A Fostered Neglect Part One by, Jedidiah Murphy

The next pages you read will be his own work as I Include this excerpt of an essay printed to minutes before six on November 17th, 2015. An internet outlet for fellow enthusiast reading and writing for the lost bird’s of love, whimsical people endowed with the best of souls. Created as a blog made for prisoners who long to be a part of our lives today, still feeling as if they can be a use to people while working on themselves finding those people they are meant for while the purpose of reform is taking its true course. Using their time to change from circumstances beyond an americans control the same circumstances that leave wakes of loss known to the people of the whole world, waters may separate us but true separation is by reason of insanity as the purpose of learning history is so as not to be repeated. Reasons being as to the known facts already by the human kind that wrongs don't live out for amounts of time repeating the same issues of uncivilized behaviors for when they do humanity falls into the hands of history that make up our modern life playing out today for tomorrow's history.

“nor do I have any real skill at preparing and writing well-rounded articles. I am a high school graduate and nothing more. So when reading this don’t hold me to a high standard because I am simply a normal guy with an extraordinary story that I think will help people to see another dimension to the whole topic.

The perils of Foster Care extend far beyond what most people realize when they think about the issue. I have seen behind the curtain through two generations, and know the dark corners of what some would like you to believe is a “chance” for someone without anyone. There are several types of chances when you think about it. There is a chance that you will get the flu at some point. There is also a chance that you will win the lottery. The chance the state gives to foster kids is closer to the latter. For some people involved it is just that; however, for you to define the systemic failure of the program as a whole by the success of a few you would have to look past all the broken bodies lying in the wake of the few who “made it.” There are always success stories, just as some skydivers who have a parachute malfunction on the way down survive to tell the tale, there are some people who make it out before real damage can be done to them. You would hardly call that skydive a success, but the state would have you believe that the few people who hit the ground had a real good time once all the bones mended. Their view is that of fantasy and jaded by the fact that for them to make money that sustains their life, they have to sell something that is rife with abuse and corruption.

Before I get too far into this I want to make something completely clear. There are some really good, dedicated people in the foster care system. It takes a special person to take a child who they seldom know much about at all and “try” to establish some semblance of normalcy into a tragic and often emotionally shattered young boy or girl. These are children who have often-times had terrible, unspeakable things happen to them and are difficult at the best of times. A lot of them are underpaid and really under-educated about the emotional impact it has on them and the child. The reason that most stop doing it is because seeing the hollow eyes of damaged children with nowhere to go hurts. It hurts everyone. Noble ideas are often the reason they join, but those are hard to realize most times. Who among you would not want to ease the suffering of a child who has lost everything? Only to lose them to the routine removal time and again. The merry-go-round is anything but merry for the people with skin in the game.

Having said that, there are people that are after nothing at all but a paycheck and will do little to nothing for their ward. They don’t care for them or feed them at times. They will chase a pet out the door in a frantic moment of panic, worried that it will get hit by a car, but won’t get off the couch if a child that they were responsible for ran out that same door. I wandered alone all over when I was a child. I would come back and eat and most of the time just be alone. I would be cleaned up for presentation when the case worker was coming, which was great because it usually meant that they would cook something good for me to eat. I learned the trick was to tell them the things that you liked most to eat and they would make it when the case worker came to see you. I learned that from other wards like myself. It worked more times than not. You do what you can to get the creature comforts that so many take for granted when you have to fend for yourself. You learn to essentially make the most of a bad situation.

Just for statistical minded readers…in 2012 roughly 650 Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) positions went unfilled. (These stats come from a lawsuit filed by Children’s Rights Inc. on behalf of my daughter Alyssa who is herself a ward who will age out July 31st at 18. I will discuss her as we go along but anytime I speak of facts about the program it will be from direct filings in Federal Court on her behalf.) Likewise in its budget request to the Texas Legislature, DFPS expressed a need for additional staff lest caseloads “increase.” They say, and I quote: “Without additional staff, caseloads would increase, which results in significant child and adult safety issues.”

There are eight stages in the processing design of the program. They include: Intake, Investigation, Family Preservation, Child Substitute Care, Family Substitute Care, Foster and Adoptive Home Development, Kinship, and Adoption. The average caseload in 2011 was 20.59 children. A child could be in multiple stages at one time for processing purposes, so the average “stages” per caseworker ranged from 1 to 100. That range is the rule rather than the exception. So how could they possibly track their wards with any reliability when they have so many lives in their hands? Many times they simply cannot do what is being asked of them on any given day, and even though they are dealing with children and LIVES, people slip through the cracks. My story is about a few who did and the results that followed.

My story begins in Kaufman County, Texas. There were ten of us living in a three bedroom house. My father, my mother and grandparents, along with three half siblings that my mother had previous to the marriage to my father, and three more after the fact. I have one full brother and one full sister. My grandparents were great people and worked hard their whole lives. My grandmother was a registered nurse and my grandfather was a heavy equipment mechanic for a construction company for many years. My mother was a nurse and my father worked for the same construction company as my grandfather. My days consisted of running around with my brothers and sisters and just living the life of a country kid with no real limits on adventure. My father was a chronic alcoholic and a violent abusive monster at times. He beat my mother relentlessly, and it was very hard to see your hero and father become something that you wished would die. I prayed that he would not come home at all anymore so many times because it was scary to watch him knock my mother out. As a child you don’t understand what unconscious is. You see your mother fall and you think immediately that he killed her. I could not process the violence or the reasoning behind it, but I understood what dead meant. The thought of him killing my mom would send all of us into a pack mindset and we would attack him to get him to stop. At five, that is a lot to deal with and none of us did it that well at all. He often did this when my grandfather was out of the house or away on a job, so there was no one to help us defend against the assault. Everyone got their share and we did our best to deal with it.

