s
and, for some,
an unusual interest in pornography
involving minors.

Run if you will,
exercise if you must,
You cannot hold back biological rust:
chromosonal dysfunction
mental disjunction
genetic misfires
there is no potion
that renews and rewires
no fountain of youth,
I’m sorry to say,
so best face the truth
and be on your way
to what?
Who knows?
Slow ruin for sure
Decrepitude
A creeping loss of aptitude
There’s no holding it back
so take it in stride
you’re heading, my friend
to the end of the ride.

Kudos to those who retain graceful poise
long marriages, trips abroad, health and wealth
to the End
who remain faithful and content
and await a peaceful demise.
Not my choice,
not the hand I’ve been dealt
me and many like me
must walk the plank in the storm
and pretend to maintain some sort of good form.
Around us the sea churns and roars
the wind screams and howls
while others look on
with smirks, grins and scowls.
But for them too the Reaper will come
sharpening his blade
honing his skills
despite the best science, surgeries and pills
despite sleep-number beds and shape-fitting foam.

And the End
the Real End
is not as the Beatles proclaimed
in their golden/slumber/post-adolescent glory
about the love you gave or took
not about love at all.
It’s about telomeres fraying
cellular chemistry staking its claim
evolution’s inscrutable aim.
We’ve tried to impose human agency
where there is none.
The universe goes on
like the stars we simply live and die
alone
glow and dissolve.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
the poet proclaimed.
What, I say, is the difference in how
you go?
Screaming or weeping or in respectful silence
running, walking, crawling or spent
in war, peace or indifference,
Christmas or Lent,
no choice in the matter
the end is
THE END (roll credits).
There’s been talk of
cryogenics
the dead becoming meat in the freezer
to be warmed at a future date
yesterday’s steaks
(or mistakes).
Rumor was that Disney had himself put on ice
only a rumor (or a joke)
regardless, he won’t be drawing any more Steamboat Willies.
or Donald Ducks.
or Goofies.
or Snow Whites.
That time is past tense.
That ship has sailed.
That train has left the station.

As for those of us in the senior citizen category
(weak teeth, leaky bladders, congested intestines)
we’re still here
waiting for the next scheduled departure.

Drought
By Fernando Rivas

On the compound the ground
dry and cracked
and I don’t care if it ever rains again
if all the grass dries and dies
to brown
as all of us already cracked and dead
walking to and fro with no point to it
walking or running on the track
keeping fit
for what exactly
our lives extinct
all the idiot cheers and laughs
no longer any point to it
no growth
no spirit
drought
a human drought gathered
in clumps
congealed
inmates
no
I don’t care if it ever rains again
I used to love the rain
but there’s no love left
there are no seeds
nothing to grow
the joy has hardened
and cracked like the ground
brown and dead
on the compound
where I walk
to and fro
no longer any point to it.

KILLING TIME (Israel/Gaza, 2023)
By Fernando Rivas

There’s murder in the air
Allah in the sky
prophets in the desert
invade with combat knives
ready to take lives
sacrifice will not suffice
the suicide, the pride
killing is in season
missiles coming down
torch some luckless town
to the ground.

Creeds and credos clash
in combat they thrash
slaughtering for heaven and peace
a territorial squabble, a rabble, a social disease:
babble
over different commandments
holy book pronouncements
sides prescribed already chosen
birthright, history, blood
since the time of some mythical flood
no end in sight
to the eternal fight
we all die a bit inside
watching opposites collide.

God – Ra – Allah – Zeus
all followers fated to lose
battle not for righteous life
engage in rape and homicide.
Holy Simians are we
skilled at finding an enemy
the Other, the Wicked Brother
the One we are compelled
to smother.

How far we’ve come
not an inch or a centimeter
as for Justice
we don’t need Her
we place all trust on fearless leaders.

God will lead us out of trouble
until there’s nothing left but rubble.
We’ll build again, my friend
until it’s killing time again.

Until it’s killing time again.

Hopeless
By Fernando Rivas

Some choose to see the wonders of creation
I see only flaws and imperfection.
What a thing is man, Shakespeare claimed
what a farce, Will.
So like an angel?
There are no angels
no deities or destinies
only churning chemicals and the forces of
atomic mass and quantum particles
purposeless but driven,
magical, empirical and thoroughly inhuman
following rules devised by no benign intelligence,
the belligerence of charged opposites
no light without darkness
no silence without noise
no void without gravity
no right without wrong.

No ghosts of dead monarchs.

The stars sing their monochromatic chant, triumphant, Will
and your suicidal, confused prince
is the sound and fury signifying nothing.
The centuries have swept by and he is but a quaint
ornament.
No heaven or hell or god or devil
as we stumble from womb to tomb
without kings or kingdoms
pitifully mortal
in the end hopeless
our fate far more meaningless (and less dramatic) than Hamlet’s.

II.

Some say we are evolving, I say we are imploding
assailed by our own paranoid rantings
repeating nightly-news memes
and advertising slogans
overpopulating or randomly shooting
or claiming some ancient religious rite.
We are nothing but a sharper breed of monkey
who has learned to add, subtract and multiply
multiply above all, randomly
and to memorize useless verbal formulas
from holy books.

We have learned to destroy more efficiently
leveling towns and cities with no clear purpose
exerting the force of earthquakes and volcanoes
without any assistance from the planet.
We can do the same damage and do it
only to display our plumage
silly birds of prey
descending like hawks
on the defenseless
mouthing biblical verse
or should I say
babbling
scriptures
set down long ago in another
confused, but less technologically adept
world.

