Doing Time (40 page)

It is 1988. Dozens of flights leave Jamaica or Haiti or Belize or Cuba each day carrying planeloads of reefer. Many airdrop their loads to waiting fast boats off the coast of Florida. A few continue to make a low-level entry into the U.S. to land in Florida, Georgia, or South Carolina. The retail price of grass is up to $150 an ounce. Flocks of Cessna Turbo and Piper Senecas with up to three thousand miles in range carry paste from Bolivia and Peru to Colombia for processing into cocaine powder. Increased government intervention has only resulted in importation of far more of the truly dangerous drugs, in greater use of violence, and in runaway crime associated with drugs.

Few drug pilots make it to retirement. The chances of getting caught are slim. The chances of getting killed, whether in an accident, or by fellow drug gang members, are high indeed. Most drug dealers value pilots a little less than a good plane and little more, just a wee bit more, than a quart of lukewarm spit. Drug traffickers, those organizing smuggling attempts, are similar to every other sort of businessman. They seek minimum risk, minimum cost, and maximum profit. Pilots are viewed as rubbers — to be used and then discarded. Drug pilots are the first to be killed, the first to land in jail, the first to be snitched upon, and the very last to be paid.

The drug lords never advertise the whole truth about smuggling. For the one drug deal that succeeds out of three or four attempts, the pilot gets very well paid indeed. Sometimes. After all, anyone going to all the trouble to set up a drug deal has already broken numerous laws. Why not steal too? Who else is easier to steal from than the pilot? Who is he going to complain to?

Every smuggling strip in the Caribbean has a refuse pile nearby built from the remains of planes that “almost” made it. Every flight is flown overweight, often out of center-of-gravity limits, always right on the edge of the flying envelope, and most with submarginal equipment.

I flew in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970. I remember an area just south of the DMZ called Helicopter Valley. From a vantage point a few thousand feet in the air, you could look in any direction and see the wreckage of dozens of crashed helicopters. The thought of the hundreds of young men killed in battle over a few pockmarked hills no one really wanted anyway still leads to depression. And the ultimate crime in any pilot's mind is breaking an airplane for no reason at all.

Colombia is worse. Jamaica is worse. Bimini Island, some forty-five miles off the coast of Florida, keeps a bulldozer permanently stationed next to the runway just to clear the wrecks of drug flights. The authorities in Bimini created a mountain of the wreckage, which serves as a constant reminder of mortality. It's like walking into someone's home and seeing a casket used as a dinner table.

The winding down of the war in Southeast Asia marked the transition period of drug usage for Americans. As the war shifted from a battle to keep the Viet Cong from invading Hawaii to a holding action, boted and scared American troops began to consume hard drugs as never before. The stage was set for increased drug use, a crime level never seen before in American history, and corruption in government reaching every level. Just as with every prohibition.

The two wars share more similarities than differences. Few take the time to understand how we became entrenched in either. No one even discusses how we might get out of the “war on drugs.” With both we have a history of atrocities, abuse of government power, and needless waste which goes hand in hand with all warfare. With Vietnam we destroyed the cream of one generation, with the “war on drugs” we seem destined to totally destroy generation after generation; leaving the bills for our great-grandchildren to pay.

At the start of any war it seems glorious. Maybe the good guys
do
wear white hats, just like on TV. Eventually, in the mud and gore of the battlefield, all uniforms tend to look alike. Nobody ever won any war. All that ever happens is that one side loses more than the other. Like all wars, this war is fought mainly by our young people: our most precious resource. Perhaps it's time to declare a victory and go home. For our kids' sake.

1989, Dade Work Camp
Florida City, Florida

I.