That all changed the summer of 1981-82. My mother took us to town and we had Coke floats and spent the day with our mom. As we came to the road the little house was on, my mom asked the three children that belonged to my father to get out and she drove away. She abandoned us that day, and I watched her drive away not really understanding the situation for what it was, yet still knowing that something had changed forever. Shortly thereafter my father died of complications from alcoholism in his early 40’s and my grandparents passed away as well. We were taken to Buckner Homes in Dallas, Texas. For those reading this and are curious about the system internally, I will tell you that Bucker was top notch back then. I don’t know what it is today, but then it was the best, considering the situation. Arriving that day, I was awake but part of me was so numb I was practically in a coma. Everything about it was terrible. Everything was lost, the disconnection of being in the wrong place, with the wrong people, wore me down into a silent, slightly disoriented, funhouse mirror version of my old self. It is hard to be that age and be around so many strangers, without the comfort of knowing any way to get back to where you feel safe. My brother and I were kept together but he was just as scared as I was, so neither provided much comfort to the other. He was 17 months older that I was and I tried my best to hide behind him and disappear altogether, to erase myself to become a shadow no one paid any attention to at all. Beyond the studies people have done throughout the years and the changes they have installed into the charade, there is no way to make this “okay” for any child. It damages a soul in a way that no amount of “talking it out” could ever hope to mend. I would wake repeatedly from dreams thinking, “am I home,” only to then realize a second later, “no, Jebediah, you will be home again,” over and over again. To be so lost in yourself that at times, from grief and confusion, you forget to even blink or even breathe until by virtue of being a mammal in need of oxygen you gasp while silently wishing you hadn’t.

I was so young then I don’t remember a lot about the time, probably because of all the processing that I had to adjust to just to be able to function. What I do remember is a conversation I had with a man who worked there who forever changed the way that I thought about myself and the world. I was standing looking out the window as the man approached me and asked me what I was doing: I said that I was looking for my mom because she was going to come and get me. Without thinking about it (I would at least hope), and without missing a beat, he told me the following: “If you’re good your mom WILL come back and get you.” I don’t know what made him say that to me but to find out I could change the situation for myself and for my brother made me determined to not make so much as a wake in life at all. It is hard not to feel the sudden disruption, the end of the familiar, when it is so stark in front of you, painted in vivid colors of hopelessness and pain. Despite the pain involved, or precisely because of it, I found not only my saving grace, but the ticket back to a time of “once was” instead of “what is to be.” Months later I would rethink my time in Buckner and replay every instance of disobedience that could have derailed what was once so bright in front of my brown eyes. Out of shame, out of the impotence and grief, something was born. Something which I believe today was the desire to be different: that is to say to be able to know what it is to mourn, to have been left alone and really understand what it means to be orphaned. Wondering if I had eaten too much or been sick or cried at some point, and in doing so, slipped past the point of no return and into the reality I was doing my best to reverse. I failed at doing what was necessary to prove to my mother I was good enough to return for, or so I told myself. It hardly matters what is statistically true when you are alone and silent in your critique of yourself. This cold understanding, the nights without sleep, became bricks I would use to build fictional houses within my mind, filled with shadows, and unresolved pain in the face of uneasiness and loss. I learned that day to hide in myself and not trust or believe anything anyone told me again. I don’t know what happened to that man but the marks he made were etched on every failure I would ever suffer, regardless if they were real or imagined. I would never be good enough. I took full responsibility not only for the event that we found ourselves in, but the abandonment that led us there. I had the perfect reason to hate myself for the rest of my young life, provided by someone who was ill-trained for what he was doing and through ignorance and good intent…broke the heart of a boy he knew but for a moment, broke what little I knew of trust at all in the blink of an eye. I lost part of me that day when I realized what was supposed to be a “break” was what would become a new normal for myself, my brother and baby sister who I had not seen at all since we had arrived.

You would think that at some point there would be some counselor who would enter the scene and make some positive impact and change, but when you deal with children adrift all the time you tend to become numb no matter your “passion” for the job. I was simply another kid and we had to figure things out for ourselves. We become a name but something less than human. My brother and I left Buckner to be injected into the stream of children in the foster care carousel. We were bounced from place to place, sometimes together and sometimes alone. We were not parted that long because it had such a tragic response: we would be mute to the prospect of anything but fear, broadcasting the dull stares of someone not quite alive and certainly not living anymore as a child. The curious thing that happened to my brother and I during this transition was that I became quiet and he just the opposite. Before we were removed from my grandmother’s it was exactly the opposite, with me being the most curious kid of the bunch. I was constantly asking questions to the point of being teased about it from my siblings. I was curious about the world and “why” things without explanations were in fact without definition. After this whole tornado wrapped itself around what cherished most and obliterated any sense of belonging a curiosity I simply stopped caring why things were the way that they were. I knew only one thing that trumped them all…I fell from the living to the surviving. So that is what I set my focus on. I stopped asking the adults anything because I spent my time absorbing things around me I thought I needed to know.

When I was placed the first time I was so shocked that I could come and go as I pleased without getting into trouble. I was in a small town in East Texas and learned a lot of things from magazines. I could read and though I did not know all the words in the magazine I knew most of them so if I saw something I had read about in a magazine I felt like it was worth investigating. Without my brother around I was scared to be alone in someone’s house. So I spent as much time I could away from enclosed places. I had seen kids my age at Buckner that had been assaulted and abused and I talked to quite a few of them. They would talk to one another and I would think to myself that I did not want to be one of those kids when all along I was one circumstance from being exactly that. Funny how at times you’re at your worst you seek out someone doing even worse so that you can say to yourself, “hey at least I am better than that.” It is little consolation at the end of the day, but anything that elevates your position, even if it is in your mind alone, is worth something. It is not that you will say anything to anyone, but it gives you something to cling to because if you know that you’re one rung up then you know that you have something to lose, and you will do more to be wary of the situation that put you at the bottom looking up. We swapped knowledge with one another and tips for getting the things that were not offered to us freely. A kind of fraternity of street urchins from some dystopian, end of the world society made of children with a vast amount of solutions to problems no child should be aware of at all.