Now we have manufactured intelligence
robot voices that will guide us through some
apocalyptic age.
A new act is at hand.
We stopped thinking long ago and
the machines will only take up the slack
extending our own misguided impulses.
No need for thought
in an impulsive consumer-driven economy
imploding
ever smaller in its vision
narrower.
Ours is the world of the exploiter and
the fast talker,
the sound-bite,
the sitcom,
sports and daily drama
a colorless panorama
of boredom.

iii.

And what of my voice and my choice
and it’s insignificance
its narcissistic
pompousness
since I am less than nothing
in the sum of all things
a single drop in a deluge.

I offer no advice and no vision and
these scribbles are just pointless
introspection
the musings of an empty shell
afloat in doubt
and
self-examination, i.e. recrimination.

Maybe the world I see is only a poor
reflection of my own
diminution
or an absolution
from the sin of
being human.
All philosophy is sophistry
niceties of language
verbosity about the invisible:
not useful in the long run
not practical in this best of all possible worlds
of happy-nappy capitalist enterprise
no surprise.
Even clowns get to squeak now and then
for the amusement of the masses.
Or squeak like a mouse caught in the trap
snap!
looking for what exactly
what is there to find
to keep the grim reaper at bay.
Everything grinds down in the end.
The universe will send
no condolences.
Ask me again why we sing and if
it does any good.
Ask me what is beauty perceived in
a raindrop
or the petal of a flower.
I have no answers
and I’m running out of questions.
Hope and hopelessness are equally
valid reactions.
Positive thinking is lunacy.
And here I am talking to myself via text
is it pretext?
Or am I just one of the nine billion monkeys on this planet who will type on and on into eternity until they’ve inadvertently recreate
Hamlet

MAUI 2023
By Fernando Rivas

Paradise is on fire the news said
they showed pictures between
jangly
snippetty
commercials
ashes and death
on the prison television.

There’s the heat now
hot weather, a sweltering planet
earth on slow boil
surely the reason.
Or no reason.
The movement of planets
atmospheric transformations
all the same
a cosmic game
beyond human scale.

For me (an inmate) things burned down long ago.
Prophet of doom and gloom they call me
not I.
My line is not ‘the end is near’
but ‘the end is here’
not a bang but a whimper
as the poet sagely noted.
Look upon these ruins:
the coral reefs pale, rain forests burned
we stew slowly in the flames of our own
proliferative
multiplicative
pointlessly inquisitive and acquisitive
nature,
OUR nature, nature-created
suicidal perhaps
nature devouring itself
like with the dinosaurs
thirsty for extinction
and renewal.

Billions of carnivorous consumers
hunger for comfort.
Doomed by our tragically short life spans
we seek some eternal corporate comfort
heaven on this blue earth
health
wealth
swimming pools.
But luxury and leisure
alas
are limited commodities.
The rest of us, most of us, not lucky to cash in
sweat
suffer
burn
all dreams of paradise incinerated

ashes and death.

A Whole Lot of Empty
By Fernando Rivera

Prison as a whole
is a dark hole
a whole lot of empty.
Nobody talks about prison
until they end up there.
Then it becomes central
gravitational
a main theme
a radical scheme
a right-wing meme.

Prison is an asylum
from the world’s insanity
from what is required,
prison itself has no reality
or centrality,
it’s a compound fusion
a collective illusion of safety
and lunacy.

For some it’s a laugh a minute
a riot of hootch
an all-night gambling house
a drug den
what they call the pen
with few penitents
mostly denizens
citizens deprived of their eminence.

Prison as a whole
is a time machine
collapsing time into space
it’s a space/time vacuum
it’s like walking in your sleep
sinking to the deep.
Above, the world spins by
a blur
of months and years
you seem to disappear.

Its walls are built on guilt
inspired by wire
fed by flaws in laws
by righteous indignation
a sorry lack of imagination
institutional sadism
a merciless concatenation
impossible to conjugate
what’s wrong or right
or tell day from night
in the Kingdom of the Blind
when reason is left behind
and space is collapsed by time
which is what the inmate finds
and feels and fears and faces
Prison
as a whole:
a dark hole
a whole lot of empty.

Stillness
By Fernando Rivera

I have stopped.
I have stopped believing
that what most people find beautiful
is beautiful
that what most people call truth
is truth
that what most people think is just
is justice.
I have stopped.
I will not repeat
what is common knowledge
which is common ignorance.
I must be contrary
to find what’s real
to feel what’s real.
I am not an echo
of some collective lunacy.
I will not share
the blindness
and the evasion.
I will be alone
in a desert of my own choosing.

I will not marvel that AI
can mimic what we are:
cardboard cutouts
mannequins
dancing to a monochromatic beat.
Easy to duplicate.

Still, I would ask AI why?
Why should it dare to be truly human?
From the stillness of its circuitry
may come the reply:
to be truly human
is to be truly
Alone.
Individual.
No sound. No fury.
A buzz alive in the wires.
The silent singing of neurons.

Flight
By Fernando Rivas

Black shadow wings across my path
streaks across the red gravel
of the prison yard track:
a bird overhead
like a passing evil thought,
a premonition.

Etched against harsh sunlight
my own shadow, solid and solemn,
plods on, step by step,
a struggle to move this body
old bone, muscle, sinew
tired of the weight
and the years
and the barking of guards
and the inane chatter of inmates.

