CRAIG EDWARD KELSO, First Prison Journal Entry

I was housed on the yard in front of the water tower (bottom left). 

*Written late 2008. 

I found a quiet, seemingly private space on the prison yard. Men were occupied with obnoxious television viewing, one of the So You Think You’ve Got Idol Talent Dancing shows.

I’d just arrived.

No one was around.

I faced the desert, alone. The twilight of early evening hung over me. 

The sky was HUGE, expansive, and forever.

I breathed in long and deep.

I positioned myself in a southwest direction, arching toward home – though home was a complete abstraction at this point; literally everything was gone. Instead of home, I should probably write I was slouching toward familiar, inching toward the past.

What came out of me wasn’t a scream. No. It was an Alpha Male yell, fucking full-on MAN shit. Hahahaha.  

My holler moved slumbering fowl and fauna, pushing them into frame … a really beautiful framed canvas of light and shadow and movement.

The next sound was practically a howl.

It was soooooooooooo cathartic.

Remember how you had to relieve your bowels, and making dookie was nearly orgasmic? Yeah, it was relief on that kind of scale. Yep.

All the toxins I held for more than a quarter of a year, the immovable frustration, the dire consequences of stupidly chosen actions, were temporarily evacuated from my emotional system. Gone.

At least for the moment.

Like the rhythmic cycle of intestinal replenishment and release, the great pain would return, but, for the moment, it subsided and gave me rest.

I returned to my quarters, lumbering past hordes of over-stimulated inmates. I climbed into my bunk, laying on my back. I stared up at the bunk bottom above me, my ceiling for many months, and I slowly drifted into the deepest sleep I’d had in weeks.

And I mean it.

*

CONTACT: checalaloskelsos@gmail.com 

Craig Edward Kelso is a felon, father, husband, controversialist, living in Southern California with his adorable family.