I knew kids under ten that you could set free in a big city and they would be fine. They would fend for themselves and operate as they were born to some feral form of parent that had the child and immediately after their 5th birthday wandered off to bigger and better things. We would teach one another the skills that it takes to be part of that life. The first time I was educated about stealing anything was from a girl who took to me and she was incredible to me. She could play you right out of your shoes and play roles that would stun a Hollywood lifer. I was terrified to steal anything because my grandmother was a Christian woman who was easy to love but if you stole something she would make sure she got your attention at the end of a switch. She caught me sneaking things a number of times and she finally got her fill of that and the way that I would cry my little brown eyes out to get out of trouble. She whooped me for stealing cookies and I tell you that I still don’t eat sweets much at all today. I don’t like them. So to steal something represented the highest form of severe punishment and this time it would be administered by some stranger who did not love me like my granny did. So I did not want any part of that, but I would watch her because who doesn’t want to see something done with so much confidence and skill and especially when it was mastered by a girl who could whoop most boys. She fascinated me then and I still smile when I think of her. I wonder what happened to all the people I knew then, much the same way you would wonder what happened to some friend that moves away. So when I was out on my wandering, I would pick up anything and everything. It did not matter if it did me any real service. I became adept at melting into the background.

While in that small town I saw the Alamo. Set back from the street was an adobe house built like a mission, and it set off every alarm I had in fact read about that in magazines. I walked right up to it and never saw the owner working in the flower bed in the front yard. I stood there looking at it thinking what are the chances that I found such a place, with no help at all when I was pretty sure that Davey Crocket got lost trying to find it. The lady who owned it was curious who the hell I was and I was curious how the hell I missed her when she scared the crap out of me by walking up on me. I ran away like a skittery fawn and I mean sheer panic because I was with a stranger who was so sneaky that she got right next to me without my knowing anything. So clearly she was some phantom from the war, and that rake looked an awful lot like a rifle to me. I bounced off no telling how many trees, running like a crazy drunk on his way to the soup kitchen. In time, I would get to know that lady and she would make me things to eat. I ate tacos and drank Kool-Aid and things I don’t know the name of at all. She knew I was an orphan because I told her. I had no idea what else to say when she asked me about my life. So she looked after me. I would stay there all the time even though I was not supposed to be away from the foster parent’s home. I would go back to see the case worker when she came and eat my special meal but otherwise I was with her. Time goes by and as with everything else it all came to an end and it hurt me to leave there. It was another loss and this time I learned that it was not good to attach yourself to anything because you’re not going to be there, and as nice as people are they don’t want another kid to look after. When people stick together they come to rely on one another to survive. I had to do the opposite because I was alone and if anyone let me down, it would be me.

The first adoption took place in that town and I, along with my brother, were adopted by a family that were well respected as good Christian folk. These were times that I would like to forget about, and though I have come to accept things for what they are and for what they were then, I don’t feel the need to detail that time. What I will say is that initially it was a great place and when things were finalized it switched to something altogether more violent and aggressive. My brother and I stayed there for four years and I came out of that house a shell. What people have to understand is that in the early to mid-80’s things were not what they are today regarding parental treatment and punishment. You could beat a child to a pulp and get by with it because the police considered it a “family matter.” You could get away and run for your freedom to a neighbor’s house and beg for help and the police would come and take you right back to the place you sought to flee. Imagine what it is to see a police officer who sees you’re scared to death and you are telling of things that you have been suffering, and what does he do…he takes you back. Someone your whole life you are told that is to be respected and they will save you if you’re being hurt, or in need of help, and they do the exact opposite and you know why? Because people label you a “troubled child,” for no other reason save the fact that you were adopted. You’re still not quite important enough to protect and be believed when the chips are down. If it was bad enough to run away from, then imagine what awaited us when we were returned. My brother was the recipient of more than I was, because he was the type to come to my defense no matter the cost. If he heard me there were no limits to what he would do to get to me. For doing that, he would get double what I got and I grew to hate myself for being responsible for the punishment he received. I saw my brother kick through a bedroom wall into the room beside it when they locked him in there to separate us. He was 8. It is beyond comprehension the strength you command when your loved one is being hurt, but as much as I wanted to do the same for him, I simply could not do what he could do. I felt so guilty at being so weak I could not kick through a door or wall to protect him. I tried many times and I simply was not strong enough.

I won’t go into things that happened, but I will say this: people have asked me at times how that officer could see us all beat up and take us back. Well, not all injuries are so easily spotted. Suffocation leaves no mark at all and it will erase the barrier from the fear you have of the dark to something a million time greater. It will break any sense of reality and a displacement will set in that will not altogether stop ever again. Standing at the margins, the distance from normal to abnormal grows shorter and easier to cross. It’s hard to measure the social destruction wrought by someone that starves another person of the things that keeps us all connected to this reckless and unnatural environment…oxygen. The marks you’re looking for are on the bones of the soul blackened by the devious sense of breaking and rebuilding, breaking and rebuilding, until the foundation crumbles and falls away leaving just the patch of ground scarred by something that used to be. Perhaps it is fundamentally human to be awed by the things that you had in front of you that you never realized. If so, it’s a tendency that has repeatedly allowed kids in a hostile environment to remain unseen while standing right in front of you pleading for help. If you don’t trust anyone anymore, how can a child trust you with a secret that big, when even police officers need evidence of scars no one but you can see? Those seeking to understand abuse and neglect on this level must do so from the equivalent of just a few pieces from a picture comprising tens of thousands of shards. So they miss, which is utterly human. Sad but true.