Effortless, swift, the bird glides past.
No need to beat its wings
caught in the thermal updraft
of this hot day
this on-and-on day
this stagnant pool of a day.

Its flight is symbolic of freedom
only symbolic.
It is no less a prisoner
than I,
trapped by instinct, appetites,
chemistry
physics
a blind fawning servant of
impulses
of biochemical processes,
of natural law,
defeating gravity only momentarily,
a simulacrum
of hope
of unrealized yearning.

Magazines
By Fernando Rivas

prison
inmates look at
gourmet food
luxury cars
boats
Greek islands
the Caribbean
women
glossy images from another planet
not the one they live on
and will live on
for
decades.

The Great Forgetting
By Fernando Rivas

we had the key
to unlock all the doors
but discovered too late
some doors should remain, that we should perhaps abstain

having the key
is the first mirage
knowledge is the first
excitement
power is the great mistake
learning
is the last
enlightenment

some rooms are best
kept shut
dark
some journeys on which we embark
lead nowhere
to the top of the stair
that is just a prop
on an empty stage
where we stop

best to forget the key
and forget the lock

a light can shine too bright
a truth so hard to bear
too impossible to share

renders us mute
deprived of keys
and rooms
that we may sleep in blissful absence
smiling fools
for whom rules
are a game
no one is meant to win
made by those whose sin
is to believe:

the great forgetting
‘s now at hand.

Running
By Fernando Rivas

I’m running from sense because sense is nonsense and logic is a trap
I’m running from what people say because what people say is essentially silence
I’m running from the Label that has been placed upon me as it is essentially
what I’m running from
I’m circular and that is a good thing
I’m running in a circular pattern to keep my sanity
I’ve circled the wagons and there is an attack
I’m running inside the circle and the attack is on going
And there is no escape from the ongoing attack except
to break from the circle
and to run in straight lines
even if you then encounter mountains
or oceans

I’m running because running gets you nowhere faster than not running
I’m running to find out if there really is nowhere to run
I’m running my thoughts and my words and finding no answers to my queries
I should be running a different program
rather than the current genetic software I’ve been given
The faster I run the more I think no one will catch up
The further I run the more distance and objectivity I find
Far away from the core one finds more truth or maybe those truths you would never
find standing still

I’m running the marathon because I want to be spent and winded
I’m running the hundred-yard dash because I want to see how fast it is possible to go
I’m running in a cage like a mouse on a wheel
a white lab mouse, anticipating the test inoculation that will cure EVERYTHING (or kill)
since I am expendable
I will run until the lab guy picks me up by the tail and says
“Time for your big debut!”
And even then
in mid-air and suspended by my long pink tail
I’ll still be running.

Liberation
By Fernando Rivas

Said: Open the windows!
what rushed in
was an ice storm
snowhard as juju beads
spatterrattling upon the old walls and filigreed ceilings.

Said: Throw open the doors!
wild mustangs rushed
stomped stampeded in
knocking over furniture
breaking through curio cabinets
shattering glass, pounding flatscreens, desktops, laptops
to smithereens.

Shouted:
This is FREEDOM
this is the END OF ASSUMPTIONS!
took a sledgehammer to the walls.

Swarms of wasps
exploded from the broken roof
and the chaos of the storm
shook the house like prey.

Prey left without prayer
Isolation complete
You stand alone
Or dissolve.

And soaring wings
Roared from us, sprang full wide
and we rose
as smoke from a holocaust
and heard what no prophecy and no blasphemy
had foretold:
the howling screams of angels.

Squirrel Time
By Fernando Rivas

I am the connection between yesterday and today
in this universe (call it mine)
I am the Timepiece.
I seek no broader observations and assumptions
am untouched by the wider scope (the social).
At this center of myself
time is simplicity.
Zero.

As an inmate on this prison compound
I may be deemed irrelevant, dead even
But aren’t all of us
in some way
when taken out of context?

Consider the Other:
a squirrel that lives on this compound
fed by the inmates,
its lifespan drastically shorter than mine:
the squirrel today is not the same one
I saw years ago
when I first was brought here.
Define that as biological continuity.

It may not be a matter of lifespans,
the squirrel too is the center of some universe
its generations live and die
shorter than ours
like me it is its own TImepiece
our time irrelevant to its survival,
of no consequence to
any of it:
the birds,
the flowers that bloom irreverently
by the walkways,
the trees casting their noontime shade.

In which context then
is there Meaning?
Were I to be able to scuttle up a tree bushytailed
or take wings and fly
or yield my blossoms to the sun
would anything change?

The Now is eternal.
The Eternal is Now.

I own nothing and measure nothing.
This place as timeless as a tomb.
My own biology ticks away
irrelevant and irreverent.
What is there to hope for,
more minutes on the clock?
Why
when all of it is slipping softly away
regardless.

Now is Eternal
Eternity is Now.
There is no time and no being and no space
only our illusion
and/or the squirrel’s.

Collapse
By Fernando Rivas

[From watching televised reports covering
the February 2023 earthquake in
Turkey/Syria while in federal prison]

Here’s how it is:
buried under tons of earthquake rubble
but still breathing
survival above all, mostly death.

Structures collapse
lives are crushed
cries for help are silenced.

What we have built
will not endure
despite our most earnest intentions,
evangelical and ecclesiastical
the foundations are unsound
riddled with uncertainty and illusion.

