Howard Guidry Justice Committee

 

July, 2007....... (to Regina)

... I put some more thought to what you said about being gifted, and
how you thought I was gifted in many things. At the end of the day I
don't think i am a gifted artist or poet/writer. I think my gift is my
ability to learn quickly; to break things down into the smallest
components and see them for what they really are. As far back as i can
remember I've always liked taking things apart and looking at all the
pieces. It could be a motorcycle carberator or a young rosebud, I've
always felt that urge to learn the mechanics of things. When I write
poetry I'm really just breaking down whatever the subject is, then
expressing each part the way I see it/fel it. My art process is a
little different but the basic urge remains the same. My approach to
people is like that too. I never give much consideration to other
people's opinions of individuals I meet for the first time. A person
is usually composed of a multitude of influences, experiences, and
opinions he's accumulated through life that has molded him into the
person he is... I look at all components of a person (at least those
that are revealed to me) and share my components before deciding my
relationship with that person. I inherited this gift from my father...



June, 2007 (to Regina)

... I've been feeling funny all day.Like the walls are closing in on
me. Maybe it's the heat. The air conditioning has been broken for at
least three days. Man !!! It's hot like fighting chickens in here!
Yeah, I think it's the heat, or maybe it's that in the back of my mind
i know that my brother Lionel will be executed tomorrow. He decided
not to file a last minute appeal so barring an intervention from God
he'll die.
Lionel and I aren't real good friends. In fact , more times than often
we tended to get on each other's nerves. The thing is , in a lot of
instances, with his pending execution I've become aware of his place
in my life. We've been doing time together since I got here. We've
watched each other grow up inside of these walls. Once, we organized
and participated in a system wide hunder strike together. We've
argued, debated; we've stood up for each other. But the thing is
Lionel and I never could agree on anything and to be honest I can' t
even say that we liked each other. Yet, with his pending date I
realize how very much he's contributed to my life and how much his
constant challenges of my ideals and opinions really mean to me.
Life in all, its grand aspect is beyond beauty. ...

March 4, 2007: (to Liz)

Heard you're hot as a dragon fart with the state of Texas. Just once,
just when you'd allow yourself to contemplate this redneck state doing
the civilized thing, they rear back with that pointed toe and kick you
square between the asscheeks. I'm sitting here in this blood muddy
murder motel trying to get past my own anger long enough to consider
my next move. I feel like a used up circus elephant after a long day
of entertaining. I just want to snap at these smiling m'fers. For a
split of a split second I almost gave up, Ma. The prospect of several
more years on Death Row is breathtaking. I'm OK though. My situation
is far better than it as the first time I was appealing the case.
After I put everything in perspective and was able to concentrate I
realized how thoroughly fucked up my trial was. It's coming back on
appeal, Liz. It's just a matter of how long it's going to take.

April Story:

       Brotha Buck is a strong and spiritually focused brotha who has
mentored many of the young men here. He's always smiling and carrying
the weight the heavier souls around us. This morning, he was in the
dayroom, a few feet from the cage of my good friend, Muenda. I holla'd
down to Brotha Buck from my cage on two row for him to ask Muenda to
send me his book catalogue.
       "Brotha Tee!" Brotha Buck holla'd out to Muenda using his nickname,
"Brotha LD wants to know if its alright if he borrows your book
catalogue?"
       Brotha Buck is so polite and never cusses. A moment later, Muenda
comes to the bears because I hear him tell Brotha Buck to step to the
bars so he could tell him something. Brotha Buck steps out of my
peripheral and right into Muenda's bullshit. I step away from the door
to fix a cup of coffee and prepare for whatever's coming.
       "Brotha LD!" Brotha Buck calls out in a serious yet nervous tone.
       "S'up Brotha Buck?" I ask as I step to the door, trying to suppress a smile.
       "Brotha Tee said until you pay him the money you own him he doesn't
eff with you."
       "How much I owe him?"
       "How much he owe you Brotha Tee?" Brotha Buck swivels toward Muenda.
       Muenda holds up some fingers I can't see. Brotha Buck's head swivels
back. His eyes watch the floor between us.
       "Brotha LD I really don't want to get in ya'lls business."
       I tell him it's nothing, go ahead, spit it out.
       "Thirty five dollars."
       "Thirty five dollars!!!" I yell out, "Man, hell fuck naw! Fuck Tee! I
don't owe—"
       "—Calm down Brotha LD," Brotha Buck hurries to defuse the situation.
Brotha Buck has known me for 10 years. He remembers my temper as a
younger man.
       "Don't cuss over Brotha Tee like that, it's just a big misunderstanding."
       Muenda barks, "Ain't no misunderstanding, that babyshit colored
mufacka owe me thirty five and I'm gon put my foot in his ass if he
don't pay!"
       "Fuck you!"
       "Fuck YOU!"
       A moment passes. Brotha Buck is pacing around the dayroom, arms
folded in full distress.
       "Brotha Buck ask that fool what I owe him for."
       He asks.
       "I'm only gon say this one time," Muenda says slowly.
       "LD been owing me thirty five cents since last year when I—"
       "Thirty five cents?!" Brotha Buck yells,  "Bruh, you trippin over a
punk ass thirty five cents?!"
       Got him!
       Muenda is probably the only person in the world that could make
Brotha Buck curse. We laugh hysterically. Brotha Buck has to laugh
despite himself.
       I love these crazy fools, man.

May 15th, 2007 (to Liz)

       Congratulations on graudating!! I'm sure you're just the cutest in
your kindergarten sized cap and gown and flip flops! :o)
       Hey! You're a white woman with a degree yo!!! Dude, you could
penetrate and infiltrate any exclusive country club in the European
world. You could drive a tractor-trailer full of immigrants clear
across the country without the slightest fear of being arrested. (No
degree required, actually.) Man! A white woman with a degree! The
possibilities are endless!

May 20, 2007 (to Liz)

       I often marvel at the multiple facets and tiers of hatred that
permeate both my mental and physical space. They really hate us, Liz.
They hate you because as an educated white woman you're supposed to
have the sense to steer clear of an aggravated niggaboy in prison.
They hate you because you have the audacity to suggest the united
states government conspires to cripple and/or imprison the
African-American male population. Goddamn you, Liz Lyon, for giving a
shit whether #999226 is innocent. Who asked you? Make yourself a
millionaire Republican and let us worry about the goddamed
big-dicked-out-of-control nigraz, Missy. Sorry, sis, the spirit of
William Rehnquist took over there for a moment. It's not merely about
race, though.
       (In Kentucky over 100% of the inmates in 1996 were on Death Row for
allegedly killing white victims. None were there for the murder of
Black victims. In Philly, Black jurors in capital cases were 4x as
often to be struck than others. Up until 2000, in the entire history
of the united states, only 38 whites have been executed for murdering
Black people.) Not about race at all.
       Seriously, the one inch shatter-proof glass preventing me from
touching you is hate. The motivation and inspiration behind the
psychologist and sociologist that laid the blueprint for these
soul-breaking supermaximum units that cage us is hate. The lift your
nuts, open your mouth, move your tongue, pull your lip, run your
fingers through your hair, turn around, squat, cough, lift your feet,
put your clothes on daily is hate.
       I wake up to hate. It comes in the form of a loud knock or a "Guidry,
you alive in there? Wiggle your feet if you're alive." It comes each
morning in a confederate uniform to awake the slave quarters and
hatred is as thick as Agent Orange in this mufucka! Oooooooom. Breathe
in goodness, breathe out bullshit. Hhhhhhhh.