As a child I was in awe of super heroes and seemingly ordinary men who could do amazing things then revert to something as common as a newspaper reporter or short order cook. When this whole scene unfolded on top of my brother and me, I would pray that one of them would come and save us and take us someplace safe far, far away. I learned that nobody was going to save us the hard way. My opinion, and that of the courts at several points, is that CPS as a whole is a broken system. What seems like cold calculation that privileged salaries over lives was also an example of institutional ignorance that has as much to do with management as it does with human values. At CPS, the consequences or separate divisions and a competitive culture inhibit communication. Why is it that CPS is unable to adapt to a challenge that many in the organization have seen coming for years? Think about this…I was in that system 30+ years ago when there were far less children in CPS custody and look how we fell through the cracks. Today CPS is bloated, wasteful, at times malicious and an unforgiving bully who covets money and power over lives. At least that has not changed that much in the last 30 years.

During our time in that house I learned what a panic attack was. I felt that I was having a heart attack and I did not know what they were either but I felt that it would be better to die than to ask for help. I could not breathe and understood that it happened when I thought they were coming to get us. I cannot explain the fear that made me break into cold sweats and paralyze any sense of fight I had in my young mind and body. I was broken. The only relief I could get at times when the whole world seemed ready to get me was to rock myself side to side with my face on the floor. I would tuck my knees under me and rock slowly side to side and it would take me someplace else. It happened without my planning or input. Some primal sense of the solution happened to me as much as for me. I would lose myself in that simple motion and disappear into some dream-like state that obliterated all the walls I built around myself and allowed me for a time to be something else, somewhere else. I had to hide between the bed and the wall to do this because if I was seen I would be punished for being “retarded.” It made it perfectly clear that I was not normal and though I knew that none of the other kids did what I did, the understanding of how different I really was pushed me that much farther from what they wanted to call normal. It’s tough on a boy my age to think that I have passed some barrier into a land of misfits and unwanted throwaways and to think that you have some mental flaw that you can do nothing about.

What happened to us in the end is that my brother and I destroyed that house in a moment of just, pure hatred for all the things they did to us over the years. We banded together and busted out of that house and ran away. We ran to a neighbor’s house who did what he always did. He called the police while we hid under his bed in his room. I will never forget the guy that helped us that day. That day the police removed us and a decision was made that I could stay but my brother could not. I was shocked that they could think that I would stay without him, I refused, but to tell you the honest truth about that time and the emotion involved…I tried to leave because as much as I hated it, it was at least SOMETHING. I knew what boy’s homes and foster situations were like and I knew that for us to have been adopted and removed once, that it would never happen again. I was scared wondering what awaited us around the corner but I know that if I stayed there I would go crazy or die. So away we went.

My brother suffered something that changed him to this day. I lost a part of my brother in that house and though he is functional and a member of society and has had kids of his own, he is not the same person he once was. I won’t go into details but it is something else that they took from each of us. They were not prosecuted for anything and they got into no trouble at all for what they did to us. They disputed the whole thing and who would you believe? Two throwback, unwanted orphans or respected members of society? We gained nothing at all from telling people what happened to us so why lie about it? The fact is that my brother and I never talked about that house ever again nor the things that took place there. I was with a girl for years who found out about it at my trial. Same for my biological mother. I did not tell my defense in this case until my brother came forward with it. It shocked me then that he did that and still does today. It is simply something that we don’t talk about and I decided that it was a part of my life that I would like to forget about all together. The reason that I am doing this now is that I wrote all this down when I got to prison and learned that it had a kind of healing effect or release. So I talked about it to some people that I knew would understand because their lives were mine and vice versa. This is not some rare occasion that takes place from time to time. This is commonplace, and the children that suffer this end up telling their stories from prison cells much the way that I am. I don’t blame my mistakes on my childhood and never will. I don’t have an excuse but without people to teach me, I did not have any real “chance.” I did the best I could and failed. Tragic and horrific failure would be the wing of the museum in which my life is featured to say the least.

When we left the home that was anything but we landed in another boy’s home. At this point I was 11 and my brother 12 ½ or so, and things were easy to understand at this point for the both of us. We knew what to expect. We had boys and girls our age that we could relay things to and they could relay information to us about our situation going forward. These were rejects as well, and we all banded together into a Lord of the Flies like band of thieves and schemers who could steal a car and go to Vegas, rob the place blind, hit Toys ‘R Us on the way home and no one would be the wiser. At least in theory. It was better than the nothing that I thought it would be. I went to public school just a few miles down the road and my brother was with me. I was a loner and my brother and I stayed within reach of one another, but I did my best to make some friends with what I thought of as normal kids. Nobody knew that I was a retard that still rocked from side to side. I say that with no disrespect as it was the word that was used in connection with my habit and I realize the offensive nature of it because I LIVED it. So please don’t take offense to my use of it. I played the trombone which they let me take to the orphanage and I thought it was the best thing in the world. I knew nothing at all about it but it was fun pretending I did. During recess someone saw that I looked like a teacher’s son and actually called me his name. I thought it was a crazy person and did what I always did in those situations…ran for my life!! I did not know what it meant to be thought of as some other kid because what if he was a bully and smoked cigarettes? I could not think of a single good thing that would come of that so I flew away. Ironic that I could not think that maybe they thought I was a GOOD kid who people liked. It just was not something that I would ever really think about myself. That one misidentification led to a series of amazing things that tumbled around me with incredible speed. Abuse can tear down your confidence, leaving you sad and confused and I did not have anywhere to put that. You can find healing pretending to be just another kid, acting out other kids’ lines and playing out other peoples’ lives, yet a playground is a terrible place for therapy. I did what I thought kids my age did, though in truth I found little joy in that anymore.

