Raegan Butcher's Blog - Posts Tagged "prison"

sometimes there’s just nothing
rain outside the window
too much coffee in your gut
time ticking away but somehow too slow
you have thoughts but they’re not profound
you have worries and they’re average worries
but terrifying too
—how are you going to make it?
you need a car
a place to sleep
food to eat
you need
all the things that everyone else needs
and none of it is cheap
but you don’t know how
to do anything
and you feel
ashamed to be selling your books
as if you’ve joined the ranks
of all the other merchants
the greedy hustlers

just another salesman

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
― Nelson Mandela

in this country
poor people
who are drug addicts
don’t get treatment
they get prison
same with the mentally ill
i was in there with them
with my garden variety borderline personality disorder
i saw i know
i bear witness
our prison system
holds literally millions of crazies
because we refuse to deal with them in any other way
this is not a poem
this is a plea:
is this any way for a “great” nation to behave?

I write simply
to put a smile upon
my own face.
The rest doesn't
matter.

visiting room

an air
of sadness
permeates
the room.
kids
without fathers.
wives
without husbands.
everyone
wishing they were
someplace
else.

Sometimes those close to me ask me why I am so forthcoming about my past, prison, all that. I figure it is a matter of public record. There is no point in hiding it. If people choose not to associate with me because of it, then fuck them.

When people ask, “How did you survive prison?” I ask them, "How did you survive high school?” Same sort of situation. You are stuck. You don’t have a choice. Attendance is mandatory, compulsory. There are two ways out of prison: escape or suicide. I lacked the courage for either.I have never had time pass so slowly as it did during those seven years. Every minute was made more teeth-grindingly awful by the knowledge that I did it to myself. No one ever forced me to make the incredibly bad decisions I made in the 90s. That blame lies squarely with me. I wasn't some innocent man railroaded into the joint. I was a dangerously unbalanced idiot/asshole with a gun--the worst thing in the world.
How could I be proud of my past—it’s a dreary saga of waste, stupidity, and failure. Surviving prison was nothing more than dumb luck and simple everyday endurance, nothing to be proud of.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Volatalistic Phil, Stone Hotel is now available once again in paperback. Get yours now.

http://www.amazon.com/Stone-Hotel-Rae...

Enter here on Goodreads to win a free copy of my newly reprinted book about prison.

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

Congrats to the five lucky winners! I have mailed each of you your copy of Stone Hotel today. Enjoy!