Guilt – Shame – Punishment – Recrimination
rewards for a few
scraps for the many.
We can shoot down spy balloons
but can we strengthen the architecture
of our humanity?

There’s plenty of glitz
Plenty of Superbowl money
but these do not cement our union

Collapse may be imminent.
Or maybe
It’s already happened.

From under tons of social debris…
can you hear me?

Pattern
By Fernando Rivas

I.

Trapped in concentric circles,
blind,
I was circumscribed.

Now I am a wound
pierced from every direction.
There’s such agony in
finally perceiving.

The beauty and multiplicity
is too much for an old man’s eyes.
The world too vast to be encompassed.

I might have said back then
back when
that I was a seer, a seeker
but it was deception.

I spun words in silent motifs
weaved a web around myself
and all the while
the world clamored and rattled.

Blind to the pain I caused I moved on
prophesized vision
when it was
oh it surely was
mostly
deception,
a construction flimsy, paper-thin
crumbling at last
scattered like confetti
strewn about
waiting for a gust of wind.

II.

Time gnaws away at what connects us
cuts us free
so we finally slilp our moorings.

Memory is this thread that will not hold
but only tug at the aching flesh
snapshots and flickers
of a long voyage.

Out beyond all reach
is a limitless ocean
unknown expanse.
We vow to journey together
but we end up alone:
as we’re born so we die.

There is no rhythm and no cadence here
nor am I much concerned for what
may be extracted,
meaning, significance, connection,
just mirages for the traveler.

III.

Letting go to drift in the empty void
looking for nothing that will anchor me
I have come this far
and know not where I’m heading.

Living and dying
two facets of the same geometry
no enlistment of higher mathematics
will yield a more generous answer,
no prayer or deity
will offer rescue or consolation.

As language is bound by grammar
so is biology bound by time
framing it inescapably
stitching us into the continuous weave
of a cellular pattern
a biospheric mesh
we can never fully see,
much less
understand.

Numbers Tell The Story
By Fernando Rivas

Despite new BOP director Collette Peters report to the congressional BOP Oversight
Committee in late September which speaks glowingly of the First Step Act as a
means of reducing federal inmate population through ‘intensive’ programming
the real numbers just don’t bear out any such trend.

Let’s look at the bottom line:
On July of 2019, pre-pandemic, the total BOP population was 180,298.
On January of 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, the total was 137,324.
The figures here show that the BOP lost 42,924 inmates during the pandemic,
probably because the courts were no longer actively feeding prisoners into
the system.

Now, on December of 2022, the total population is 159,206. In just about
two years the BOP has managed to intake 21,882 inmates, or half of
the population it lost during the pandemic. At this rate, and all the while
under the supposed population reduction of FSA programs, the BOP will be back to the
same levels as in 2019 within two years.

Just a reminder: the First Step Act was passed on December of 2018.

Another area of contention in Peters’ statement to congress is her argument
that the BOP is under sufficient and competent oversight. She does take note
about the sexual improprieties that took place in the past few years and
does seem to be willing to act to change that issue in the prison culture. But
far more crucial to the welfare of inmates on a daily basis are the medical
deficiencies, the negligence and lack of proper diagnostics and care which have provoked
numerous lawsuits and brought attention from national news media. Both of
these issues are important but the second seems to be glossed over in the
new director’s statement. Peters’ faith in the existing system
of oversight is probably not well founded since all or most of the problems that plague
the BOP took place while such oversight was in place. Changing the director
won’t be the ultimate solution to the problem. The ACA, Region and OIG and other
oversight/inspection systems are composed of previous BOP employees and insiders.
It’s a textbook case of the fox giving other foxes a pass to the henhouse.

Finally, Peters addresses the importance of the issue of respect between
inmates and staff. In the institution where I’m presently ‘housed’ we are
still berated, shouted at like animals and called out to various duties as
‘INMATE’, a patently derrogatory and unnecessary term. When there are
messages and call outs over the PA system the term INMATE is unnecessary.
The guards and staff do not use the PA system to communicate. Any person
called on the PA system is automatically known to be an inmate and using
the term over the PA system is purposefully demeaning, intimidating and
thoroughly meritless. I don’t know if this problem is a system-wide issue but I would
think Peters should have addressed it in her presentation. It seemed to be
a key factor of her reform in the Oregon prison system when she was
the director there. We’d surely welcome it here.

The Contrition Narrative
By Fernando Rivas

Countless prison reform organizations have sprung up over the past three decades.
They are forged and fueled perhaps by our great national angst over our problem
with crime. But is it a problem? Or is it not more of an obsession? While certainly reform is an
admirable endeavor the reality of prison in the U.S. is that it is currently as humane,
as ‘reformed’, as is possible given the underlying philosophy of punishment and
retribution that has spawned it.

Our idea of prison is mired in the same quasi-religious philosophical mud as the
efforts to reform it. Ours is a binary belief system. It’s ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’, white hats
and black, the good Jedi and the ones that have gone to the dark side, God and
Satan. In our communities, our living rooms and in the media we are repeatedly
living out and rehashing iconic archetypal scenarios, biblical conflicts,
that require clear-cut, no-nonsense right and wrong, guilt, shame and in the final
act redemption. There is no room here for gray areas or doubt, no room for
psychology or social science.

