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Writings
by Anthony Ross
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- Prose - Walking With demons (2005)
- Prose – Routines (2005)
- Personal short story - Stick-up Kid (2003)
- Fictional short story - The Restless Dead (2004)
- The Words Would Not Come (In honor of my of my brother - Stanley Tookie Williams
III
Prose
- Walking With demons (2005)
Twenty three years.
That's how long I've been here. Surrounded by the same colors, the same
sounds, the same faces, the same smells, the same routine. Twenty three
years on death row and I've watched more men commit suicide or lose
their minds than I have seen executed. No matter how I do the math I
realize statistically, either way I could be screwed. So I made an
uneasy alliance with this nocuous environment in order to survive,
straddled between life and death, I decided to walk with my demons and
not give them control. If I did, I would like many others, be a prime
candidate for taking the little pills that make you sleep or stare at
the TV all day, or worse, a guard could find my lifeless body at count
time dangling from the cell bars. The battle for self-possession is a
solitary struggle and inside the isolation of prison the turmoil must be
nullified alone.
Without blinking I
faced my demons head on. There is no other way to do it. Those afraid of
transparency take refuge behind a mask. And what is a mask if not the
inward reflection of the face behind it?
Death row is fertile ground for personal demons, they roost in the ugly
walls and beneath the scalp causing desperate thoughts to claw at the
mind like the elongated fingers of a corpse. The lines of sanity aren't
fluid, they bend and curve like twisted metal, so it is easy to take the
wrong turn and end up in a disfigured reality, a reality where emotional
deformity is the only narrative. I have sensed the dark and paranoid
impulses move inside me, pulsating to a primal instinct. I feel but I
don't act. I hear but I don't answer. I visited the images that
terrorized my waking moments. I went as far as I could to the edge
without plunging into a schizophrenic psychosis and becoming lost in the
dark matter. The key was, not to identify myself with or cling to what I
saw, instead I sought the calm ocean that sits at the epicenter of the
psyche. Getting there wasn't easy. The trip was filled with demons from
my past who tried to trap me in the wounds. They are always there,
always waiting for a chance to surface. They breathe nihilism and
despair. Their incessant voices, like razorblades, make small painful
incisions on my mind that scream blood and death. It is a lesson in
psychological warfare. A lesson in psychological resolution.
I once wore chaos like a second skin. Everything was disposable. But the
navigation of pain and trauma can transcend the rawest of scars,
offering the possibility of a new beginning. I took the journey in my
own way. I'm far too active for sitting meditation, and the traditional
religious avenues don't speak to me. So everything I did became zen,
ritual, prayer, focus. I did not have an epiphany. I arrived at my
center by the sheer force of my will. Spiritual reconstruction wasn't
cathartic for me. It wasn't meant to make me feel better about anything.
It was meant to acquire strength needed to descend into the mental
darkness to face the madness without being consumed by it. I am still
flawed. Still bruised. Except now I know who I am on every level. If I
fail at something, I fail. I don't give a fuck. I do my best and on
certain days I do great. That's all you can ever ask of yourself.
I have this reoccurring dream: I am in the gas chamber strapped in the
chair. My feet are disintegrating, turning into vapor. I could stop it
if I want to, but I don't. I draw the vapors of myself deep into my
lungs. The feeling is beyond euphoric. My legs dissolve next, then arms,
and torso, until finally, I consume myself and exist only as pure
consciousness without any memory of ever having been alive. When I
awaken I have the distinct sensation of having been somewhere I can't
explain. Somewhere minus the spatial boarders that confines us in
corporeal form. I think the dream means that I am my own demon, my own
god, and no matter how much I try to purge elements of myself, I am
whole only when the essential parts, both good and bad, are forever
fused together. I have watched many men set adrift in chronic depression,
imprisoned in a private wasteland. They create the paradox between
facade and interior in a futile attempt to escape from themselves. But
we cannot hide or separate ourselves from the duality of our nature, we
have to bring a vital balance to it. We have to be willing to look at
our demons and not flinch. As long as we're willing to do that, we won't
get lost in the fog.
