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| Kenneth Gray |
Kenneth Gray 315302,
RCI, PO Box 900; Sturtevant, WI 53177
RCI, PO Box 900; Sturtevant, WI 53177
Confined Reflection
I am someone you never knew existed. How is that so, you question? Well, because I've been raised in a place that's the equivalent to Hades, the place where all the 'bad' people get sent to... yep, that place. How did I come about to be raise there? No, not because I was birthed badly, nor, my surroundings were such, though, it was. There are many who've come from far worse situations and made good. So, I will not provide some sort of excuse as to why I went from the bowels of the Ghetto, so young, to be ingested in the bowels of the beast - that's labeled "The System". Really, it's all the same, the ghetto, prison system... The dimensions are definitely the same. One form of oppression, to another, just different geography.
For most part, based upon research of self, and life; it's been
concluded that my journey has profoundly orchestrated a millennium before my
birth by those who knew I would exist, or at least someone like me. See, I've
always been quite the loner, I guess that’s why Loneliness felt I am her 'life
partner'. And, well, you know when you marry a person; it's like marrying into
the whole family; and all of the dysfunctionality that comes with it.
It's still difficult to battle Depression with wild turkeys and the
snow-covered trees just beyond the electrified fence of this "secure
minimum", truly an oxymoronic title for one of 30+ Wisconsin's prisons.
Bitterness leans against the wall scoping me in this dock area in the Restrictive
Housing Unit - the Hole or Segregation, folding outta shape and over used
underwear. No, I'm not a resident as I have been for many times in these past
23-years, it's where I'm employed.., doing menial work; washing the inmate's
seg. Clothing, preparing meal-trays before the officers (COs) deliver them to
the residents through slots in a door. Something that I've begrudgingly had to
grow accustom to during this imprisonment that begun when I was the tender age
of 14-years old- For 1st degree homicide; stemming from "a naïve kid who
pulled out a gun and took a man's life because he told him to go home," as
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper reported it.
I've grown up behind barbed-wired walls and towers, confined to cells
equipped bathrooms amenities with showers; no end in sight. Truly, I have been
raised in captivity; there are times when the prison's administration allows
the Public a 'walk-through', as though we are an exhibit. It's almost a kinship
'I feel, when I ponder back on those times when we ventured class field-trips
to the County Zoo, or my mom took my little cousins and me to the Circus. I can
now understand, why those lions, tigers and bears... paced back and forth, so
effortlessly, the way I remember them. If I could speak animal, I know exactly
what were their thoughts and intentions were. But, I'm no Solomon, when I use
to pray, it was for his 'wisdom, knowledge and understanding', I humbly beg the
Grand Architect. Some told me how they prayed for the health and safety of
their family and friends... I possessed neither.
At 14-years old waived into Adult Criminal Court, there sentenced to
serve 30-years in the State Prison System. But,I was too young to enter the
said Prison System, to Ethan Allen
School for Boys until my sweet 16th birthday
I was transferred. There, I was kept in their segregation unit under
Administrative Confinement (AC), because by law, I was an 'adult', yet not
"adult enough" to go to an adult prison... the irony. This pretty
much conditioned me for what I was about to experience.
