prison poetry
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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 correspondence.
With vague mail policies, guards can sever people from the world … often those who need help most.
activism, beginning of life, biotech catalogs, books to prisoners, central dogma, church outreach, correspondence, DNA, DOC, drug blotters, drugs, enforcement, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, filing cabinets, greeting cards, Indiana, Indiana Department of Corrections, Indiana DOC, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, K2, LSD, mail, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, MWPP, plasmids, poetry, post cards, prison, prison guards, prison mail policy, prison poetry, RNA world, RNA world hypothesis, spice, suboxone, synthetic marijuana, undergrad research assistants, USPS, vague policies, War on Drugs
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On goals and Jack Gilbert’s “Failing and Falling.”
We either fail to reach our goals … or they fail us. Striving is fine, but we should enjoy the process of life.
Adam Alter, beauty, death, exercise, Facebook, Failing and Falling, fulfillment, goal-oriented, goals, growth, Icarus, Instagram, Irresistible, Jack Gilbert, Jack Vance, jail poetry, meaning of life, Pattiann Rogers, poetry, prison poetry, process, process-oriented, rec yard, tech companies, The Demon Princes, The Greatest Grandeur, The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, unhappiness, University of Phoenix, 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 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 naked mole-rats.
Naked mole-rats shrug off pain, & cancer, & even time itself… but can they withstand the curiosity of Homo sapiens?
age-related diseases, age-related mortality, aging, animal cognition, animal research, animal welfare, anoxia, anoxia resistance, apoxia resistance, breeding, caloric restriction, cancer, cancer immunity, cancer resistance, cancer susceptibility, carbon dioxide poisoning, chemotherapy, Christopher Byrd, civil war, compassion, cooperation, cooperative childcare, Creep, cruelty, David Stipp, death curve, Eliot Weinberger, environmentalism, eusocial, eusocial mammals, eusociality, evolution, evolution of eusociality, food insecurity, fructose, Fructose-driven glycolysis, glucose, good stewardship, high-molecular-mass hyaluronan, hit single, hyaluronan, hypoxia, immortality, jail poetry, Jennifer Jarvis, Karmic Traces, lab mice, Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, laboratory animals, laboratory research, lifespan, lifespan elongation, limited senescence, longevity, mating habits, metabolism, mutation, Naked Mole-Rats, naked molerats, New Yorker, Norman Dubie, observation, opiates, Orange and Peanuts for Sale, Oranges and Peanuts for Sale, oxidation, oxidative stress, oxygen deprivation, pain, painkillers, Park et al., poetry, prison poetry, Radiohead, recycling, research animals, Richard Alexander, Selective Inflammatory Pain Insensitivity, Stalin, starvation, stroke, The Biology of Naked Mole-Rats, The Ghosts of Birds, The Marshall Cloud, Thomas Park, Tian et al., tumor, tumor resistance, tumorogenesis, What Happened Here, Xiao Tian
Frank Brown Cloud 