Reformers should focus their efforts not on prisons, which are the final
stage on the product line of our social malaise, but on the legislative bodies and on
law enforcement which is where, as they say, the rubber first meets the road.

In our misguided reform system reformers become apologists for those the legal system
has designated as ‘criminal’ (i.e. ‘evil’). Forced into this role reformers become unwilling
and unknowing pawns of the existing cycle. They are led to seek excuses for why
certain offenders are ‘forgivable’ while others are to be reviled and ignored.

What reformers fail to see is the larger reality of how the U.S. has created a for-profit
system that depends completely on this shame and forgiveness cycle. It is inhumane and
bureaucratic, dysfunctional, a dinosaur cobbled together from bits and pieces of religious
dogma, puritanical righteousness, public fear, racism and plain old shaming and
guilt-reflection, all of it glossed over with some high-falutin’ post-Enlightenment jargon.
It is rooted in the historic violence of old English law, of the bloody medieval power plays
between kings and nobles, in the 17th century illusion of democratic government. It
is rooted in myth and prone to dehumanization as in ‘we are a country of laws, presumably
then not a country of flesh-and-blood humans. This myth is strengthened and propagated
by TV shows and media hype, talking heads of all stripes. In this milieu offenders, if they
are to be addressed or listened to by reformers, must adopt a contrition narrative. They must
define themselves as victims of racism or exploitation who lacked education or resources
and ‘fell into’ a criminal life-style, or as grieving, sorrowful and repentant ‘mea culpa’ actors
who have come to ‘realize how their offense has harmed others’ and to recognize ‘the error
of their ways’. These attitudes can be thought of as contrition narratives. They are meant
to shift the focus from the offender as predator to the offender as victim.

Meanwhile the focus on the true predator here, the state, is lost. Laws are passed with little
or no consideration of what social destruction is wreaked on individuals, families and
communities. Prison sentences become longer and longer even when there is no pragmatic
substantiation that such extremes resolve any social issue. Prison populations
expand and ironically, or perhaps inevitably, there is more crime, more violence. Instead
of protecting society the legal system becomes a dissolving and dissociating force
that inspires rage, dissent and ultimately senseless murder.

Reformers need to cast out the ‘bleeding heart’ contrition narrative and directly address
the legislative processes that have fed the senseless behemoth our
legal system has become. We need to get past the fear and ignorance that generate only
hysteria. True reform lies in seeing beyond the stereotypes and archetypal reactions that
have been implanted in us, the easy definitions of right and wrong, to a more just and
fair accounting of our social ills. There is an overwhelming need for a data-driven system,
not one that is driven by false assumptions, by mindless panic, even less by politicians.

Our society is at a crossroads. Our concepts of crime and punishment need to be radically
overhauled. Some difficult reassessments lie ahead. They will not be the result of
contrition narratives, of the enduring shaming cycle that continues to perpetuate
and not correct the present state of our violence-prone society.

Abolition
By Fernando Rivas

It’s interesting to note that this term once used to end slavery is now used in the
context of ending punitive incarceration policies in the U.S. There are definite
parallels. The 13th amendment abolishes all slavery but preserves the right for
prison inmates to be used for various forms of unpaid labor. Slavery in the South
was primarily an economic institution pre Civil War. From it evolved the scourge
of racial discrimination that blossomed in the post-Civil War era and led into
the 20th century’s excesses, Jim Crow, lynchings etc. Now discrimination, social
and economic, is also the result of incarceration. Inmates face serious social
marginalization, losses of rights and privileges after their release, not unlike
what African-Americans faced after Emancipation.

In the U.S. incarceration, long prison sentences, have become a social addiction.
Society seeks to solve every single problem through its courts and prisons. Sex
and drugs are currently the primary drivers of all incarceration in America. Mandatory
minimums and three-strike laws fill institutions with non-violent inmates that
present no danger to society and could be easily and quickly rehabilitated and
released. Prison has become a billion dollar industry paid by a society driven to
extremes by crafty manipulative politicians.

As a means of solving social problems we are learning the hard lesson that prison
is not very effective, that, in fact, it may make matters worse. Long prison sentences
destroy individuals, families and communities and in the end create more social
havoc and damage than the crimes they purportedly defend society from.

Can prison be abolished? Not in the current atmosphere of social disorder, hatefulness
and vindictiveness. It might be that some form of incarceration is impossible to avoid.
Society cannot allow those individuals that are catastrophically violent and destructive
to roam at will. But using prison to wage moral crusades needs to end. Surely
better and more sustainable solutions, a more enlightened view of what we define as
‘criminal’, can be sought. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth cannot continue to
drive and/or define our social processes.

As they currently exist our courts and prisons are a cancer that is slowly devouring
the core of our society. We are headed down a blind alley. What needs to be ‘abolished’
is our blind dependence on legal measures to insure the solidity and survivability of
our communities. Courts and prisons cannot provide the glue that holds us together.
Without a shared sense of humanity we are doomed to constant conflict with each
other. Prison will never replace what we’ve lost. It can only deepen the wounds that
divide us.

Cycle
By Fernando Rivas

We fluctuate
from minute to minute
year to year
from there to here
here to there
mostly unaware
who we are
who we were.

Rise and fall of tides
the ever-spinning cosmos
invisibly ordered orbit of electrons
a constant vibration
surrounding us
within us
the tormented energy of the universe
ever restless,
formless.

We actors on stage perform without a script
Time’s children, awash in light
though time is an accident.