When I found out that someone was coming to see me at the orphanage I was lost as to what the move was. I sought out people I knew would be able to tell me and learned that this was a pretty regular thing. Like test driving a car you’re thinking about buying if it doesn’t burn too much oil and doesn’t have too many whiskey dents in it. If they only knew all the dents I was hiding they would have seen they were getting something akin to a golf ball instead of the Easter egg they thought they found. They told me that the family wanted to take me for the weekend and I asked them if Donnie could come. They told me no and I told them NOPE too. I mean at this point I did not care to go anyplace. I was with him and that was what I wanted more than any house with more strange people. When I told them no, they had to huddle up because this was clearly not something they planned would happen. It was my brother that changed my mind. In another example of his love for me, he told me that I should go and just check it out for the weekend and if I did not like it, then at least I got to go someplace different. So I went against my better judgement, and it was an awesome thing to a child who had nothing at all to see. They had a three story house like the show Webster and he was adopted too so that is why I knew about it. I mean I had never been in a swimming pool and I was about to have the freedom to stay in that thing all day long. They had a son that was my age and they wanted another son to be able to grow up with him because his brother had died some years before. At this point I did not know any of that because this was to be just one weekend of eating things I had never heard of before and swimming in a pool that did not cost me a dime…which I did not have anyway. I remember the first thing I ate…it was pears with lettuce and cottage cheese with some shredded cheese on top of it. I was thinking…man what the hell is that? I knew what pears were, but I had never had cottage cheese in my life, and who mixes all that together but some crazy people, but the whole time I was nodding like a used car salesman trying to sell a junker to some suckers. Hey if I have to eat this weirdo rabbit food for a weekend to swim in that pool then hey…BEST THING I EVER ATE!!

“What??” Felix looked the old woman squarely in her one good eye and mustered the courage to voice what all the initiates were thinking. “Did you say bull's blood??” He wasn’t sure if the room shrank or if the old woman grew, but he suddenly felt much closer to her.

“That’s what I said, boy. How else, do you suppose, are we to make this potency potion? Lambs tears? I can tell you; they won’t work!” She winced and let out a sound that might have once been a giggle before it made its way through the tarred pipes of the village's one remaining witch.

Of course, to young people in a darkened ceremonial tent made entirely of animal skins and tied together with dried innards, it was a cackle. Quite pleased with their appalled, fearful reactions, she continued. “It must come from one of his hind legs.”

“Isn’t that super dangerous?” Felix interrupted a second time.

“You certainly have a lot of questions for one so small,” the witch squinted. “But…it’s a good question. And I’ll tell you why.”

A collective sigh hung in the musty tent. The witch, known simply as Silver, coughed and chortled. Then, she continued. Later, the children would agree that none of them remembered holding their breath.

Dear Jedidiah Murphy,

Chapter one of a book I sit and write eight days before you are removed from your home, a place of confinement that will just be replaced by a man child much like your past self, he a human. With your lingering spirit embedded in the floors, paint, the flat, and drinking source that is attached to the very adjoining place in which you leave all your daily meals behind essence escapes time and time again a place of lingering hate for the situation at bay, the future of the soul next in line. A soul with a tragic upbringing or even more disturbing a normal one. As few men are truly ever evil without a higher purpose, I wonder who he too may become from those nights on the. He could be short or tall like you, he could smell of fear or depression. Unknowing to him the sleepless night you went through. The people you had forgotten to miss until the walls, floors, and ceiling caved in on your organs making it hard to exhale all the things one holds onto. Knowing the places of a man deep inside himself left to the wolves of true darkness, comedy of self, and a new love and respect for time. I promise, these words I intended to make this story of none-fiction into your vibe of conscious being and the infinite realms, the soul of a wanderer. I’ll look forward to seeing you travel in and out of time and into space.

At most with hope these pages would have given you more out of life than any other human may have or may attempt at in the future. I know you're more than the number that holds you close in confinement. A systematic way of thinking, for intentions to correct people or persons not intended to be corrected without compassion of that of a mothering or fathering love.

The chess of man, fear versus the monopoly of God and the building of game plays seen as a game of logic and less of chance. While some take time forced to

feel used much like that of an emotional toy throughout the day’s fight, the game’s true role of collecting spiritual redemption and peace.

A mist, a structure frozen in time of barbaric relief. Bad examples set to only be mocked, at a loss with a stable sense to its poor foundation, broken since the idea of such crimes have fallen into places of an even bigger source for more or less.

The States United have executed their own unfair share of unnecessary violence inside prison walls as the blind have leqd the blind. I leave the spelling as it is for the sake of correction for the nation under God with judicial and social liberties for all. Obligations to a writer, that being a true poet and fan of my stubborn ideologies, you this ideal man of convictions. Time calculated to a “t” seven days, ten hours and fifty-six minutes. Doomsday, written off by faith, yet hopes for the people to come among the effects of a well planned fall of broken promises or position of something promising.

Inmate #00999392

First incarceration:

April Fifth, 1994 Burglary of a Habitat A ten year follow for crimes committed,

May Twenty-sixth, 1994 Burglary of a motor-vehicle, Ten years as well for crimes committed.

Shock you made probation!

“Shock probation is the US legal policy by which a judge orders a convicted offender to prison for a short time, and then suspends the remainder of the sentence in favor of probation. It is hoped that the initial experience of prison will provide an effective deterrent to recidivism.

In shock probation, a convicted offender is sentenced to prison and starts serving their sentence. After three to six months, the judge re-sentences the prisoner to probation, and the prisoner is released under supervision. Shock probation is usually considered when a prisoner is a first-time offender and a judge believes, given the circumstances of the case, that the prisoner has a chance at reform which may be enhanced by being released.

