Prison Radio
Spoon Jackson

Okay, this is Spoon Jackson of Rabbits of Realness, and I wanted to let people know that the
little zine that me and another artist, SaraMarie Bottaro, have put out a little booklet called The
Rabbits of Realness
where we talked about how to write letters, and we got it geared towards
young folk.

We hope to continue to create these little zines, and we gonna have something in
there- a section in it called “A Spoonful of Wisdom” where people can call in or write in or text
me now. We’ve got email capability now because we got tablets, and ask questions, and I can
answer them in the zine, which is again called The Rabbits of Realness. And you can acquire
this zine by going to spoonjackson.org, and you can figure out how to get it there, or you can go
to saramariebottaro.com, and she can download it for you.

And the first zine, like I said, is about the art of letter writing, and I had an essay there already
on Prison Radio talking about the art of letter writing so that’ll fit right in. So anybody who wants
to text me now or wants to email me can go to gettingout.com and put in their information, and
they could text me. Just got the tablets yesterday so they’re a little backlog with requests and
things to do as far as GTL is concerned, but I got the capability to text people now and people
can text me, and I think that’s cool.

So as far as poetry, I’ve been writing skits, and I’ll give you a little tiny bit of a demo from one of
them. This one is called “The Darkest Days.” What I do is- I went back for some great people
that have passed on, and I tried to channel some of their texts. A lot of people don’t know, but
Nelson Mandela, when he was locked up over there in South Africa, somebody sent him in a
copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. So what they did was- the prisoners that were
there, they read Shakespeare, memorized it, and recited Shakespeare to each other. And I
thought it was really cool, so I decided to do a dialogue between, uh, Nelson Mandela,
Shakespeare, Mother Teresa, and James Baldwin.

As a story behind Mother Teresa, I met her at San Quentin a long time ago when she came to
go on death row, and what’s ironic about it- it was the same day of my mother’s funeral, and
they would not let me go to the funeral. And Mother Teresa did not know me, but when she
came into the chapel, I was in the back row and out of nowhere, she handed me a cross. And I
think that was a message from my mom who had passed on.

Anyway, I’ll read from this dialogue. This is a little skit. It’s called “Darkest Days”.

This is Nelson Mandela first speaking: “Your work took me through my darkest days when the
bars and walls were like large needles. Someone sent me your complete works, Mr.
Shakespeare- we recited your text daily to turn walls into pebbles.”

Shakespeare: “You are too kind, and I thank you, sir. Your courage, Mandela, moved mountains
and shaked seas.”

Mother Teresa: “Love always moves mountains.”

James Baldwin: “And plants trees.”

Malcolm X: “How did we get here, and what is this all about? But I am honored to be here.”

James Baldwin: “There’s no pain here.”

Mother Teresa: “And no shame.”

Malcolm X: “I wish we could have experienced this back then. We could have moved and
marched across the tracks.”

James Baldwin: “And not get spit on.”

Shakespeare: “The secrets of the future are hidden from us too, brother Malcolm. I’m
Shakespeare.”

Malcolm X: “Shakespeare? Pleased to meet you.”

That’s just a short excerpt from- I’m creating- a past lot of people. And I hope those interested in
some of the work I’m doing, please contact me at Rabbits of Realness or go to gettingout.com.
Alright, thank you very much, and that’s it for now.

These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.