Introducing poems written by Angelo Sedillo, a (De)serving Life client serving life at NENMCF in Clayton, NM. Angelo is a member of a group of peers at Clayton focused on positivity, mutual support, and accountability in their journey towards parole and eventual freedom. Through his poems, Angelo describes the realities of life in prison and explores the emotions he’s feeling while serving life for a murder he committed as a child. Angelo hopes to connect with and provide understanding to those interested in hearing the hard truths about serving life. He also hopes his words provide support and empathy to anyone out there impacted by mass incarceration and who needs to heal.
Hope
I tried to find it today
Staring out of tempered plexi-glass,
Knowing loved ones were out there…somewhere
Beyond endless prairie… vocal breezes whisper their names
Inside nostalgic swirls a life unknown to institutional me, a loneliness holes up deep inside where residuals of a child lays, up at night
For years the face who stares back from the stainless steel mirror,
With graffiti, letting us know ” Maniac ” was here, Is no more…young, he who stares back is unrecognizably
An echo holding my image bearing my likeness
Is trapped- somewhere… years ago, I smirked
Then smiled, at the person staring back…who are you??
In bister flesh, coils rooted to cement drags my song
Staggeringly – the first rule: survive the hunt
The second, keep your heart, beating low, are quiet thoughts
With no promise tomorrow will respond to the taste of freedoms anticipation…
It reaches forward,
out,
towards its own way home
And now, I must find it, I must guard the pieces of me…the pieces of hope…of love…of laughter
Must be sheltered
Where maybe they can live free, and come out to visit.
I tried to find hope today while remembering the fullness
Around the contours of my face…
Sunkeness has set in – who are you???, looking back
Trying to recall full brown eyes remembering the names on the breeze
That had sunken into the earth like a quicksand
eyes remember Way. Too. Much.
And hope is in me somewhere, I just have to find it,
I just have to remember where it takes courage to walk by the facsimiled mirror and say: “You are still in there…”
“You are still alive to extract beauty from brutality”-
And today, will be no different then extracting life from
Inner voice of institutional me…” Go away!!! ” I tell it-
Because to care is all I have in this world
Is an ability to summon dreams
From the first juvenile rays of July that enter my cell
Unannounced… I make you a promise
I am leaving here
With a smile, for everyday that passes in stainless steel
It’s despairing audibles I no longer hear
Because HOPE lives beneath my skin
And I peel it back- each day, to find the courage I need to Hope.
-Angelo Sedillo
The Boy Who Wept For Dad
An adolescent boy
Runs from table-to-table
H y p e r m i s c h i e v e o u s
Jabbering unintroduced and wild
Inside an institution’s stomach
He roams visitation.
Minute by minute he adventures
An adolescent energy
Mazing inside between the condemned
With warnings from staff who want control
Of His hurried feet bringing disorder.
Minute by minute he’s calmed
But never pacified, a boy
Laughs profusely, crawling under desks
Of prison furnishings
To play hide-and-seek with his self
As we watch
Winking.
At 3:30, visitation ends
His grand canyons smiles, turn somber
This adolescent boy
Pulled by his mother feet dragging
Hands flapping farewell
Is led to the red glowing EXIT
His protest of combustion
Is the only affection for love he wishes to show.
-Angelo Sedillo