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Prose
– Routines (2005)
I
wake up
early in the morning. That's when all the noisemakers have fallen asleep.
Guys who incessantly engage in pointless arguments and banal babble:
“If a gorilla and a grizzly had a fight who would win?"
Shit like that. They make quite a racket during the day and well into
the night, shouting over each other at insane decibels as if that would
leapfrog their train wreck of logic to the forefront of the bedlam.
Chaos is their escapism. A way to muffle the real noise in their own
heads. A way to avoid, if only temporarily, having to deal with the
wretched reality of being on death row. It's their routine.
Two hours before dawn it's real quiet. I can think. Get some work done.
I pace back and forth in my cell as an alternative to meditation. It's
much more effective in setting the tone of my mental focus. I have a cup
of coffee. I don't eat breakfast. I stopped years ago when I found part
of a rat in my oatmeal. That screwed up my taste buds for a while. I
wash my face, brush my teeth, rake my fingers over my hair. I stretch
while listening to classical music then exercise for an hour:
callisthenics, push-ups, shadow boxing, running in place, triceps on the
toilet, and curls with a towel slid through the bars. Statistically
speaking, California
death row prisoners are more apt to die from poor health or a drug
overdose than be executed. I think it’s important to stay in shape.
I'm manic about it. I don't miss a day.
After my exercise routine I take a birdbath in the sink if it isn't my
day to walk to the shower, something we get to do three days a week.
It's 6:30am when I look out the window across from my cell. I try to
gage the weather conditions. That's my barometer for rather or not
I’ll go to the yard - on rainy and cold days I stay in. San Quentin
prison sits on a peninsula overlooking the
San Francisco
Bay. During the winter months the prison can get covered in fog. We're put
on lock down. No one gets to go out in the fog.
The windows are behind the gunrail. A guard, cradling a mini-14 assault
rifle and wearing a holstered 38 revolver on his side like a
cowboy,
watches
the tiers. He rarely sits down. He rarely looks out the window. He eats
standing up. For 8 hours he walks the entire length of the gunrail,
about a quarter mile, back and forth. If the alarm goes off he runs up
and down the gunrail looking for the trouble. He doesn't have to give a
warning shot. He could kill without saying a word. That's his routine.
Anytime I leave my cell I am searched. Anything I take with me is
searched. A guard will examine every piece of clothing, every sheet of
paper, and every cavity of my body. I have learn to disassociate myself
from the procedure. I stare straight ahead, right through him, as I lift
up my scrotum. I am numb when I spread my cheeks and cough. I don't feel
anything. Not anger. Not frustration. Not humiliation. There is a cold
primal exactitude coursing through my veins, like a predator waiting for
one precious moment. There are days when the cells are searched. What
meager possessions I own gets tossed about and ramshackled. I don't take
it personal. Afterwards I methodically return everything to its place.
It doesn't matter how long it takes me. I do it. This is prison. This is
the routine.
Alone. That's how I processed the news of over a dozen people dying in
my family. It is the only emotional arch that can stir up feelings of
vulnerability. Each lost makes me acutely aware of my isolation – 24
years. Each death gave me a precise sense of my own physical
impermanence. I live with an intense sense of immediacy. I engage every
day like a man on fire. From a single visit I can absorb a lifetime. In
a single letter I could, in vivid detail, translate all the passion of
an imprisoned man's heart. I
have
become stoic. Knowing anytime I call home there could be another death.
There was. My only blood brother died in a foreign country where he
didn't even speak the language. He was alone. With his thoughts. His
ghost. His regrets. I
have
watched my hair turn gray. Watched my youth dissolve with the
pendulum-like swing of each day. Fear does not keep me company. I am
ready to meet my fate. Birth. Decay. Death. This is life's routine.
State level appeal. Denied. Death sentence upheld. Incompetent attorneys.