Hot bothered nights …

street corner hype &

neon signs winking to def jams'

rhythms jumping

the juke joint;

Mad Dog

T-bird

&
greasy fatburger's stench

reeks from sweaty pores

of nickel dime poolhall hustlers

busting nine-balls &

OOPS

upside the heads of
bluesed out screwballs;
where fanged flies on a mission
ignore the

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK

signs

like kamikaze daredevils
free-basing poppies &
practicing the serious art
of hara-kiri;
a 15-story highwire act featuring
odiferous mongrels howling unmolestedly
off key
in schooiless breezeways up 14th St.
sporting flat-top fades on second grade
boys rolling dice
drunks

cursing like Popeye the Sailorman

&
breaking down gats
&
Macs
as a skillful trade;
where cornrow-weaved
cornbread and swine fed
bow-bellied hoochies
double-dutch into labor.

Salvation dies too many deaths
in this palefaceless metro
where first-of-the-month checks
arrive a little
&
too late again
straight shooters

“jingle it, baby .. .”

& face-cracking Wet Willies*
flood Afrika's blood.

II.

The buck stops here
headlining Monday's toilet paper
after rendezvous in pissy gangways
between swingblade strawberries*
doing their best James Cagney
impersonations
&

oversexed

overweight

outraged corporate America

(The Brave?)

ganked

stunted

jacked and permanently dissed

screaming for mercy

911

(it's a joke in our town!) frigid wives

^ł
“Face-cracking Wet Willies” are More cigarettes laced with PCP, which — if “good” — cause a grimace.

^ł
A “strawberry” is a woman who will do anything for a hit of crack, including selling her body. (JLW Jr.)

&
the AIDS hotline;
where storefront philanderers
preach
666
Hail Marys
in atonement for satisfying sins

with an idea when the indoctrination

began

but none of where hell or this alleyway

end

determined to discover brownstones

still

in corner pockets full.

Hot bothered nights …

but unstrange bedfellows.

1994, Potosi Correctional Center
Mineral Point, Missouri

Mr. Srinivasan
instructs us to call him “Babu”
because no one can say
his name —

perverted letters mate
unnaturally, heretic
bloodlines (sex in high school
was like sports: we did our
best and hoped someone
important saw). This country

Absorbs into its blondness
darkness and we began
in darkness —

I wonder how a Hindu
falls in love in Texas.
I wonder where Ann Nguyen went
(who threw her books into my
hands and knew English
enough to say, “You are my
boyfriend,” no matter what
I thought) —

who kissed engulhngly yet was
so tiny her ring sat only
a crown on my fingertip —
I thought I was the most
powerful chain-link boy
in school.

Mr. Srinivasan
was born in Rusk (a tiny
Texas town which still
dreams of the Republic)
and speaks only English.
His drawl is John Wayne or

Ross Perot and once in
Texas cows were sacred;
once in high school a girl
from Vietnam was more
beautiful than America.

1998, Ramsey I Unit, TDCJ-ID
Rosharon, Texas

Who, at fifteen, raped and killed a boy

Rattled in daysleepd reams the taste of space
Filled with www.com and photographs
Of himself caressed by strangers.
The lady says (the lady with the hat
That says, “I am a lady,
₁
') Sam Manzie
Should be chained or photocopied,
Paper clipped to hell Still I think
Of your fingers and think someone
Should hold your hand

(should hold you down:

Did you think he would rise after the weekend
And harrow hel) to retrieve you?) but they
Reappear. They rise and sign autographs, give cred

To James Cameron's Hollywood for their
Annual resurrection

(was there something beautiful

Inside a teenage softskincandywrapper,
Art in smashed pumpkins?) or maybe he was
Much too boylike.you for you? An instant
Eternal brief while (you felt) what about
How I or you trembled (what about
How you or I felt (rell me how we felt

And I know what the world lost. Not one child.
Two. Everyone is dead, and everything
Is lost, and everywhere is hell, and I
Blame wherethehellwaslanyway lor the lady

Who says (yet has never deatbtrembled) we should
Rather kill you than allow someone to hold
Your vacant palm, your curl-fingered hand.