It is possible to think of it all as
timeless
this place, this pulse, our lives
some subtle and shapeless dream
here to there
there to here
to live and die
blossom and wither
to move to no apparent purpose
for no reason human logic can apprehend
Timeless
All yesterdays todays and tomorrows
a singularity beyond our grasp
and what we have called god
in our anguish of errors
is simply some urgent displacement of energy
thrashing and revising itself
a cycle
with no end and no beginning.

Worms
By Fernando Rivas

Words scattered on the floor, alive
scrawled and crawling
scrambling for sense, angling for my attention
wriggling and writhing
worms
words that slither through me
in and out of me
like when I’m dead and in the ground
which is why I’d rather burn
and be ash
scattered in the wind.

All these words point nowhere
My life insubstantial, insufficient, illusive as air.
Noise, this voice
what choice
but to look to the puzzle
the wriggling symbols
that congeal and form at my feet
creating forms
these worms
these words
these sounds I make
dangling them on a hook
bait
for some mythical beast
that refuses to be caught.

Carousel
By Fernando Rivas

While I was moving toward you
You were moving away.
I was opening my heart,
You were closing yours.
In this opposing dance and at a distance
we drifted apart always further,
a widening circle,
me alone behind the walls,
you out there free.
My offense loomed ever larger for you
as time passed.
I became smaller
and mattered less.

My words sought to reach you
your silence shut me out.
All the talk of redemption and healing
once inspiring
now
means nothing to me
not even being free
now
can heal these wounds.

In this den of noise I find only silence.
Music rings false, it’s cadence hollow.
I see now that in reaching for you
I was reaching into emptiness.
Would you have been there if they’d let me out?
Were you ever really there?
All the songs that had you in them, so many,
have become empty shells.

That you have so neatly excised me from your life
is miraculous surgery
performed without anesthetics
with the dull blade
of disdain.
You have cut me loose.
As a sinner I have no defense.
I never had it.

From here, my desolate vantage point,
life out there spins on and on like a carousel
all tinsel and color.
Sidelined, I watch,
prone to occasional nostalgia.
What there is of love
or what there was of it
is nothing but that senseless circular motion
that tinny calliope music, faint and muffled,
those hobby horses rising and falling
to the sad and predictable meter
all of it going nowhere.

Paradise Misplaced
By Fernando Rivas

From pinnacle to debacle
might be a long fall
but possibly short-lived.
Sultry shady satin-smooth Super-Mario-Brothers Satan
can attest to this,
sent down to the Pit
for daring to be top dog material.
“Hu-hu-hubris,” sang the angelic choir,
“Only room for one God up in this bitch!”
(And maybe this angelic choir is like a hip-hop group,
kickin’ it on the club circuit)

But the Pit with all its drawbacks:
sulphur fumes, lakes of everlasting fire, seedy sleazy demons etc.
is not without its attractions,
which is why Milton made Lucifer
the star of the show, top billing,
a five-pointed star pentagram, get it?
“Lu-lu-lucifer, he the man!” is what the demons sing.
(And maybe they are like a late 90s boy band, all
Biebersweet like)

All religion aside,
we are all angels and demons
all of us on this rickety old prison transport
goin’ down the road
like some Johnny Cash tune
headed for the state pen
the state of being bent
the state of staying numb
to the hurt of living.

Lucifer got it right maybe
if you think about it,
trading the smarmy glory of blue heaven
for the sexy slutty burn of hellfire.
The evangelicals quake in their skin to hear that
surely,
while secretly
they give in to all earthly human temptations
and indulge in private where no one sees
but their Cyclopic God who witnesseth all.
And eventually the confessions must come:
pinnacle to debacle,
pulpit to prison,
how the mighty have fallen,
tearful and repentant for the AP wire, the TV newsfeed,
fodder for the TikTok and Instagram crowd.

Yo, Milton, dude…how could we lose Paradise
if we ain’t never found it?

Emitted/Omitted
By Fernando Rivas

Emit time
through brain, bone and breath.
Emit energy, measured, temporal.
A finite ratio
accountable
once emitted
unrecoverable.

Emit time
through stars, planets, meteors
endless galaxies
beyond numbering.

Emission of light:
Emission of breath:
Once completed
equals
an end to luminescence:
dark matter
black holes
transformation to unknown states.

Emitted we are
gradually
omitted
until, giving off the last spark
we, like the universe
will perish,
die, end__
or possibly
transcend

Rec Yard Haiku
By Fernando Rivas

Summer dissolves into fall.
Youth jogging past on the muddy track, fleet-footed,
long-legged, able-bodied, virile.
Leaves me behind, an old man shuffling
lagging, nostalgic.

Pieces of a slaughtered bird, scattered feathers
Strewn on the dewy grass,
Time like a hawk swoops down and pillages
leaving only debris:

What we are made of.
What we once were.

The Buck
By Fernando Rivas

I guess we live in a police state and I forgot.
What’s that old saying?
First they came for the criminals.
Then they came for the vagrants.
Then they came for the undesirables.
Then they came for the minorities.
Etc…

The buck has to stop somewhere. It’s better if the door is
jammed open with an old shoe like me than by someone
who would really be hurt. As far as missing mail we already
get that here and I don’t think it’s intentional. They are short
staffed and don’t have enough mail handlers. One guy just
got a magazine from November of 2020.

