Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, said, “Whatever life gives you, you write about.” Life gave me incarceration, which I write about to hopefully overcome the ineffable experience, the sense of exile and the dark corridors of prison as I lived them.
NORMAL LIFE
In prison anything
not here is
normal.
Even TV ads jar the armor
of memories
lost.
An Audi family,
the setting
staged,
streets of studio
sets,
smiles every
where.
None of it
real.
Still breaks your
heart.
Always returning
to the same
place:
What am I doing
here.
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