One of the things I’ve learned is change is constant and inevitable. This is not a concept I originated but rather an intrinsic truth that exists in nature and in life. In my personal experience I’ve known people who were once strong who have become weak. I have seen people who were once weak become strong. This has taught me that you cannot freeze people in time and keep them locked in your own perception box, because people, circumstances and situations do change. Who a person is today may not be the same person they will be in the future.
As human beings we go through evolution, and there will be certain things we cannot stop or control. We cannot stop our hair from greying, our skin from wrinkling, or our bones from weakening or from growing old. That is a natural process of life, but evolving isn’t the same thing as personal growth. There are people who reach old age who do not mature or grow because they don’t work at it. When I speak of personal growth. I mean spiritual growth, emotional growth and psychological growth. Growth in these areas requires introspection. It requires taking stock and taking a full inventory of yourself and checking in on yourself daily. I tell guys on death row that being sentenced to the death is not the immediate threat to our existence. No, the immediate threat is to our sanity and the struggle to hold on to it. I know many guys on death row who lost their minds. I know many guys dancing on the brink of insanity and who wind up teetering between a life of clarity and suffer from bouts of deep depression and emotional outbursts with schizophrenic behavior. There might be a link to genetics or being on death row might be the stressor that activates these illnesses but I believe that mental health like physical health has to be actively looked after if improvements are to be expected. I found that a strategy to battle against insanity on death row is creating a purpose in your life and committing to it because having a purpose in your life gives you a reason for being and keeps you physically and emotionally intact. It also creates focus and discipline. For me, not a single day goes by that I don’t strive to grow stronger and to be better. I try to reaffirm this every day. Prison may have taken my physical freedom but it has not taken my mental or spiritual liberty and it never will.
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Transported to another time
I’m seated on the auction block of the courtroom. Curious spectators wait to witness a legal lynching. The court stenographer chronicles every spoken word, History will not forget this day. Waist chains gird my wrists and waists. Lay shackles fastened to my ankles, I’m transported to another time when men hunted men, cruelly enslaving them. Not as prisoners of war but for profits. I am a commodity reduced to invisibility, where batteries of neuro psychologists and psychiatrists are paid thousands of dollars not to testify about my humanity, but about my saneness, my fitness to be tried, to be executed. Every morning the sun rises I chant an African battle hymn. Every evening the sun sets I chant a freedom song. I am stronger today than I was yesterday but not as strong as I will be tomorrow. Victory is mine. County jail buses are vessels containing black, brown and white bodies. I am transported to another time where slave ships have morphed into slave buses. Where slave fort is the new prison fort. Where a whip, a rope, a chain utilized to punish, brutalize and control are updated to tasers, pepper sprays and stun guns. Commanded by men and women who wear green, the color of money, the color of greed. I’m transported to another time when I’m poked and prodded. Flanked by armed guards. Misdirected and directed to kneel, to be still. And when the shackles come unclamped, I am not free to walk out of a prison, but into a cage, another fort where I sleep until I am transported to the plantation , again. Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara) Separation
What are mere months Of separation between You and I Who defy the odds and dared to love Through steel and concrete Barbed wire and razor wire Fences and walls Gun towers and bullshit Why should we lament Over inconsequential things When we shall have an eternity together. Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara) I sing
I sing not for praise or critique. I sing to stay alive, reminding myself singing connects me to God, to a universe, to a spatial reality no confinement can touch, no oppression can wipe out. Singing heals my wounds, softens my heart. Men sing in solitary confinement to free themselves from boredom. I sing to stay human Because I don’t want to go insane So I sing Steve Champion We can no longer communicate.
Those who boast of being more powerful than we have removed the phone so we can no longer speak. They have banned mail so we can no longer write. They have cancelled visiting so we can no longer see each other. They have rendered us incommunicado. But you and I create our own language, our own timetable. We travel without moving. We bend time to our will and conquer distance. We have the gift of remembrance. If I am held incommunicado, You keep me alive by remembering When I say "I love you!" For Them
For them, the ancestors who lay in unmarked graves. Who are part of oceans. Who braved the storms. Who stayed the course. Whose air we breathe. Who consciousness resides in us. Who created cosmologies symbolising life and light. Who shaped destiny so we can walk upright in spirit and soul. Who were initiated by water and fire. Who believed, one day that we would be free, standing as living oracles. Standing as living testaments of their struggles, transmitting their legacies, evoking their names. Because one day we will be ancestors, a part of oceans yearning to be free The inner light
There is a Latent but tangible inner light in everyone but our inner light can be submerged and stifled, making it hard to grow, difficult to shine and not easy to express yourself, if we don’t properly nurture it. When the inner light is supressed it is like being submerged inside a hole and the only way to free yourself is to chisel away at what’s holding you down. What usually holds us down is the identification with our ego, our refusal to let go and our unwillingness to do the hard and messy work by looking at our own short comings, imperfections and demons and then reconciling ourselves with them. I believe, it was the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche who said “Be careful of casting out your demons, lest you cast out the best part of yourself”. We have to learn without shame, judgement or fear to accept and embrace the total package of who we are. Denial of that acknowledgment is a rejection of the self. Our inner light is our counsel; it can be compared to a rudder that helps us to navigate the murky waters of life. Imagine if you were blindfolded and had to negotiate your way through a labyrinth of tunnels. Would you not feel lost, feel a little confused and maybe get frustrated? What about going through life blinded to your inner light and unaware of how to resolve internal conflicts that arise in your consciousness because you are not connected to yourself? The loss of our inner light is the loss of our compass. I can attest to this based on my own experiences. I grew up with people who were talented and had real potential but a disconnect from their inner light, me included, prevented our potential from being realised. Instead we took a path that took us further away from our inner light and therefore ended up on the wrong road. The inner light is our consciousness and an indwelling spirit. It points towards true reality and it is the life force that enables us to will into existence what we invoke and visualise . When we succeed in tapping into our inner light we awaken a natural part of our spiritual identity. We become our true essence. We become healers by healing the wounds in ourselves by healing the wounds in the universe and in the process we help guide humanity to their inner light. The inner light |
Adisa Kamara
Poetry, writing & Lessons in Life from San Quentin death row Archives
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