Pound, as he’s called, is big. Bigger. When you sit with him or stand next to him, it feels as if he was made for a world 50% bigger than we’re inhabiting. Even his voice is big. When he booms, “Hayy baby,” to his niece or wife on the phone, you don’t just hear it 50 feet away, you feel it, the power, the joy.
Pound is happy, almost all the time. It’s not a shallow happiness, either, but a deep joy and tranquility that resembles a laughing Buddha statue. His belly helps the imagery.
When Pound smiles, you’re in the smile, and not just because you reflect in his gold teeth (you can tell when some men went in to prison, because that trend dates them) but because his smile is bigger than the room, maybe the prison. He greets everyone like he’s at a wedding and they’re a cousin he hasn’t seen in some time, and they greet him that way, too.
“Were you always this happy?”, I ask. Maybe it’s genetic.
“Not at all. I was angry at the world. Angry. Angry,” he said. Until around 2013.
Pound’s catchphrase is, “Why I got to make you miserable just because I blew my trial?” He seems to have taken on the mission to bring you joy instead.
He’s a long way into his 30 years, but there’s still a long way to go. When you see someone so completely transformed who’s still inside, it’s heartbreaking. The success stories should get a second chance. If the purpose of prison is to reform people, Pound is another poster child of success — but far from a child now. We’re all better off with him outside.
Pound, who’s real name is Mike Cannon, gave me some tough love after I lost my cool being moved for the 4th time in 17 days in prison, at 10:35 PM! The next day he sad down next to me at the computers, nobody else around, and tapped me with his giant hand on my shoulder.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, “Imma give you some advice, because you said some things…”
“There are three types of men in prison,” he said determinately, opening a giant finger to start counting off, “There are guys who are making moves, trying to make a buck, trying to make it here and on the outside. There guys are who are just tryin to make the time go by until they out. And then there are the guys who don’t give a fuuuuhck.
They here for life, and they will killl you if you talk like that.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. Just because it’s a “Low” doesn’t mean there aren’t guys who are never leaving, lifers, and you don’t want to push them. A Low is a much safer, better experience than a Medium or Pen, but it’s still a prison, with gangs and lifers.
He meant it. He cared. It was a good lesson. In prison, lose your shit inside yourself, ride the wave, and let it slide away… this isn’t the place for public expression of life not being fair. The truth is, it’s good advice for the outside —
and something I’ve gotten much better at, but still need to learn. Not every moment of life is the stage, and not everyone is going to react kindly to your ideas or lamentations.
Part of “surrendering” in prison seems to be accepting responsibility for being here, even if you’re innocent, or the charges or sentence were unfair. Surrender is critical to tranquility and joy (yes, joy) even if you’re working and praying every day to get out.
“I put myself in the line of fire,” Pound says, “Even if the chargers are bullshit,” which he pronounces “booolshit” (even his words are bigger), “the Government created fake dope, a fake house… they came to me with it… but you still gotta ask, Did you put yourself in the line of fire? I put myself in the line of fire. I needed money…” A flicker of sadness appears in his eye, “My wife had bills from lupus,” he explains. “She needed money for treatment.”
“Are you still married?” I ask.
“Yeah! Yeah!” His face lights up like a schoolboy in love for the first time. He’s been in for years. Many relationships don’t make it. That level of excitement and joy even less.
“You can beat the truth, but you can’t beat a lie, because you don’t know where a lie is coming from,” he says about the Government’s entrapment.
“If anyone told you the government worked like this, you’d have said, ‘Nah, you just got a bad break,’ but now you know.”
It’s true. Our system, sadly, values winning over justice, high numbers of years in a cage over rehabilitation.
Pound finding tranquility and faith is a success, but to the system the astronomically high number of years he’s torn from his wife and loved ones is the win — and they’ll make up crimes and trap people in them for those wins.
Of course, you all know about my case, the hidden evidence the prosecutors and Judge knew (and know) about, the coaching of witnesses to perjure, the lying by the AUSAs to the defense and judge and jury… The incentives from the arresting officers to the prosecutors to the judges are all backwards — we are rewarding the destruction of good men and loving families, rather than incentivizing our justice workers to to true justice and uplift the vulnerable, hurt, and mistaken.
Pound sat down next to me, a couple weeks later, a few hours after seeing me working out with Zater and said, “I want to say, I’m proud of you.” He paused to take a breath. “You came in here entitled. ‘This isn’t fair,’ and ‘They should do this,’ and ‘This is missing’… but you got level headed quick. You saw how it was. You got your balance.
You fit in with the guys, your energy is good. You don’t belong here, but you found your peace. I’m proud of you.
Real proud.”
He says to me, “You stronger coming out. Now shit that you couldn’t imagine in your day, you can handle. Your sense get sharper too. Now someone comes at you, your sense says, ‘They guy ain’t right’, ‘Something ain’t right about this.’ Can’t nobody run game on you now.”
Pound calls the charges against me “booolshit”, and says, “You gotta get that shit up off you. Get your record expunged. So you can earn.”
“I’m one of your biggest cheerleaders,” he says, lookin right into my eyes, “Because to see one of you make it is to feel like I made it.”
I’m one of Pound’s. It’s difficult to capture him, not only because he truly is a giant of a man in stature and energy — to the point you wonder how the little plastic chair (normal human sized) holds him while he jokes and laughs and shouts watching the games and movies on TV with the rest of the crew — but because he speaks in poetry.
“How you doing, Pound?” I asked this morning.
“Fair and medleying”, he says with his trademark smile.
I had to ask him a half dozen times what he was saying, and even to spell it. I was still confused.
“Fair and middling, he meant,” Zater explained later. “The expression is ‘fair and middling’, but guys here say ‘medleying’”
“Probably Pound has a medley in his head at all times, he’s so happy. It fits.”
“Ha. Yeah.”
We need to do a better job identifying the Zaters and Pounds of the world and getting them out of prison. We need these stories out there so that young guys get to where Pound is now before they find themselves inside.
And we need to help make prisons and jails a place where young men are guided to learn the lessons Pound and Zater and Bek and others discovered for themselves.
There’s so much time here, to read, to watch educational videos, to meditate, do yoga, pray, draw, learn, explore, practice. Yet so much time is given up to vegging before the TVs, napping, and putting yourself into a sugar coma with comissary snacks — all understandable activities. You have to tune out to survive, and Pound, Zater, and Bek all use TV and movies to help hours pass each week (it’s unbelievable how much they still accomplish in a day —
and without smartphones, Google, or even copy/paste!) but they’re unique self-starters who grasped that prison is a gift, in some sense, of massive amounts of time for self-improvement.
We can help many others learn these lessons, and with today’s apps for video education, language learning, meditation, therapy…prison tablets are the perfect platform to help men lift themselves and each other up, heal their pain, find meaning, and get outside.
If anyone knows Oprah or Kim K, Pound should be on their pardon advocacy list, and so should Zater and a few other great guys here. (And I wouldn’t mind one, too. :))
With love, Ari =====================
Group letter. Draft 1.0. You may share this letter with friends.