Same old story. For 24 years I
have
moved through the judicial maze like digested food slowly making its way
to the final solution. I was the 107 person to joined the exclusive
group referred to as 'Dead Men'. I may leave them soon. As the number
climbs towards 700 each face brings with it a reflection of what is
wrong with the system. Each
face
is wrought with an impression of what is wrong in society. But what I am
most struck by, is the sharp contrast between race, class, who gets
death, and how it is all so accepted as routine.
I have long ago come to terms with the possibility of dying here. I'm
not overly philosophical about it. If it happens I will have the luxury
of knowing exactly when, where, and how I will die. No surprises. This
insight has had an affect on me.
But my self-transformation is of my own making. I have not
had a personal experience with any god. My transcendental experience
came the moment I realized that the last routine of my life may occur in
this sequence:
Four
guards in black fatigues will escort me from the death cell to the
chamber. A spiritual advisor, if I want one, can accompany me. Once I'm
in what use to be the gas chamber the guards strap me onto a gurney. The
executioner locates a vein and sticks in an IV. When he's finished he'll
look at the warden for a signal at which point the warden will ask me if
I have any last words. Since I'm not big on monologue I’ll shake my
head no. The warden then nods to the executioner who releases 5 grams
of sodium pentathol via a 60cc syringe into my bloodstream. In no more
than 60 seconds this knocks me out cold. The IV is then flushed with
saline and 50cc of pancuronium bromide is sent through the line. This
drug will paralyze every single muscle in my body except for the heart.
My breathing slows as the muscles controlling the rib cage and diaphragm
began to freeze up. The IV is again flushed with saline and the final
poisonous chemical, 50cc of potassium chloride, is pumped into my body.
This blocks the electrical impulses to the heart, stopping it from
beating. The results - my lungs are imploding, my organs are writhing,
and my brain is gasping for oxygen. The outward appearance will look
uneventful, but internally, all hell is breaking loose. Death comes in
less than 15 minutes. There will be nothing peaceful about it. The
warden will announce the time of my demise. But I tell you now, don't
dare accept the claim that my murder was routine.
top
Personal
short story - Stick-up Kid (2003)
I
commit my
first robbery at age thirteen. A Motel frequented by prostitutes and
tricks. I needed money for school clothes, plus, it's my graduation from
burglaries.
That
night I
dreamed
about my father for the first and last time: I'm a kid sitting in a
getaway car with the engine idling. It's dark. The keys dangling from
the ignition resonate like a tiny windchime. Bugs
bump against
a dim neon sign above the entrance to the liquor store. Through the
store's window I see my father: black trench coat, black fedora angled
down on his face, standing at the counter pointing a pistol at the clerk,
an old man whose skin looks like volcanic ash. The old man's eyes bulge
from their sockets when the barrel gets shoved into his forehead. He
empties the cash register without looking, handing my father the
crumbled bills. I see the whole scene vividly from the car. I alternate
between the store and scanning the sidewalk for passer-bys. I'm my
father's look-out. He would beat me back into my mother's womb if I let
someone sneak up on him. This is his threat. He always says crazy shit
like that and I have no way of knowing if he could, but he's my father
so I think he can.
Stuffing
bills into his pocket he swivels his gaze right at me and grins like a
vampire. It scores the hell out
of me. I watch
him
whack the old man upside the head with the pistol for no reason. I wince.
I been there. In the car he tosses me the gun. I
tuck
it inside my pants because, "Cops don't search little kids."
He
tells me. He flings his head back and laughs madly. The
suddenness
of it, not to mention it being completely out of place,
convinces
me my father is a lunatic. I put my hand on the door
handle.
Reading my mind he presses a button, the lock slams down.
Grabbing
the back of my neck he scowls. "Where you going, sonny?
You're
gonna be just like me." He lets the words drag slowly as if
it
is a thing I’ll become. Then starts laughing again, it's at
that
moment I wake up.
I
lie in bed thinking about the dream, wondering about a man I
had
never seen. A man I wouldn't recognize if he stood in front of
me.