Shock probation is not used in all U.S. states. In states where it is used, shock probation is at the discretion of the judge.[1]

Source of definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_probation

Untitled

by Jedidiah Murphy

Lately I´ve been saying

That luck´s a fool man´s game;

You plant your fields and reap your crops,

And love your family through pain.

Whoever said it was easy,

Never flew like a dart to the wall;

Never sang about pain in the rain,

Or wanted to sleep through it all.

We all want sunny days,

And baby birds to fly like the wind;

Though should they get burned by the flames,

They know to come home to us again.

Sometimes we plan to walk tall,

And often times end up chopped at the knees;

For who among us plans to fail at life,

Instead of striving to succeed?

In the era of survival of the fittest,

Where we trample the weak and the lame;

Politicians praise God on Sunday,

Then kill those unfortunate in your name.

So when you say your prayers at night,

For love, for life, for family,

While down on your knees with God,

Say a few for sad poets as me…

The ways in which I compare him and connect him to the earth, finding and dishing out purpose for his soul outside of prisons walls and cell block floors is overly compelling. Giving him reason. I know for which he should not have to lay dead after this week to come. In which Texas will take vengeance into their own very hands and wash his inner body with a toxin made to stop his sweetheart. I am undoubtedly falling in love with him more everyday as God stops me in my tracks of my own day to night living as to point out the importance he has been to him. Things I intended to leave with him in his afterlife. A halachic Jew born of the jewish family of God, a love he found reaching the bottom of the pit of life he undoubtedly had little control over. A boy abandoned by all including himself.

He has spent years finding Jedidiah and making a point that maybe, just maybe someone might hear him inside his solitude, he started to write and publish through online sources. Incorporating him and encapsulating the work of art I see him to be, I write just so you a reader could or would do the same. As I dive into the makings of this book including his works of art along the way clashing them like water into mine own as to flow with the river of Jordan, the place of original grace. His essays published have made way for me to explore the depth of soul amidst my own gift bestowed upon me from the connection between earth and heaven. Jedidiah’s spirit is undeniable when looking into the windows of the human itself with portals through the eyes of a grace filled individual. I read him using the love he generates knowing that he mustered the courage to set himself apart through all his living years of oppression, something most white males find themselves in while living in the walls of american poverty and crumbling family structure lacks a head of household that means the most in regard to security, God.

As I introduce him throughout these coming pages I’ll Share with you as many works from his prison cell the internet allows me to find. Through his own very words typed, alive through the mind of inspiration and wonder of everything that should have been. My poet heart can barely hold all the excitement he leaves me with. The endearment to love everything life offers in itself is a work of the art of God that he, Yahweh gives to being alive. I’ll give warning to the fact that most of his life was spent in depression for he was unable to feel just how much a human could love him. While he love’s to love people, I find true likeness between both his and mine, of a very spirit alive traveling in and out of the dimensions we can all exist through. Portals from one life into another’s just like that of books a true loner or enthusiast can become attached to while getting the feel of real people and characters of fantasy.

Dear Jedidiah Murphy,

Chapter one of a book I sit and write eight days before you are removed from your home, a place of confinement that will just be replaced by a man child much like your past self, he a human. With your lingering spirit embedded in the floors, paint, the flat, and drinking source that is attached to the very adjoining place in which you leave all your daily meals behind essence escapes time and time again a place of lingering hate for the situation at bay, the future of the soul next in line. A soul with a tragic upbringing or even more disturbing a normal one. As few men are truly ever evil without a higher purpose, I wonder who he too may become from those nights on the. He could be short or tall like you, he could smell of fear or depression. Unknowing to him the sleepless night you went through. The people you had forgotten to miss until the walls, floors, and ceiling caved in on your organs making it hard to exhale all the things one holds onto. Knowing the places of a man deep inside himself left to the wolves of true darkness, comedy of self, and a new love and respect for time. I promise, these words I intended to make this story of none-fiction into your vibe of conscious being and the infinite realms, the soul of a wanderer. I’ll look forward to seeing you travel in and out of time and into space.

At most with hope these pages would have given you more out of life than any other human may have or may attempt at in the future. I know you're more than the number that holds you close in confinement. A systematic way of thinking, for intentions to correct people or persons not intended to be corrected without compassion of that of a mothering or fathering love.

The chess of man, fear versus the monopoly of God and the building of game plays seen as a game of logic and less of chance. While some take time forced to

feel used much like that of an emotional toy throughout the day’s fight, the game’s true role of collecting spiritual redemption and peace.

A mist, a structure frozen in time of barbaric relief. Bad examples set to only be mocked, at a loss with a stable sense to its poor foundation, broken since the idea of such crimes have fallen into places of an even bigger source for more or less.

The States United have executed their own unfair share of unnecessary violence inside prison walls as the blind have leqd the blind. I leave the spelling as it is for the sake of correction for the nation under God with judicial and social liberties for all. Obligations to a writer, that being a true poet and fan of my stubborn ideologies, you this ideal man of convictions. Time calculated to a “t” seven days, ten hours and fifty-six minutes. Doomsday, written off by faith, yet hopes for the people to come among the effects of a well planned fall of broken promises or position of something promising.

Inmate #00999392

First incarceration:

April Fifth, 1994 Burglary of a Habitat A ten year follow for crimes committed,

May Twenty-sixth, 1994 Burglary of a motor-vehicle, Ten years as well for crimes committed.

Shock you made probation!

“Shock probation is the US legal policy by which a judge orders a convicted offender to prison for a short time, and then suspends the remainder of the sentence in favor of probation. It is hoped that the initial experience of prison will provide an effective deterrent to recidivism.

