THE DEATH ROW POET

"To each his own.  I know it's not a 130-mile-an-hour motorcycle ride where I'm just flirting with death.  Nope!  I'm fixing to meet death head on, grab it, and dance with it."

Ronald Wayne Clark Jr.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD

Welcome to my world, a world people seldom try to understand, a world where a man lives in a 9X6 foot cell 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, year after year after year.

No matter what I say or how hard I try to explain, I can never make you fully comprehend what a day in my life is like.  For you to experience it and see the whole picture, you couldn't just experience it for 24 hours or even seven days, for all that would do would be to cheapen the experience.

To see the whole picture, you would have to step into my world.  Step into this cage and have the door slam shut behind you (for nothing around here closes without a slam). 

The guard then turns to you and says, "Welcome to your new home, where you're going to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 12 months a year, until we're good and ready to put you to death, taking from you the remaining life you have left."  Then and only then could you understand my existence.

Death Row, where one sits on a thin mattress on a steel bunk in a tiny cage and tries to escape through a vision of hope.  Where there's no privacy, where peace or tranquility can only be found in moments of time.  I exist in a world where seconds turn into minutes, minutes into hours and hours into days.  Yet every second of every minute of every hour of every day is the same as the one that just passed.  Time moves, yet stands completely still.

In my world days blend into weeks, weeks into months and months into years, and only the names and faces of the inmates and guards change.  All else remains the same.

Yes, welcome to my world, for in this is the world that I exist in and that's all I truly do, exist day to day, week to week, month to month, year after year.

No one can truly call this living.  It's just a mere existence in a tiny cage in a small prison in a small part of this world, a world which spins at thousands of miles an hour, around a big sun, in a huge universe in a great big galaxy which no one really understands.  Just as you can't understand my world, a world which I just exist in, a world which changes with technology, yet remains completely the same.

Confined to a 9X6 foot cage day in and day out, left only with memories more bad than good, more sad than happy.  This life has brought much suffering, heartache and pain, and so I'm stuck in a place in time, left with nothing but memories of my past to deal with the best way I possibly can.

You're welcome to my world, a world you truly can't envision and you could never possibly imagine.  Even though I've shared these thoughts with you, you still can't and never will fully comprehend my situation, my life or my existence and there's no need to try, for it just can't be done.

Yet again, I say welcome to my world, a world that only a few know, yet fewer understand.

Ronald W. Clark Jr.
The Death Row Poet
2003

PROTESTING ATTORNEY DALE WESTLING

Saturday, Aug. 2, 2003

I talked with Mr. Brody last night to see if they are sending me back to Q-Wing, that hell hole.  No matter what attorney I have, I'm not living like that.  Those cages are bad enough without having to deal with a situation like Q-Wing.  You have absolutely nothing to stimulate the mind: No books, no magazines, newspapers.  I'm not going back to that.  I've got one of the pictures I drew of Q-Wing.  Just to remind me of how them guys over there are living and when I think of  having to go back, I think to myself, "Nope, Can't do it."

Do me a favor and if something happens to me and I die, please keep the website up because after all, my main goal is to educate people on the injustice of the death penalty.

Much Love,
Ronnie
The Death Row Poet
Aug. 2, 2003

RONALD CLARK JR'S MEMO
RE: JUDGE DAVID WIGGINS' POLITICAL ASPIRATIONS

The Audio Presentation
Of The Death Row Poet's Readings
https://www.angelfire.com/fl5/j4j/DeathRowPoetAudio.mp3;