Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Breaking Failure's Grip




Hotep,

 Some time ago, I was talking to my son while he was preparing my grandson for football practice.  The sound of his fatherhood continues to instill a great sense of pride within my being.  

At the same time, when I hear his fatherly instructions, and my grandson’s obedient responses, I become overwhelmed by the reality of my political handicap.

Capital punishment and mass incarceration cripples a free society with the psychological effects of knowing one poor decision can lead to spending the rest of your life living in captivity.  Everyone you know and love continues to thrive – making new memories day after day, while your eyes and ears absorb the same walls and routines of day-to-day life inside of the box.

Once the gates close and the steel doors are locked, failure eats away at any aspirations to be more than your circumstance, similar to a terminal illness deteriorating its host.  There are no light switches, thermostats or windows for me to control.  Prison extracts the minutest forms of independence – making success seem like a distant pipe dream.

Prison rarely grants the opportunity to unleash success from the shackled grips of failure.  As a first time offender, I long for the second chance to show that the most extreme failures can entail progression.  Rehabilitation for death row prisoners in North Carolina is unsettling; to a society who trusts their political leaders’ core values are what fuels the potent engine of justice.

These same leaders ignite their megaphones and political platforms with the malarkey of capital punishment being a justifiable deterrent to crime: the need to kill, in order to prevent murder.  They will convince their constituents that it is more suitable to build more prisons than schools.  Underpaying schoolteachers while cops get a pass for the escalation of black death rates. 

If our kids are not being taught properly; if they’re not staying in school, they are destined to join the ever-growing population of mass incarceration.  Some will even meet the demise of a poisonous cocktail that the twisted political leaders will promulgate as humane.

Looking at the free-world from a slit five inches high, I can clearly see the generations of my son and grandson, resisting defeat while in the sights of capitalists eager to fill up their prison spaces.  Death row prisoners, on the other hand, know the disappointment of defeat, yet some have proven rehabilitation through prison programs like: social psychology, creative writing, journalism, and the chess club.

In most cases, success is stimulated by failure.  The best way to understand success is to know that it is subjective.  The successes of Barack Obama, Michael Jordan and Jay-Z are templates of what can be accomplished when your work ethic speaks louder than your proclamations. 

In life, we all fail to some degree.  As my grandson takes the field for his Pop Warner Football Team, I am inclined to see that he can drop a pass, and then come back to the huddle for the very next play.  If he stumbles before making a tackle he can still recover to make a game-winning play.

While, some prisoners take their place in the stadium of outside competition, winning through our diligence to change the game, others may choose to sit in the parking lot, listening to the game on the radio.  To fail and end up in prison could mean the end of your opportunities to fail again.


Copyright © 2016 by Leroy Elwood Mann

Sunday, March 18, 2018

My Son



Hotep,

I was four years old the last time I heard my dad’s voice.  The distinct gruffness of his vocals would be no more.  But, through my dreams, I could still hear him, “That’s my Lil’ Mann right there.  C’mere Lil’ Mann, give Daddy a kiss boaw.”

As I grew older his voice acted as my conscience, I guess that had everything to do with Moms always reminding me how disappointed my dad would have been, whenever I screwed up.

I often wonder, what type of dreams did My Son have as a child.  Was my voice a part of those dreams?  I wondered if he could hear my pride, as he recited two of my favorite songs – over the phone – when he was barely three:

“Give me the microphone first, so I can burst like a bubble,
 Compton and Long Beach together now you know you in trouble.
Ain’t nothing but a G thang baby.”

“Just waking up in the morning, gotta thank God. 
I don’t know, but today seems kind of odd.
No barking from the dog, no smog, and
Mama cooked the breakfast with no hog.”

I wondered if his dreams relayed my pain when I stared into his familiar brown eyes, through a stained Plexiglas partition, which forbade me from squeezing a nose that once belonged to me.

If My Son saw me in his dreams, was I the monster who neglected him, or the troubled father who longed for his only son’s love?

My Son!, the greatest gift that God has given to me.  My many years of being away have given me so much to say.  Although I wonder, what is appropriate to ask, when I’ve been absent for so long?

            ‘How old were you when you lost your virginity?
            And did you use a condom?
            When did you have your first drink?
            Is it something you’ve come to regret?

As a father, I would ask these questions out of concern for my son.  As a fellow Mann, I simply want to swap war stories.  Despite the distance between us, My Son is every bit of me…a much better me.  The evolution of a Mann is My Son.

The only one.
One Mann who makes me a grand, and at the same time, I’m becoming his biggest fan.

There is nothing I could do that would instill a greater sense of pride, than when I was chosen to be one half of making you.

My gift to you?

It is a voice that is far from being an adlib in your dreams.  A voice that will forewarn you of mistakes already made, that do not need to happen again.  Feel me?

A voice that can say, ‘I love you, son’ today, then live to say it again tomorrow and the day after.

I never forget a voice. This is me assuring that My Son will never forget mine.

Much Love,
Dad

Copyright© 2017 by Leroy Elwood Mann