FORTY YEARS AND COUNTING
by Joe Lbriola

Off and on I have over 18 years in segregation. Less years than some,
more years than most. My Achilles tendon was being worn through by
the biting leg shackles. It took three separate restraining orders
to finally get them to stop putting leg irons on over the bleeding
and puss-filled wounds.It took a couple years to completely heal
and yet to this day I can still feel the irons. I accept full res-
ponsibility for my past actions so I have no real complaints about
being locked up. I own it all. I did five years straight in the
hole for trying to blow up the industry building in Walpole. My in-
tent was to simply burn the damn slave labor factory to the ground
and thereby deny the slave-masters a lot of income at the blood
and sweat of the slave-prisoners. As it goes in prison or anywhere
else in America today, I was rattled out by a cop wannabe. Later it
was for inciting a riot. My favorite was for "committing a mutinous
act." The ones I am most proud of however are for escaping and then
constantly attempting to escape. Now, forty years later and in a
damn wheelchair all I can do is dream about it. I got away in 1983
and was captured 93 days later in Carson City, Nevada by the Feebies.
From 83 till 89 I was in the hole..again. In retrospect, putting me
in segregation for so long was a big mistake on the part of these
"I'm so much smarter than you" people. It gave me the time to read
a library and to hone my writing skills. In my pen I found a more
powerful weapon than fire or rain. Through the written word I found
ways to give my tormentors the blues by exposing their chicanery
and fascist-like attitudes toward us. Today we live in a closed and
hidden away environment. We are out of the public eye and because
no one can see what they do to us, they invent onerous and idiotic
rules to make our lives as miserable as they possibly can. In the
70's they used to deal out regular beatings and gassings with CS-
gas. Something even the military is not allowed to use in combat
against enemies. Today its much more subtle. Mostly it is all mental
punishment and emotional anguish replacing beatings and gassings.
They make visits so uncomfortable that many family members do not
want to come into these places to be humiliated by searches and dogs
that feel its okay to put their noses in your crotch. In the visiting
rooms themselves screws will patrol gestap-like up and down the
aisles thereby inflicting themselves in the course of your intimate
conversations with wives or lady friends. Words are the only true
intimacy allowed between you except for the hug and kiss at the be-
gining and end of each visit. As the screws pass by you instinctively
whisper or stop the conversation because you don't want to share
even the most minute thought with their prying ears or ogling eyes.
Anytime a country allows its smallest segment of society to be hidden
from public scrutiny it seems to be a natural progression to fascism.
Prisons essentially become like small isolated third-world countries
and the armies of guards feel invulnerable and inviolate with their
actions toward the chained people in their charge. Rules are made
up on the spot to fit whatever course of action they wish to take.
By the time we prisoners get it straightened out we will have spent
months in the hole on Awaiting Action (AA) status and lost several
items of personal property which was thrown in the trash by vindictive
and twisted mentally deficient swine. We are forced in isolation
to breathe the recycled air that comes out of the vents in thin dust
balls. Blankets that shed like diseased collies and greasy Johnny
Walker water with its alluring caramel coloring. Lumpy thin mattresses
that feel like you are laying on a bag of softballs or body parts.
After many tears with your arthritis you get up in the morning feeling
like you just defended your title. Then you painfully make your way
to the chow hall where you are insulted with the gray lumpy stuff
on your dirty tray. Thirty days of this living in a county jail is
one thing but imagine forty years of it? In a perverted and sick
way I almost relish this treatment because it keeps my mind sharp
and my intentions focused on exposing these assholes for what they
really are; over paid and inane drones. They come into the prisons
hung over or still high and then ask YOU for a urine sample. They
will work double shifts after taking "diet pills" to stay awake.
They commission panels to try and figure out why the recidivism rate
in Massachusetts is so high. That makes about as much sense as having
a panel to figure out why a tortured dog gets off his chain
and then bites the person(s) who tortured him. Lucky for these sonsa-
bitches that I lost all my teeth over the long years of great dental
care. Lucky for them that the medical department has done all it.
I am training other bigger and stronger young dogs to take my place.
We can never stop barking because silence will signal our total
demise as human beings caught up in this fanatical mileau call
prison.