D Ansgar Nyberg

Usual Tears D Ansgar Nyberg

The book, USUAL TEARS: THREE MONTHS IN AUGHT AND SIX, is an imaginative collection of prose and poetry that lays before the reader the innermost thoughts and emotional life of a man thirty-plus years in prison. The book USUAL TEARS relates the history of Nevada state prison in the first quarter of 2006 when a new get "tough Warden" was assigned in the previously quiet and safe prison that now turned into a place of violence and murder. Nyberg wrote: "At suppertime a Unit Ten prisoner stop by Unit Six and told the officer that a dead man was in the Unit 10 C-tier shower." The murderers imprisoned at Nevada State Prison had never celebrated death with the zeal that their "betters" (the administration) did. Nyberg further wrote: "On nights of an execution we prisoners were locked in our cells immediately following the evening meal. While we were locked down, the administration officials and distinguished guests have a party with the buffet set up in the school area." The author reminds us: "It is not what you think that defined you - it is what you do with those thoughts. The madman's dreams are also the dreams of the poet." As he now finishes his forty-fifth year in prison the author expresses his greatest fear: "I am facing the greatest fear of old lifers-to grow old and alone in prison."