In shock probation, a convicted offender is sentenced to prison and starts serving their sentence. After three to six months, the judge re-sentences the prisoner to probation, and the prisoner is released under supervision. Shock probation is usually considered when a prisoner is a first-time offender and a judge believes, given the circumstances of the case, that the prisoner has a chance at reform which may be enhanced by being released.

Shock probation is not used in all U.S. states. In states where it is used, shock probation is at the discretion of the judge.[1]

Source of definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_probation

Untitled

by Jedidiah Murphy

Lately I´ve been saying

That luck´s a fool man´s game;

You plant your fields and reap your crops,

And love your family through pain.

Whoever said it was easy,

Never flew like a dart to the wall;

Never sang about pain in the rain,

Or wanted to sleep through it all.

We all want sunny days,

And baby birds to fly like the wind;

Though should they get burned by the flames,

They know to come home to us again.

Sometimes we plan to walk tall,

And often times end up chopped at the knees;

For who among us plans to fail at life,

Instead of striving to succeed?

In the era of survival of the fittest,

Where we trample the weak and the lame;

Politicians praise God on Sunday,

Then kill those unfortunate in your name.

So when you say your prayers at night,

For love, for life, for family,

While down on your knees with God,

Say a few for sad poets as me…

The ways in which I compare him and connect him to the earth, finding and dishing out purpose for his soul outside of prisons walls and cell block floors is overly compelling. Giving him reason. I know for which he should not have to lay dead after this week to come. In which Texas will take vengeance into their own very hands and wash his inner body with a toxin made to stop his sweetheart. I am undoubtedly falling in love with him more everyday as God stops me in my tracks of my own day to night living as to point out the importance he has been to him. Things I intended to leave with him in his afterlife. A halachic Jew born of the jewish family of God, a love he found reaching the bottom of the pit of life he undoubtedly had little control over. A boy abandoned by all including himself.

He has spent years finding Jedidiah and making a point that maybe, just maybe someone might hear him inside his solitude, he started to write and publish through online sources. Incorporating him and encapsulating the work of art I see him to be, I write just so you a reader could or would do the same. As I dive into the makings of this book including his works of art along the way clashing them like water into mine own as to flow with the river of Jordan, the place of original grace. His essays published have made way for me to explore the depth of soul amidst my own gift bestowed upon me from the connection between earth and heaven. Jedidiah’s spirit is undeniable when looking into the windows of the human itself with portals through the eyes of a grace filled individual. I read him using the love he generates knowing that he mustered the courage to set himself apart through all his living years of oppression, something most white males find themselves in while living in the walls of american poverty and crumbling family structure lacks a head of household that means the most in regard to security, God.

As I introduce him throughout these coming pages I’ll Share with you as many works from his prison cell the internet allows me to find. Through his own very words typed, alive through the mind of inspiration and wonder of everything that should have been. My poet heart can barely hold all the excitement he leaves me with. The endearment to love everything life offers in itself is a work of the art of God that he, Yahweh gives to being alive. I’ll give warning to the fact that most of his life was spent in depression for he was unable to feel just how much a human could love him. While he love’s to love people, I find true likeness between both his and mine, of a very spirit alive traveling in and out of the dimensions we can all exist through. Portals from one life into another’s just like that of books a true loner or enthusiast can become attached to while getting the feel of real people and characters of fantasy.

Ignore the title of this piece, I was far from certainty or trust at this point, I understood nothing, I just wanted to sit in a cocoon built out of my own self-pity and continue to beat myself up until my Lord called me home. I had missed what I thought was an opportunity of a lifetime, and I was crushed, crushed by what I felt was my own carelessness, self-loathing slowly but surely encroaching upon me-- I was broken.

"Thank you for applying to this position. Your cv matches this job so please send your cover letter detailing why you would be a right fit for this job to the following email..."

It had been all I had been waiting for, the glimpse of some kind of hope to affirm that all my efforts in this whirlpool of finding my footing in the jungle that is the job market, actually did count for something. The only problem was that I had found it a month after it had been sent. And for someone who had been born with words and ink flowing through every vein, I had somehow found myself void of any words to speak. I scrambled through every key on my laptop, put together words of apology the best way I could to the hiring team lead and ended the message with a question I already knew the answer to; "Is it still possible to apply for this job?"

For weeks after this heart-stopping moment, I had beaten myself up, tried to tell myself that I had been so wrapped up in my dissertation, I'd barely had the time to check any updates on my applications, but that simply didn't cut it for me. No matter what excuse my mind tried to come up with, it made no sense to me; as the voice of accusation rang louder and louder with each passing day, "you were careless... you were so careless," "how could you be so careless? And you claim you wanted this? You clearly didn't want it enough."

So, finally, after what felt like eons endless dreariness, I found myself on my knees before my Saviour. And like I would do when I could no longer keep the misery at bay, I poured my heart out to Him, how hurt I was, how I didn't understand how derelict I could have been with something I claimed to have been so focused on, I knelt there for what felt like forever, teary-eyed and repeatedly stating the phrase "I don't want to feel this way." I wanted to let go of the guilt, but I felt I had to hold on to it; that letting go of that feeling would be irresponsible of me.

Then I heard in my heart, a nudge that I am still discerning, one that I know only comes from the One who gave me breath in my lungs and a purpose for this earth, to open to the book of Job, and so I did, and I opened to a chapter I had never cared to read because for me, it appeared too "lengthy", and I began to read. And there Yahweh was, clear as day, scolding me and questioning me, inquiring of me what power I felt I possessed in my life to feel the way I did as I knelt there. In summary He had one simple answer wrapped in a question, "How dare you think that you are powerful enough to mess up the plans I have for your life?"

