Carry on My Wayward Friend
Featuring “Seasons are the Reasons” and “Requiem of A Quick Wit” by James Terry
James Terry, image by Héctor Muñoz-Guzmán
James Terry is a creative writer and passionate freedom fighter currently incarcerated in Wisconsin for a crime he did not commit. He is now 56 years old and has spent 18 out of his 19 years in prison in solitary confinement. James’ favorite things include enchiladas, blueberry cheesecake, purple (the color), and Don Quixote.
In the two pieces below, James offers us a steel, wayward directive. While they play with form in different ways, these pieces center a meeting point of constitution, love letter to the planet, poetry, homage to the trail blazers, and plea for justice.
The recurring image of the fool in James’ pieces reminds me of the June Jordan poem resolution #1,003:
I will love who loves me
I will love as much as I am loved
I will hate who hates me
I will feel nothing for everyone oblivious to me
I will stay indifferent to indifference
I will live hostile to hostility
I will make myself a passionate and eager lover
In response to passionate and eager love
I will be nobody's fool
Could this be an epigraph to James’ words? Or the other way around? As James writes, the “cross burning Department of Correction officials in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin have fooled no one.” To write, in the revolutionary sense of the term, is to clarify truth, again and again; to pave the way for liberatory relationships and politics outside and against the realm of the state liars, cowards, and fools. In James’ words, from “birth until eternity our souls are entwined unless knives of calamity come between us.”
James’ full story, as well as ways to support him in re-opening his case, can be found here. The GoFundMe for the legal funds to overturn his wrongful conviction is here.
To no more fools, to living hostile to hostility, to the seasons of change.
—Anjali
Seasons are the Reasons
The seasons have become the reasons, the steel of my constitution. Summer’s the crest of the sparrows tattooed across my chest; Winter’s the frost that emboldens my heart from the very start; Spring from out this cell as I YELL as if in a well; and Fall y’all is my refusal once you’ve answered this call.
For this ink pens my life blood. Entrapped within this fortress of solitude, I wish that you may receive my long-lost forlorn-led words of wisdom. The stark white paint, rank, dank & that stinks! Cement, concrete, and metal doors have become chores. Inmates screaming—correctional officers (paid, on the job) daydreaming—while third shift earnings pay for sleeping.
This prison is a pigsty—the administration’s a goat’s head and Lucifer’s appeased. Satanic worshipping, Ouija board playing , séance attending, and cross burning Department of Correction officials in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin have fooled no one. Gathering valuable humans, treating us as disposable—like a trash heap we get lit up and turned out. Violence begets violence, but our spiritual war rages on against the state’s devils!
I feel the isolation of decades of loneliness, abandonment, and tearstained pillows that wrenches at my very soul. Crying out Dear Momma! Pillars of salt are at stake here. Never turn back to witness the abhorrent destruction of a cathedral of humans scattered like marble statues in the potters’ graves; but carry on my wayward friend has long been the battle cry of those who came before me, blazing the trail of the prisoner.
Incarcerated because of the judiciary's insensitive and illogical attempt to rationalize the false narrative of compromise. How many have pled guilty to avoid cruel and unusually harsh lengthy sentences? Contemplating scenario after sophisticated scenario, prosecutorial misconduct is par for the course, legislative statutory traps to oppress neighborhoods of color and judicial hijinks to hoodwink the very people the police claim to serve and protect. Friend, psychologically they believe they’ve made fools of all of us.
Are you telling me that the color of your skin doesn’t come into play, or there’s no double standard in America , when 30,000 Trump supporters stormed The U.S. Capitol and on scene there’s not thousands of arrests? I am anti-penal system; I am for the abolition of prisons.
These gray hairs don’t alarm me nor does my dark skin offend me. It’s with Black Pride! that I rise in the mornings, break my fast, wash my face, brush my teeth, say my prayer, stomp my feet, plan my attack, write you this letter, wait for your response, nourish my body, lift my weights, flex my brain and remain the same.
Even in the abyss of this prison cell, I remain a humble servant to humanity—a custodian to this planet. Go green–reduce your carbon footprint. Then go give a stranger some unconditional love.
Seasons of change are upon us.
Requiem of A Quick Wit
Sweetheart: If you cook the way you walk,
I would eat your burnt rice
For what is a Jester without a court? But a fool,
without an audience,
from birth until eternity our souls are entwined
unless knives of calamity come between us,
dear friend of mine
Breonna Taylor! Say her name!
Trayvon Martin would feel the same,
your outbursts betray this heart
of wine, intoxicated; never muted,
and so divine,
you’re cherished
until the end of time
Whenever speech has alluded me,
wherefore art thou my silvery tongue when I needed thee?
I Can't Breathe!
George Floyd’s a martyr,
I say with ease on one knee,
come answer this plea
And come before me I beckon,
curing writer’s block I reckon,
show oneself as a cornucopia of wealth
then true flowers of language will return
in stealth
Hallelujah for this vision,
I go forth with this mission,
from the heights of heather,
Jacob Blake!
rise up for their pleasure and as proud peacocks feather
friend, remain fair weather
for as sure as I talk,
suffice it to say