A man who had no more do to with my
life
other than supplying
a
chromosome. The only
details I
knew about him was he was a
criminal
and had tried to stabbed my
mother
to death in a fit of
jealous
rage. Other then that he existed only as a vague and
abstract
image for which I had no desire to investigate. There was
no
yearning in
my bones
for his paternal presence. No wish of him
playing
catch with me. And no deep desire to seek him out for a
face-to-face.
I didn't need him. I learned about cars by
stealing
them.
Mastered fighting by having at least two a week.
Masturbation
was my sex education, and what I didn’t know the
streets
would teach me.
I
sat up in bed, reached under the mattress, fingered the cool
steal of the gun. It brought back images of the night before. For a
moment I wondered: what if the lady hadn't open the cash register? What
if she had a gun in there? What if I had to shoot her? But it had all
went like clockwork -
still,
the little voice in my head asked, what if? Fuck you, I tell it.
Climbing
out of bed I lock my door, light a smoke, and start counting the loot,
It's a lot. The adrenalin comes back, the feeling is scary but euphoric.
I feel on top of the world, invincible. I play with all the bills as if
they're a pile of leaves. I’m thinking: I’ll do it one, maybe two
more times then quit. But the bills feels good in my hand, about as good
as the gun feels. I start laughing, a little at first, then I'm cracking
up. I have no idea what's so fucking funny but I can't stop myself. I'm
rolling on the bed holding my gut, laughing like a madman. I forget all
about my father.
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Fictional
short story - The Restless Dead (2004)
Eldridge was executed at midnight just after the new moon. A foggy mildew mowed over the prison consuming it inch by inch. It was silent. Damp. Dozens of protestors held hands and prayed outside the gates. Eldridge never knew they were there, nor would he have cared. The guards who escorted him to the gas chamber would later comment how a peculiar humidity wafted from him like an open furnace but his body leaked not a single drop of perspiration.
"His skin was glossy, like candle wax. It sure was creepy." One of the guards told us.
His last meal was light: Two acacia leaves, the last page of his favorite book 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', and a two ounce dixi-cup of rainwater. At the exact moment Eldridge was getting himself strapped into the death seat I sat on my bunk eating noodles and saltines not feeling sorry for him at all.
“Now don't you go feelin' sorry for me. Folk like us crossover all the time." He told me with a sly grin on his face.
Lately I haven't been feeling anything. My insides are like cold metal. My own thoughts harass and push me around.
"It's just jitters. Executions make everyone edgy." This is what my lawyer Arty Brightmen tells me between mouthfuls of vending machine bagel and cream cheese as we sit huddled in the visiting room two days before Eldridge sucks cyanide like he was taking his first breath.
He ain't got a clue, not a fucking clue. The voice, sharp as razorblades, whispers to me.
Eldridge wanted to die. He fired his attorney, dropped his appeal, gave away his few possessions, and waited. Said he would commit suicide if there weren't a chance of him failing, or some guard seeing him dangling from his belt and pressing the alarm.
“I read about people being saved in the nic-of-time. I don't want that: I don't want to regain consciousness, a doctor telling me, 'A few minutes more and you'd been a goner,' That has got to be the shittest deal could happen to a person. I'm playing it safe, gas is reliable. Plus, no one comes back from an execution."
I nod my head and write on my note pad: Call it 'subversive suicide'. He looks at my words and laughs.
Yeah, let 'em do the very thing they think I don't want. That's genius."
I scribble on my pad again: Suicide isn't narcissistic, you know. It's filled with existential merit.
He reads my words and slaps my back.
"Got that right." He says. And that was the last time I saw him.
After Eldridge’s execution, in the days that immediately followed, I began making small precision cuts on the inside of my forearm just to feel. The skin looks alive when it swells and bleeds. There's a preternatural beauty about it that's indescribably sad and
peaceful.
Sure feels nice though. The voice, smooth as lacquer, coos.
At night I masturbate. I pull and squeeze the fat muscle until it coughs up the milky mucus and collapse in on itself. I wait. Patiently. Then do it again. Conjuring up overripe memories that lie in disarray. It's not the same. The thematic connections are long gone. There's nothing to hold on to. The act is only a metaphor now.