                       "phone call home from houston summer"

on the phone, my mother asks me: what is it like when you visit him?
what she means is: can that monster harm my baby girl? i tell her that
her concern for my well being and safety in this particular instance
falls under the category of "things that i am fighting against,"
cross-referencing racism with ignorance and learned fear. she says,
well, okay, but didn't he try to escape? i ask, did jews try to escape
auschwitz and birkenau and dachau and egypt--she interrupts me to ask,
but didn't he take a guard hostage? i ask, what is the difference
between a riot and a rebellion? i ask, how do you speak up when no one
will listen? i ask, how else do men who are told they are animals
undeserving of human rights tell the outside world that they are
sentient and that they are hurt and that they want justice and
that--and she interrupts me to say, well, okay, but are you happy
there? did you make the right decision to go to houston? i pause and i
wish she was buddhist so that i could just tell her that my karma took
me here, that my past lives are tied to all of this continuing hate
and injustice and fear and revolutionary angry desire for everyone to
be the same percentage homo sapien. i say, mom, happy is an empty
word. but i need to be here. i couldn't be anywhere else. before i can
quote rabbi hillel and ask, "if not now, when?" and  "if not us,
who?", my father comes on the line. i can hear him smiling under his
big jewish nose as perfunctory greetings flow into the receiver and
the phrase "i love you"  is caught in his throat. he asks me about
what i'm doing, whether i've been to any museums, and how the andrea
yates case is going. a doctor who doesn't believe in jesus, it is
non-threatening to worry about this chemically imbalanced white
christian woman trapped by the holy trinity of her patriarch-headed
family, god, and the state. i tell him about howard instead. about
poetry. and two white cops who used lies and racial slurs and uniforms
bought with his own mother's money to steal him away from her for more
than a decade. i say the word 'activism' and he, the son of a german
doctor who just missed the nazis and a russian from the shtetl who
died missing the communists, he asks me about efficacy and about
getting things done. and i wish he was a poet instead of a doctor, so
that he could see the reflections of houston in the blue
suburban-taught eyes of his daughter. and i wish that he was a daoist
who understood the deepness of taught white supremacy so that he would
know that the way is the goal and that the most important struggle i
could face is with my own self. but i'm never as well-spoken with my
parents as i am with myself, or maybe they just don't listen to my
words as carefully as i say them. in their ears, jewish is louder than
white, liberal is louder than american, and "we're not as rich as the
ceos" is always louder than "we're richer than the masses." so when i
tell my parents about howard, they are interested in the injustice.
they would sign a petition for his release. they read his poetry when
i email it to them. but after my mother and i exchange i love yous and
my father coughs a goodbye, we hang up, and my mother goes back to her
new york times crossword, my father returns to his planting, and their
orange tabby cat walks circles around the pool as cicadas and
lawnmowers hum in the suburban new jersey summer. on the rare occasion
that they should eat a texas steak, they will not taste the sweat of
the slaves who raised the cattle. and when my father listens to bob
dylan, he will not play "hurricane" over and over and over until pain
and frustration and anger burst out from his eyes. in chicago, in the
sixties, when my mother was a teacher and all the white teachers
planned an end-of-the-year dinner, she refused to hold white racist
hand with white racist hand and instead chose to allow them to
maintain their racism while she went out to dinner with her black
co-workers and didn't mention the invitation that they all knew they
had not received. so i hope that we are sponges, the way a friend once
explained, each generation having less prejudice and hate to squeeze
out onto the generation below. and i hope that the air around us is
not an ocean and that we are not drowning, that is to say, that some
of us are drowning while others of us float on their bodies. and i
hope that these words and these symbols are not just more things
coming out of another white face while its hands are around brown
throats and its feet stand firm on the heads of brown babies whose
hopes and dreams and wishes cannot come true because all of mine are
guaranteed to.

                       "monster"

i'm punching my knuckles and clenching my fists,
so pissed off and helpless i can't turn my words into fire to burn
down these walls
can't make my anger a gun to point straight in the face of what goes for justice
in this plantation state.

last night and this morning, i'm at home asleep,
wrapped up in my ignorance and clean cotton sheets
while in downtown houston, belly of the beast,
pigs in riot gear escort my brother's face into the concrete floor

"stop resisting," they tell him,
"your back's up too straight.
don't you know you should be broken, and stupid, and down?"

