day 14: escaped prisoner

free the Move 9 - wrongly incarcerated since 1979. Love to them. all praise for their fearlessness...

the beginning and end. my nephew neel ('blue' in bengali and hindi) das ullah was born yesterday, behind glass panes revealing a terrarium of a snowy city shaken by disparities of wealth so great that no ekg screen could display the bottom and top 10 percents.

10 percent of all people born in december will recall past lives.

i was buried on a mountain behind bengal, by sikkhim and bhutan, by a gathering of elders from the lal tribe, moving in secret like prisoners breaking free of their perceived selves, behind bars.

the freedom was there all along, laid behind the walls of the inmates limitations, the tunnel that started from a fearless scratch of the surface and led to a hole so deep that the sun was within a dim sight.

run, i yell, every time i hear that police are on a search for a wild crazy person who has escaped rikers, attica, sing sing. run. escape. let the Light lead you. i'm rooting for you homie. my prayers n blessings r with u. all praise is due for U.

ten years ago i bore a hole through these walls my soul is trapped in. i spent most of my time running towards the rays of freedom, reading the scriptures on the wall like the liberation theologists of latin america during the era of giants my abbu is often speaking of, the time when the colonized said no more and sought exegesis in marx and engels, in the legacies of jesus and muhammad (peace be upon them).

i got far enough in my morning meditations to know that the Light was more than mirage, that the dessert of my thirsting body was not drawing castles in the sky and seeing lucy with diamonds. but come a call, a text, the afternoon and evening, i ran back into my jail-cell and paced, taking comfort in the complacency of a cot, toilet, roof, that the system provided, that for all its shortcomings, offered a semblance of security.

i paced. inside myself, i was frantically running like an iraqi vet tortured by the acts of terror he partook in to establish the idea of terror concocted by the shadow government of obama, bush, clinton, bush, regan, carter, johnson, nixon... i'd been acting out the conditioned training i received from 13 years of public education, hands folded and listening to lies my teachers didn't know they were saying. lies so deep, they were beyond words and books, but the very seats and board and buildings we sat in. lies I Knew, but accepted, allowed to hand cuff, and mummify me, till i was a walking dead, inside a prison of my own acqueiscence. i participated in the set up, in getting myself jumped, beat down and 25 to lifing.

through the calamaties of war, of media lies and the regurgitated enactment by the inmates of normal social behavior, i have sat behind this cell of my body and mind like a good inmate, looking for recognition, for acceptance from the prison guards and warden, for greater time in the yard and library.

i am reminded of my incarcerated self everytime i speak from a place that is beyond the frequency of Humility. i am reminded of my striped uniform every resume i send to the babylon system. i am reminded of these bars from this trepidation of what if i take a risk and fail, what if it doesn't work out, what if this is all there is, what if i can't get rent paid, what if the women in my life get tired of my empty-handed state, what if my Purpose is not my purpose, what if i am wrong for being bangladesh and 3rd world and overpopulated and india, and islam, and too hood and not hood enough and too dark and too light and too straight in my hair and not straight enough and what ifs about whether i am accepted.

the hole in this body-mind, in this prisoners uniform, has grown into a scratch again, like an epic poem written in pencil and erased. the erasure indicates passages written once upon a time.

on day 14, the hole has grown, is still dark, no light in sight, other than the One that Guides me, the One that assures me to let go, the trust, to have faith, that the risk is worth it, that the work towards Light is the ultimate act of worship, and should be conducted with urgent Purpose, in the pace of sun moon and planets, in the Quiet cadence of the snow.