1998, Ramsey I Unit, JDCI ID
Rosharon, Texas

Buildings rise around the waitress
that are of concrete and metal shadow, dark
beyond the silver black of night.

There is a moon.
Lunar mountains
shine on the jukebox

that hangs over my left elbow.
The moon begs a song through newspaper print
after a murder of the previous

night. I insert no spare quarter.
I cannot decide whether I am
like Hamlet; or the city is a parasite.

I note my own insignificance, drag on a cigarette.
The waitress bends over a Spanish omelette,
white American cheese, toast. The plate

clatters like death. I drink coffee
I shake ketchup onto eggs
though I notice the absurdity of my elbow

pumping tomato paste Eucharist.
I know the waitress: curled blond hair,
blue eyes of a Wonder Bread billboard

faded image of an industrial era.
When we were fourteen we kissed in an antiseptic high school corridor.

Anna had an abortion last week.
I exhibit no sign
of how deeply

someone has reached into her soul:
I fear what
I may see, what I may feel.

1997, Massachusetts Correctional Facility-Norfolk
Norfolk, Massachusetts

The highway lures me out of my house
at night, when lead-white faces mock
a black moon.

I get into an Oldsmobile.
Red lights blink,
I push in a tape
and follow the words of a song,
Nothing is real,

I look at my watch.
10:30 P.M. E.S.T.
I slant in my seat
an imitation of a cinema actor,

There is a gun under my front seat.

• • •

I pull into a diner
in the middle of Connecticut.
I order eggs and bacon.
I drink coffee.

The waitress is a cheap actress.
I ignore her.

She may be thinking of her tip
or she may not care.
It doesn't matter.
She is air.

I eat.
I put on a lead-white face.
Do you want anything else?
No.
My life is a cinema cliche.

*  *  *

I finish my second cup of coffee
and I am on the verge
of philosophical observation.

Highway lights pass.
It is 1:00 A.M.
Police follow me.
I am an owl.

Without doubt I am analytical.
I possess an introspective
bent.
I grimace through a lead-white face.

The lights of New York City
flash onto my windshield.
I am in a film
There is a gun under my front seat.

This is the part
where the criminal hero …

1997, Massachusetts Correctional Facility-Norfolk
Norfolk, Massachusetts

for Lee Morgan

Your latest lover sits at my table,
and I snap open my purse
as her lips smudge
the rim of her champagne glass red.
Your gun fills my palm
like something sexual
while all the nights I spent alone
beat black-wings inside my chest.
You raise your trumpet,
the stage lights shimmer like stars
while I watch you from the shadows
in the 5-Spot Cafe, damp hands
balled into trembling fists.
I schemed for days, imagining ways
to win you back, like the time
I met you at our apartment door
naked but for the red rose
in my hair. Once you even cried
on my shoulder, and I glowed inside
until the phone rang and you
rushed out the door, lies falling
from your lips like fruit.
I close my purse.

Halfway through your new arrangement
I sashay past tables with candles
in tinted red glasses, the slip of satin
like a cool hand against my back.
My anger like steam
knocking against pipes as I brush the shoulder
of a man leaning back in his seat,
eyes closed like a lover
waiting to be kissed.

I beg his pardon, step gingerly
past your lover nearer the stage.
Our eyes meet, and for a moment
I almost lose it, remembering you
hard and strong in my arms, black hair
slicked back like a silk cap
tight against your skull. But when
you turn away it's like steam
filling this room so full, the lights
dim, and each riff burns like the iron
you held near my face the night we fought
about a motel room receipt
I found balled up in your pants pocket.
Tonight I ride with you to the last measure,
where the music is pure, where applause
retards to a heartbeat, and
your lover calls out, “play it sweet
for me baby,” and I bring the crowd
to their feet — with a single,
well-aimed shot
I compose my own arrangement
all over the white brick wall.

1989, Sing Sing Correctional Facility
Ossining, New York