"i ain't resisting," he says, "you're beating me up,"
"you've got guns and clubs
and shackles for me,
and you say my refusal
to bow down before thee is
resistance?"

they play barbie with him.
pushing the arms of a soldier into the clothes of a beast,
shackling one footprint-leaving foot onto one footprint-leaving foot
so tight, he needs a wheelchair to leave.

they don't give him his glasses so my brother can't see,
cos, you see, they can't beat him enough
to make him stare down at their feet.

now pigs in all corners,
with guns on their hips,
throw open the gates,
for this monster to roar into court.

but the brother just shuffles in.
too mad and blind and tired to see
all the shining and beautiful eyes upon him:
loving him, feeling him.

we breathe in their hatred and blow freedom his way.

but then the judge walks in.
old like the bible and white like a corpse,
your honor.
he picks up his hourglass and says,
"that thing can't tell time,
so i can just stretch it out,
instead of letting that go."

and then he leaves,
wise and all knowing,
temperate and meek,
the real monster in the belly of this beast.

"visiting #999226 at polunsky unit in livingston, texas on march 26th, 2007"

this poem is called visiting #999226 at polunsky unit in livingston,
texas, on march 26th, 2007 and i wish i never had to write it. it's a
miserable, awful poem about a miserable, awful situation, and i wish
it was all make believe, and i could read you a poem called howard
paul guidry eating mamma's gumbo, bare-chested, wearing flip-flops,
and grinnin' at me, but it wouldn't be the truth. and poems are
supposed to be true. so here's the poem i had to write, and i'm sorry,
but you have to hear it.

warm soft east texas breeze blows the soft muzzles of brown horses
with white blazes, snips, stripes, kisses the salty pony smell all the
way up to the two inch slits they call windows on death row. blue sky,
white clouds, clean breeze off the oceans, brown off the bayou, grey
off the trailer park, sort of pink off the horse under the warden
watching over the inmates in the field. it's beautiful here, if you
didn't know what it was.

if you couldn't smell the tear gas filling the halls, the salty sweet
blood pooling in the cement, the odorless anguish of a girlfriend's
perfume on the other side of bullet-proof glass. if you couldn't smell
the silence, the fear, the heavy, sickening boredom, and death, with a
stopwatch, on the other side of the razor wire fence.

almost no one leaves death row, except to die. strapped to a gurney,
under a sheet, in huntsville, where your mother can finally touch you,
and kiss you goodbye, in the funeral home, while you're still warm,
rolled in on the gurney.

i sit cross-legged on a hard-backed chair breathing in the stale
conditioned east texas air, looking at howard and laughing, laughing
through the steel wire between our black plastic phones, laughing.
he's singing redemption song by bob marley and i sing country songs
from borat's kazakhstan, laughing. laughing. we save ourselves for
four hours straight and talk about nothing so that we can pretend
that's all there is.

so that we can pretend he is not drowning, texas justice forced into
his lungs, scuffed brown cowboy boots on his forehead. "they got my
black ass," he says, and we laugh, like that's some sort of joke.
them, and his ass. if all of this were an ocean, he was born bleeding,
and when he whistled for the sharks, they came. we throw bandaids into
the waves from a passing ship and hope they stick.

his innocence means nothing without an attorney to prove it. the only
thing that will get him out of this is money, and lots of it, pushed
deep in the pockets of a good lawyer's well-pressed suit. justice
ain't affordable, but it sure is for sale.

when i left him, i was tired. tired of sitting, tired of listening,
tired of talking, tired of caring. so drained i couldn't see straight.
walking past the guards in their confederate grey suits, through the
electric locked doors, past the roses. nearabouts too tired to get
back my id, walk through the door with the sign about hostages, too
tired to taste the fresh air in my lungs, the sun, the breeze, the
ponies.

too tired, except to keep fighting.