april 2001
if “April is the cruelest month / breeding lilacs from despair” as T.S. Eliot claimed, surely March in the Spokane County Jail runs a close second.
I sit here in the semi-gloom of the tank yet slumbering. It is the first of March and two scant weeks from tomorrow I will be delivered, in shackles, waist chain & handcuffs to the Federal Building where Judge William Fremming Neilson will pass down sentence.
there are legal maneuverings afoot, but the infamous bottom line is that I most likely will get 97 months ripped out of my life to appease that ravening beast which cries out for blood. “Feed me!” it demands.
the Lolita now has 4 notches on her gun. two lives have been devastated & the dispositions of the other two cases are not yet known to me. she is…untouchable.
the reality is that it is much like a pack of Nazi’s making recommendations to the Reich High court regarding the filthy Jew Dickens who has so corrupted the morals of this fine young Aryan Serial Predator that she has taken it upon herself to deliver us all up to boxcars heading out for Auchswitz. showers, anyone?
the thing about the report is that we tread on the very thinnest of ice. if we tell the truth, chances are it will go very hard on us, as the truth stands in adamantine opposition to the jackbooted “official version.”
the wrong & the short of it is that they will take a minimum of 8 years from my life & if my bowing & scraping does not satisfy them they can go all the way up to (gulp) 15 years.
I would be 70.
my natural inclination is to denounce these marsupial proceedings at the very top of my lungs, but that would mean an automatic life sentence, practically speaking.
so…I will wait & when the time is ripe, I will write about it.
what presses most heavily just now upon me is fear. phobos, the greeks called it. they were so fascinated by phobos that they created an entire discipline to deal with it, phobosobia & phobologia.
my knowledge of fear & my articulation of it zings about my innards, rechicocheting from one intestinal wall to another.
in short, I am afraid.
I am afraid that I will not have what it takes to enter into this fiery furnace of trial. I am mortally in terror of those lions, that den. my 56 year old knees knock together, applauding this bare bones production of phobos. morituri le salutamis.(sp)
“we who are about to die salute you.”
yet there is this infinitely tiny voice which whispers within, “Peace! My strength is sufficient!”
I may. I weep silent tears in the stillness of the yet slumbering county jail. I tell myself that the truth will eventually triumph.
the temptation to go up to the HOLE in 6 east up to the refrigerated chill where the trouble-makers & the malcontents pace back & forth like muttering madmen wrapped in the most gray & shoddy & frayed of blankets, awaiting ‘justice.’
there I can commune with the vast chambers of the solitary heart. I can slowly regain my perspective in a world gone mad.
I think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. & his holy “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” my gawd, the courage, the stupendous shining moral supremacy! glossalaria of eloquence.
I think of John Brown addressing the court with searing & soaring sentences of liberation.
my fear dances dervish circles about me & my despair I think of
cait
and cathy
and Dalia, LLT, BP, laura
and yea, though I walk through this valley of the shadow of death… I do not do it alone.
there are kick-ass angels of hope & love who wing their way to me through volleys of lies & distortions. semper fi stand up angels of the abyss.
they succor me, lift me up, give me hope.
think of me? remember me?
next column I will write about the sentencing…
aloha
dickens
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