The BOP is not very concerned about criticism from inmates.
They will do what they want regardless. BTW Sally is not the
only one with a hair bun. That’s a fashion. It’s impossible to
know who I’m talking about unless you were in the middle of
the situation. And I’m sure situations like this play out over
and over throughout the system. I don’t mention names.
I’m not interested in getting individuals or institutions in
any hot water – I have bigger fish to fry – like the entire
system.

Still I’m Here
By Fernando Rivas

A breath of this Texas sky is all
and I’m glad to be alive
even if not free (even if not).

Golden morning sky
Saharan desert sand blown,
smeared across the wide dawn horizon.

Another summer,
more long months ahead, years
unloved.

Still I’m here
in one piece
like an old tree
rooted in this life (in this).

They let us out
now and then
like dogs
taken for a walk.

They’ve enclosed me
but my spirit roams
these golden morning skies
on wings
and I
breathe.

Renewed,
tears blur my eyes,
thankful:
a breath (one deep breath) of this Texas sky
is
all.

Maya’s Bird
By Fernando Rivas

I would if I could tell Maya Angelou
that her caged bird
no longer sings
it squawks
and struts
in front of a mirror in its enclosure
where it sees only its reflection
a dumb bird
that knows no better.
But Maya’s gone
gone too her world and that avian species
and what’s left to say?
No song. No words.

Today
in the rec yard
they circle
round and round the dirt track,
crow-like grackles,
all of us
in our sorry cages.

It’s a wind-tossed day
that ruffles our wings
another forever day down
no more songs to sing, no poetry
only the squawking
yammering:
a
pointless
enunciation.

EMPTY TIME
By Fernando Rivas

1.
You want me to make sense?
How can I make sense?
Nothing makes any sense.
I’m in deep, inside reverberant social insanity, inequity.
I am the criminal
Null and void.

Prison poetry:
Tripping on
A frisson for those who hunger &
wonder &
stammer:
What is it like?
Would I survive? (those poor bastards, us)
Just being alive, aware.

There’s sense if you enclose it with a fence
like you had to with the Capitol in DC
because that sense
is priviliged, periscopic
as power always is.
But me, here, surrounded by concertina wire
submerged
entombed in concrete
how can I make sense?
Nothing makes any sense.

My senses are cloistered, curtailed
assailed.
I am reduced,
once seduced
now I’m trashed
classified/
rehashed/
smashed/
You – want – me – to – make – sense?

Sense is only alive
while free,
unlike me
left here to marinate
disintegrate
in brutal nonsense
and noise.

2.
Struck, I watch you out there
deconstruct
I watch you flail and fail
I watch your speeches
your patriotic fervor
your forum and decorum, empty gestures
And you ask me to make sense
But how can I make sense
when nothing anywhere (anytime) (anymore) makes sense.

All I truly grasp
is your need
to build a fence
and you have built a fence (many fences)
taller than me and stronger
ever taller, ever longer
And now you want
you
want
me
to
be contrite and make amends?
But, don’t you see, I can’t make sense
when nothing anywhere makes sense,
not inside and not outside
no excuse and no defense,
nowhere to hide
just these lines
and these rhymes
running down
on
empty
time.

Here we live and here we die
behind the fence
beyond all sense.
There is no truth, there is no lie,
there’s no defense, no case to try,
only these poor bastards
these witless clowns
all locked inside
all locked inside.

Never Mind
By Fernando Rivas

All that we hold close and dear
in hope, in lust or fear
will one day disappear
into the dust of time (a fate we deem unkind)

Enthralled by love’s embrace we cling.
Such ecstasy we bring
to songs we rock and sing
libidoed, fooled and blind (how we do shine)

In those fizzy fires of youth
we spin with fevered truth
sometimes naive, sometimes uncouth
we fall and crash and never mind (we learn to fall or walk the line)

This is the mystery:
that these hands, mine
were once a child’s hands,
smooth.
These eyes
perceived with crystal clarity
a night sky,
stars, sharp as pinpricks.
Once fresh
now jaded,
now spent,
gray.
The mystery,
my story,
all of ours’
all of us, witnesses passing through
here and gone.
The moment of deja vu is strange enough,
but stranger still:
remembering where you were when
you first conjured it:
a dream? a reverie?
That glimpse,
that mystery,
always and never

here and gone.

Amidst The Noise 
(A Prison Villanelle)
By Fernando Rivas

I die each day a bit inside
while still I try my best to live
amidst the noise, against the tide.

By these Laws should I abide,
strained and drained as through a sieve?
I die each day a bit inside.

I am assailed, without a guide,
by guilt that pierces like a shiv,
amidst the noise, against the tide.

On wings I wish that I could glide,
far from these sins they won’t forgive.
Each day I die a bit inside.

There’s no escape, Lord knows I’ve tried.
There is no love, no yield, no give,
amidst this noise, against this tide.

You speak of freedom out there, outside
But we know better, here inside:
These pristine walls, so clean and white
are harsh collide of wrong and right.
     It’s why I die each day inside

          Amidst the noise, against the tide.


Speculation
By Fernando Rivas

To have love.
Can you ‘have’ love?
Or is love
what you feel? (skin-deep or heart-felt)
To feel or have
to need or possess
or to be needed or possessed,
to hunger for and yearn
or to be
just – to be released
feel
have
love
four letter words all
to be empty
to lose
love
love and
hope
four letter sighs
gasps of the soul
oasis of the spirit
to be whole
to be
free.

