Russell Kerr is currently incarcerated in the Texas state prison system. Out of his 37 years of incarceration, Kerr spent 23 years in “super seg.” Super segregation units are high-security housing areas where incarcerated men spend up to 23 hours per day in solitary confinement.  

Despite having spent almost four decades in what he describes as “Hell visited upon Earth,” Kerr has not lost his tenacity. He attributes his continued survival to the community he has built with his fellow men within Texas’s prison system. From teaching himself to read and write to earning various professional certificates, Kerr says he refuses to be undone by prison. 

Kerr says he shares the following poem and painting with one goal in mind: to expose and bring awareness to the injustices that remain unchecked in prisons within and beyond Texas. He can be emailed on Securus by adding him as a contact using his name “Russell Dudley Kerr“ and number “00557098,” and leaving a return stamp. His mailing address is “Russell D. Kerr, #00557098, Coffield Unit, 2661, FM 2054, Tenn.Colony, TX. 75884.” — Kilhah St. Fort 

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Dreadful not only of knowing what has been, but of what is surely yet to come.

Where hopes and dreams are oft in vain, where terror whispers of brutalities to arise.

Where decades upon decades, I have been forced to live in filthy squalor, as well as its stench.

Where piss, shit, vomit, dirt, tear gas, smoke from fires, and blood all merge; and when the sewer pipes are clogged up, it floods the floor, as one great big, nasty paste

Where rats and roaches of all sizes call this their home, and mice and spiders also reside along with me as well. How best to describe this included odor?

Where the mentally deranged scream their maddened rants, day and night at all hours. 

Where many bang, yell, and toss piss mixed with shit all in vainful hopes to get a little attention, yet in vain do they get what they seek; their only company is their insanity. 

Where all the while, all are forced to dwell in their midst, and all are also forced to endure their madness.

Where for 35 long years, I have been imprisoned in this animalistic 6 X 9 cage. 

Where the sunlight is rarely ever felt, maybe once a year. 

Where all disorders are oft neglected and ignored, and a steady diet of depression, anxiety, and insomnia bombard me daily as this torturous, unrelenting misery seeks to strip away my very soul.

Yet, I refuse to lay aside my hopes and dreams, regardless of the unmerciful Dread of Day, Terror by Night

I’ll close with these two quotes:

“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become”: Carl Jung

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”: Romans 12:21

I choose to be an overcomer.