jail
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On reading Natalie Diaz’s “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs” with a room full of men in jail for drugs.
Natalie Diaz wrings beauty from an impossible situation — how much hurt can you bear, trying to help someone who can’t be saved?
addiction, amphetamines, crystal meth, drugs, heroin, How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs, jail, jail poetry, juvenile detention, meth, methamphetamine, Natalie Diaz, opiate epidemic, overdose, poem, poetry, prison, prison poetry, rehab, relapse, sobriety, street drugs, teaching in jail, War on Drugs, When My Brother Was an Aztec
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On smell.
Humans actually smell pretty well … and scents affect our emotional wellbeing. Shouldn’t we want places of healing to smell good?
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On clarity, Matthew Zapruder’s “Why Poetry,” and reading Bruce Weigl.
We should strive for clarity, out of love for those willing to listen.
abuse, Billy Collins, blaming victims, Blast Furnace, Bloomington, Bruce Weigl, childhood, clarity, drug abuse, drug use, honesty, honesty in writing, Introduction to Poetry, jail, mass incarceration, Matthew Zapruder, memory, metaphor, Monroe County Jail, New Leaf New Life, poems, poetry, prison, psychiatry, psychology, PTSD, rape, recovery dorm, rehab, rehabilitation, repressed memories, say it clearly and you make it beautiful, sexual abuse, Spotlight, symbolism, The Impossible, Tom McCarthy, trauma, Why Poetry, writing
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On addiction, crime, Buddhism, and exorcism.
If we want people to heal, we shouldn’t keep them inside bleak boxes.
abuse, addiction, agency, Buddhism, child molesters, Demon, demons, drug dealers, exorcism, free will, gang murder, Harvard commencement, hurt people hurt people, I Will Find You, incarceration, J.K. Rowling, jail, Jason Shiga, Joanna Conners, liberation rite, mythology, nurture, parenting, penitence, poverty, prison, prison rape, Rowling, sex offenders, solitary, Tibetan mythology, trauma
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On the Silk Road, Nick Bilton’s ‘American Kingpin,’ and the difference between being clever and being wise.
If someone is clever enough to build a billion-dollar website, should that person also get to decide who lives or dies?
addiction, American Kingpin, anarchist, anarchy, barter, clever, commissary, Dread Pirate Roberts, FBI, H, heroin, honey buns, intelligence, jail, jail bartering, jail economy, kinesthetic learners, libertarian, libertarianism, Nick Bilton, opiates, prison, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, spoons, The Silk Road, types of intelligence, Ulbricht, Variety Jones, violence, War on Drugs, wisdom, withdrawal
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On Liu Xiaobo, monster hunter.
“If you be good and grow strong, you can help your father fight the monsters.”
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On prosecution.
Prosecutors can wield their tough reputations to push problems elsewhere … but that’s not the same as fixing them.
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On changing a life.
We can’t be *forced* to change … & sometimes it takes a jolt to realize that we want to.
AA, addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, Becoming Ms. Burton, Cari Lynn, drug use, drugs, getting sober, halfway houses, heroin, I Felt Your Presence in the Absence of Time, incarceration, jail, jail dormitory, John-Michael Bloomquist, junk, Max E., meth, methamphetamine, Monster House Press, New Leaf, New Leaf New Life, opiates, Poems from the Jail Dorm, poetry, prison poetry, recovery, rehab, release from prison, San Diego 1985, shame, sober, Susan Burton, teaching, teaching in jail
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On race and our criminal justice system.
In our nation’s criminal justice system, we ignore most of who people are… and focus only on the parts of them we fear.
AI, blow and go, broken communities, Child Beater, education, emotional trauma, going without medication, jail, jail medical care, jail poetry, Marfan syndrome, mass incarceration, medical care in jail, Norman Dubie, persona poetry, poetry, poverty, prison, prison poetry, probation, prosecutorial discretion, racial injustice, rehabilitation, Safe Passage, sentencing inequality, teaching, teaching in jail
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On keeping someone alive.
Our bodies will go, but our values might live on.
Frank Brown Cloud 