Rhythm and Greens: Professings of a Prison Poet

By Evan Sachs

Since he was just a toddler, the author was identified as having a special gift of intelligence. As a student he excelled in school, and was known by all as a smart, funny boy with a quick wit and a shy manner. Then one day he shocks an entire community by attacking an innocent child in a local video arcade. No one would have suspected that he w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pseudoku Books
• Release date: May 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781633932678

Evan Sachs

Evan Sachs holds a degree in Psychology from the University at Albany. He is currently incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility in New York State. Rhythm and Greens is a collection of poetry about prison, remorse, mental illness, life, and his determination to heal himself and someday to live a better life.

Book preview

From the Author

I’m told this book needs an introduction, but I’m going to try to keep it brief. I believe the poems speak for themselves.

I’m in prison now, serving a 14-year sentence for attempted murder. On October 8, 2010, I walked into an arcade at a shopping mall and stabbed an eight-year-old boy five times. I’ve been asked why I stabbed a child. I promise you that no answer to that question could ever satisfy. I should also clarify that this was my only act of violence. No one other than me could see it coming. I was in treatment for mental illness.

That night, I became a monster. I have not forgiven myself for what I have done, and if I can convince anyone contemplating taking such an action I tell you now: DON’T! I’m not the monster I thought I was. Now I consider myself to be a recovering monster, and this book is helping me in my recovery. I hope the poetry here will stand as a testament to the need for anyone who is troubled by their actions or by their thoughts to find a productive outlet, and that it serves as an example of what can be accomplished by using introspection to transform your darkness into light.

An explanation about the title of this book: Inmates in New York wear green.

Evan Sachs 11A4346

SEA OF GREEN

My life consists of somber fits

And television, television, television, television

Day by day in every way

Is repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition

Yeah, it’s true, I’m getting what I’m due

Yeah, I know, I’m reaping what I sow

But I’m only human, hence the err

Forgiveness my sincerest prayer

Redemption in my fondest dreams

And a life no more than what it seems

My sanity has been in question for nearly a decade

I’ve diagnosed myself as everything from Paranoid Schizophrenic to MPD

Divided myself into Red, Yellow, and Green

I had all these charts and graphs

Now I laugh about it

But every now and then I doubt in the realness of my experience

The incidence of coincidence just feels of insincereness

Subjective and objective reality are the same, discuss

Use a slide rule and astral projection if you must

Oh dear, I’ve gone terribly off track

My life’s imbued with sobering truth

And fantasy, fantasy, fantasy, fantasy

Every night I take the flight

Of can it be, can it be, can it be, can it be

Yeah, I guess, I simply need a rest

Yeah, I’m sure, I’ve said this all before

But I’m only human, hence the ennui

The weight of what I’ve done on me

The burden that I placed on him

The wages of my vice and sin

My intelligence has always been a given

I’m not trying to brag, I’m just saying

Even at the lowest of my self-esteem, I know I’m bright

It’s those intangibles in which I’m slight

Street Smarts, which I lack in spades

Explain the choices that I’ve made

Not to say excuse, fuck no!

Never would I say it’s so

I’ve always felt my skills were useless

And damn if what I’ve done don’t prove this

My life’s replete with bittersweet

And loneliness, loneliness, loneliness, loneliness,

All the time I see what’s mine

It’s only this, only this, only this, only this

Yeah, it’s hard, to live a life apart

Yeah, it’s tough, and still I get enough

But I’m only human, hence the hunger

The need to leave the roof I’m under

To sail away to part unseen

Across the teeming Sea of Green

HOUSE OF WAX

There was a boy named Kevin Wax

Who had a pair of special cats

Gravy was so sweet and plump

Such a fuzzy, furry lump

Splurge was quite the firebrand

Bit the leg if not the hand

Kevin also had two brothers

One was older; one was younger

The eldest son of Wax was Max

Mastered circuits and syntax

Seth, the family’s youngest boy

Theater was his greatest joy

That just leaves the parent team

Dad Nathaniel, Mom Brandine

Brandine handled pressure well

Hated Daryll, boss from Hell

Nathan hated and despised

Anything unorganized

Kevin had a bestest pal

Fellow by the name of Cal

Their childhood was spent together

Through the worse, but more the better

Cal had Kevin friend-surrounded

Kevin tried to keep Cal grounded

Their families did support the other

Cal was as the fourth Wax brother

Kev was never out of place in

Mack and Trudy’s child’s basement

To this day they keep in touch

Miss each other very much

Cal is living overseas

Acclimating there with ease

Say of Calvin what you will

He is quite adaptive still

Kevin, well I think you know

He ain’t got nowhere to go

Kevin’s regrets number none

Growing up the Waxes son

With his siblings and his friends

He would do it all again

Not, of course, that other bit

That is something separate

Something bigger in a way

Than how we’re raised or DNA

Call it fate or destiny

What has been is meant to be

He would like to represent

That this, to him, is excrement

But I know him very well

He believes it I can tell

More precisely he would say we all have will that’s free

Though perhaps we’re choosing from a small decision tree

And even if his happened to have borne a bitter fruit

He would say his tree was free of poison in the root

THE GREAT WALL

It’s funny and this is true

Years ago, I thought hopefully of being locked away

I envisioned more of an institutional setting

Nothing to do but roam in my robe

Fingertips lightly brushing the sterile, white walls as I go

No responsibility

No need to even say a word

There’d be talk of Crazy Sachs

Staring into space, wandering wordlessly

Much of this has come to pass

The walls are green and I’m a bit more verbose

But there is that talk

And not much is asked of me besides being seen not heard

I offer this anecdote

For it is the second biggest example in my life

Of the difference between fantasy and reality

Novelty fades fast

Occasionally instantaneously

Expectation begets exaggeration

Excitation leads to exasperation

All in all, between dreams and evil schemes should be a Great Wall

Mine was more an invisible fence

I passed through and was aghast to view the consequence

Slashed through thick vines for a sick crime

I was them first two pigs

Dicking around with straw and twigs

Unhinged when the wolf blew in

hit bricks because the walls were too thin

You can’t always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, you might find

What you want isn’t what you get once it’s got

Now you have to lie down in an unmade cot

Ruin, subvert

Cause one to hurt

Feel lower than dirt

That’s it in a nutshell

Just swell I’m in a jail cell

Bars make for a fine wall

Look, not touch at all

Plan how to build

With my unskilled

Hands that killed

Nearly

THE WANDERER

Wandering and wondering at all that’s possible

I slipped and fell by carelessness and landed in a hole.

Upon the haze of coming to, I squinted toward the sky

(As there appeared the Demon King, to tell me how I’d die)

"First comes the thirst, then comes the hunger,

next comes the pain as I tear you asunder.

The rest of your days shall be spent in the hole,

and at Death’s sweet embrace I’ll collect of your soul."

I frowned and cursed the hands of fate that made such rotten luck

to be supine and motionless and so severely stuck,

And still as if that’s not enough, on top of everything;

to have somehow incurred the wrath of Za the Demon King.

Taking stock of muscles that could oh so slightly move.

I hoped to find by hook or crook a something I could do.

I thought although upon my back I couldn’t pass the test

I might have half a prayer were