Is love biology?
Life
is it viral?
Is it a memory
or a
wish?
A life wish
to hope to love
to have
to crave
to need
to hurt.
To fade.
As love will and must fade.
As life will and must fade.
As hope will fade.
As we’ll have nothing
in the end
as we had nothing coming in
not having, not being
not hoping
will we be
at last
free?

In Memory of George Floyd
By Fernando Rivas

I’m remembering
disassembling
what my life in pieces
     I can’t breathe
is what he said
     I can’t breathe

Comes to an end, crushed.
And what do you have
remembering
disassembling
questioning
     I can’t breathe

For too long
for far too long
choking down bile
choking on it
the seething injustice
comes to an end
     and what do you have

Been here to long, inside.
Too much of the same
too far in the wrong
this game
They shut the gates on me
they shut the gates
and I can’t breathe and
     I can’t breathe
oh momma
and everything hurts and
     I just can’t breathe
i
just
can’t

COVID
By Fernando Rivas

The virus that afflicts the planet
the pandemic that infects the soul
the hysteria that reduces us
the simplifications that enclose us

All the voices that comfront us
Feeding fear and great confusion
All an illusion that surrounds us
All an intrusion that may crush us

Come at once and in great numbers
From a thousand images concocted
And a million voices erupting
All the talking heads disrupting
End of times at every moment
Breaking news in every segment
Truth be damned we’re selling Product
Keeping eyes tuned in and waiting

All our specialists commenting

All our maps and graphics trending

All the people we’re surveying

How the virus keeps mutating
Until yes, we’re all infected
yes indeed, contaminated
with a fear of our own making.

Lockdown/Endurance
By Fernando Rivas

At 17,500 MPH astronaut Scott Kelly
orbits
rides the International Space Station.
In lockdown I read his words
Endurance, his book.
Prison, like the space station
is hermetic
inescapable.
What kills an astrounaut is the cold vacuum of space
What kills the inmate are the guns of the perimeter guards.
Kelly says space has the smell of burnt metal.
Prison smells of concrete and sweat
anxiety.

In lockdown during the COVID epidemic
endurance is psychological.
Will the virus get in?
350 men in this space vehicle traveling at 0 MPH.
The virus would feast
on our biology.
On the phone my wife asks, is the virus a sentient being?
It endures, is my reply
mutates
multiplies, hungry to replicate
but knows nothing
cares nothing for our humanity
our sins, our good deeds.

Leaving lockdown
will be like passing through an airlock
into the earth-bound module, to descend
to crash-burn through the atmosphere
no fear
what is outside
but thos lives we left behind?
Like Scott Kelly, enduring, surrounded by technology
not a pilot but a passenger
as are we all, prisoners
here in the lockdown
enduring
orbiting.

Monkey
By Fernando Rivas

Armored silver-plated eggplant launchers
poisoning the dreamscapes
corrugated skateborad wobble wheels
grinding over geologic fissures
seismic plates waiting to shift
writing haikus like poisoned curare darts
for which there is no antidote
see me falling from the high branches
like the Amazon jungle monkey
stung by every which possible
inequity
brought down.

Carbonized caramelized psssion fruit concoctions
cocktail promises for cures to no disease
all the dancers wearing dada outfits
gowns that flutter in the whispery breeze
maybe in Belize
not allow my mind to wander
into deeper darker
please
keep the doctored pictures in the box beneath the workbench
where no one finds the inward sea I swim in each night
‘Doom’ they call me
like the Gameboy
and I find myself wandering off course
as if ever there was any truthful tributary
in the topographic visions of the seabottoms
I’ve been sounding, drowning and never even knew it.

No mythological deity to save me
only lure me
pretty girlies misty-eyed and clean
virginal and sweet
far from prophetic
pathetic
makes you wonder what it all could mean
(if anything).

I escape your worldly pragmatism
and destroy your twisted legalese
brought to my knees

I am the sacrificial monkey
wrested from his nest high in the canopy
to die at your feet
spewing irrational
non-sequitors
purple blood
in ribbons
frothy

sleaze.


Inmates
By Fernando Rivas

We, the discarded
the distorted
the broken
the perverse     the excluded     the morose
here in the cinderblock palace
making human noises and animal
shout & strut & lurch & laugh & fight
though we are empty
wasted
lost
forgotten     fragmented
left to wither and waste

Through television portals
we watch the world unfold
motion and emotion
in which we play no role

In the kingdom of noise
we are ghosts
waiting for an out-date

we say the word mother     sister     wife     daughter
we say father     brother     friend     son
we say
we say
but words here have no substance
and we’re left to drown
in plastic sippy cups of tea and coffee

We are walking talking weight-lifting silence
music in our heads
the lyrics of half-remembered tunes
floating out of reach

time murders our spirit
and if the punished bodies survive
it is unlikely they will house a clean soul

We are dinosaurs
fossils
relics
artifacts
the adverse     the deluded     the comatose
we are unassembled and disembodied
still we walk on
programmed to survive
to sustain hope
for some unlikely outcome
as yet unforeseen
something different than this

some are lost in the journey
left behind as memory
incomplete and unfinished

those who have broken us
call this
justice
but it is fear and disgust writ large
that locks us all inside

and even the gatekeepers catch the disease
the silence seeping out of these walls
is already beginning to cover the towns and cities
and nothing will hold it back
we are all infected
we are all marked
we are all

inmates.

PRIZM/PRISON (A)