In a dream a menagerie of insects spill from my mouth as a scream lodges in my throat like a plump fist.
"You won’t be needing this." The voice says. Dirty fingers wrap around my tongue and rip it out. It makes a squishy thud when it hits the ground next to my feet. It sounds like musical notes, the way the blood drips on the tips of my shoes.
It's an old dream. One that never tires of chasing me. I squat in the corner of my dark cell, restless, flawed. I raise my hand and touch the fleshy nub inside my mouth. I can no longer remember when I cut it out, maybe when I was ten, maybe younger.
I am trapped in a lethal alliance with myself, unable to expel the horrific images of my despair. How I long for the warm solitary darkness. I can't mend the cuts, they're too deep, and heirlooms are meant to remain with us forever. Everyday I battle between self-possession and pharmaceutical inefficacy, which only feeds the turmoil within. It'll win by default when I nullify my facade of normalcy and leave a swarm of question marks in the empty space. I'm tired and will take the explanations with me.
"You need someone to talk to," Arty tells me. We're in the visiting room again. "You're in your head too much. I’ll get you fixed up on one of those pen-pal
websites."
I jot on my pad: The only thing cerebral prisoners need is, a way out.
Arty reads it. Slumps his shoulders and says, "I'm worried about you, that's all."
I'm lying on the floor writing, the ink keeps smearing my pad. It oozes onto the floor and morphs into animals who disappear in the cracks. I rub my eyes and gaze transfixed at the wide vermilion smile on my wrists.
I smile serenely back.
This time I'm not dreaming.
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The Words Would Not Come
(In honor of my of my brother)
Stanley Tookie Williams III
=1953-2005=
A hundred times I tried to write this. But, the words would not come. Poems froze in my head long before they could reach the paper. And prose solidified in my throat like burning lava at the ocean’s edge. My soul was torn and, it took me a moment to catch my wind.
I write this from the very place comrade George Jackson saw blood in his eyes. The very hell where Tookie and I spent years side by side fighting, struggling, and educating ourselves. The place where we found our philosopher’s stone and went from blue rage to black redemption… and never looked back.
I sat here, in this place – San Quentin’s adjustment center – on December, 13th, 2005. I sat in the dark imagining warbirds filling the sky, and me, chanting and African Battle hymn and speaking in Swahili to my brother.
But, the words would not come.
I heard the helicopters flying over the prison as their churning blades cut through the night air, and like hungry vultures they circled waiting for the end. I saw the look of apprehension on the guard’s face as he peered into my cell trying to gage my emotions. But my eyes were empty as I intensely concentrated on pushing my mind forward… forward… forward, over the prison walls and amongst the sea of people who stood vigil outside the gates. Their hope. Their resolve. Their love. Made visible and given texture by the sheer force of their gathering. With all my might I summoned whatever trace of telepathy, esp, or psychic power I possessed. I wanted to tell each and every one of them, thank you… thank you.
But, the words would not come.
At 12.36AM I felt something seep out of me. Something that existed above the conscious where Tookie and I could communicate on – and I knew a part of me was gone forever. I felt the weight of my brother’s huge arm around my shoulder the way I always felt it whenever we walked countless miles around the yard. I saw his handsome face and remembered when his beard was jet black – remembered how he never cursed, not once – remembered the moment we became writers, him saying, “This changes everything.”
And it did: Author. Poet. Historian. Mathematician. Philosopher. Wordsmith. Mentor. Nobel nominee. And messenger of peace.
He was right. Everything changed.
Together, Tookie and I learned the true meaning of being warriors – of being men. We were always under siege, always targets. Resistance became our dreamcatcher amid this walking nightmare, and the distance we have traveled on this journey can not be calculated in years, because some epics exist outside of time, thus timeless they become. And we have always undertood that the struggle does not cease with breath nor shatters with lost, but gains strength as the message of freedom is transformed into the living fire within each heart that fights for change.
I did not grieve for my brother, nor did I say goodbye. For I am he – he is me, and our brotherhood was never temporal, so…
The words would not come.
By
Anthony Ross
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