And right there and then, I bowed my head in repentance, as that cloak of guilt lifted off of me and that tugging in my chest where condemnation had begun to make its home was completely wiped off. These feelings rarely vanish so instantly for me, and so this felt like a novelty. I embraced the love of my Father once again, as Romans 8:28 found a new meaning in my life and heart. All things may not always happen for our good, but He does, beyond a shadow of a doubt, whatever form that may take, work every single thing, good and bad, to turn out for our own good and inadvertently, for His glory.

I still haven't got a job yet, but that glimmer of hope still shines through, and I will do all I can do keep the substance of all the things I believe for alive, for it is the only proof I have of the things His Word promises me will come. Now, I know that feeling of doubt will come again, but I do hope I remember where to look to, and that I know that I hold the substance of these things not yet seen, things that, though they tarry, will, with certainty, materialize.

Oh, Prose! How you’ve thrown me for a loop? And all these years I have thought that the bottles were there to drown the past in, not to float up it’s relics. But the damned memories will never die, will they? And now you want to see me drunk on them, and to watch as I regurgitate them up, and laugh as I wallow in the messes I’ve made.

But there is this one bottle, dusty and aged. Watch as it clings like oil to the sides of this swirling crystal. See how it settles on the bottom, weighty and sure? Lift it up. Don’t fall shy, now. Push your nose right in. Close your eyes, and mouth. Breath it in like a young girl’s breath, floral and light. Yes, that is good! Relax. Let it have it’s way. It will not hurt. Not much.

Now then, slowly… taste.

Do not swallow, not yet. Swish it instead. Swish it hard! Harder than that, Prose! Come now! You asked for this. Swish it all around! It is on you to wake the flavors up! There is no shame. Ok, good… now… now… now then. Swallow. Feel it down. Feel it titillate as it scatters your mind.

Ahhh. It tastes of autumn, does it not? With subtle hints of moonlight, and starry innocence? Now, search through it, find that sugary sweetness floating somewhere beneath. It recalls a kiss if you can find it, a pressing of bodies, a squeezing of hands, the fear of the forbidden, and somewhere a worried mother sitting up, her hands folded in useless prayer.

And the vapors so dry, recalling what is gone. And the jarring numbness of regret, or lack thereof. Ah, it is a precious bottle, this one. A good one for memories, and so very, very old.

Go ahead, Prose. Drink up. It is the best I have to offer, and isn’t that what you asked for?

Just how did I get here?

In this type of relationship

At this point in my life

I really thought I was

the driven serious type

who would not get trapped in

this kind of living.

Living with a man, my husband

Can I really call him that since

I barely even know him?

Though that is newly unearthed

information. I only just found

out that I'm living with a

stranger after deciding to do

some investigating.

We met, fell in love, said some vows, got married. I say 'we' but who am I kidding, should've stayed eagle-eyed and cautious of evil as I had originally been from the beginning...I got

myself caught like a bird locked in a cage with a complete

stranger. Only now in deep thought with worry piling on worry, GASP! My goodness, Father God I utterly regret it.

Not waiting on you to send the right one, that is.

'Cause right now, all I can really say is Who on earth did I, not too long ago, marry?

“Okay! I think we should leave.” I said. “Get ur stuff ”Dad replied. We walked towards the car and got inside. It was 8 in the morning. I was all in business attire for the Model United Nations conference. This is the only club I find joy in and that is educational. So sorry I did not introduce myself. I am Maiytreye. I am 13 years old and live in Richmond VA. This is getting awkward so let's go back. After he dropped me off I saw a lot of old desi people in front of the highschool exercising. I waved goodbye and started walking towards the door.

After getting in I could not see anyone from my school so I walked towards the stairs like Gauri had said. Gauri is the person who started the club at our school, a 7th grader. I met people as i saw them come through the back doors of the school. I greeted them as they came in. I was feeling nervous as always but I put a smile on my face to hide it. I was looking for ruqquah and then when I saw her come in it was such a relief. Ruqquah is my best friend. Well, she was. So as people started to gather around the cafeteria Ruqquah was stressing over what to say. It was her first conference and she did not have a speech. I was sad and trying to act mature. Then I noticed a strange guy staring at me. And when we met each other’s gaze he would start looking else where. Suddenly a girl came up to our table. Her name was Asiya she was Ruqquah's family friend. She had known that guy. We chated a bit about the position papers and stuff. ”He looks fine” I whispered to Ruqquah. “Who does” Ruqquah asked. I slightly pointed at him. Ruqquah was awkward out. “Bro! You are here for a conference not to stare at boys okay! And he does not look good he has a such a long nose ” Ruqquah whispered back. “Look, I was not staring he started it ok” i said. He then came up to our table he started to talk to asiya. He looked at me twice. I looked at my phone while he did. In fact I was very loud. After the committee sessions past by we were at the closing ceremony. We were the first ones there. So we got into our seats. When I saw him come in He was sitting behind on the other side so he could keep an eye on me. Then Gauri made us move seats. After doing so I saw him come to the seat in front on the other side. So I begged ruqqah to let me side on her seat so i could see him more clearly. I did not like him. It was just i wanted to prove that he was staring first. I looked behind and told Ruqquah that look at him if he stares at me. After the ceremony ended we all got out of the seats. Some one slightly pushed near him but not exactly. Apparently he was not paying attention. I wanted him to but oh well. Then when I got back I got ready and went to bed. Then I looked out the window at the moon. It was quite. Everyone was asleep. I was asleep thinking of how I felt like he was someone to me when in real life he was a complete stranger.

The metropolis smoldering

it’s glass and iron valleys

funneling the people

towards servitude

The inner machinations

grind the herd

into acquiescence

and inquietude

Mindlessness erupts

like a pathogen

that hungrily consumes

the gathering crowd

Unaware of the mountebanks

and trusting subjective truths

they fail to notice the wizard

standing behind the shroud