I reached for a pen
and there was no ink
I reached for a pencil
and there was no lead
I reached for a heart
and there was no blood
I reached for you
and there was love.
by C-Note
©2018 Donald “C-Note” Hooker
Tag Archives: Donald “C-Note” Hooker
The World’s Greatest Threat: Being Black With Self-Respect
They never likeded my swag
cause it was rooted in gang culture
cause out here in L.A.
WE DON’T PLAY.
Nineteen Sixty-Five
ain’t never died
year of the Watts Riots
cause thirty years later
Nineteen Ninety-Two
We kicked off some shit too
year of the L.A. riots
But who really brought it your way
N-Double-U-A
You know what dem Niggas had to say
about dem cops
Police brutality had to stop
But that was before Black Lives Matter
and that shit came from the Town
Oak Land
Where Huey P Newton was the Spokes Man
for the Black Panthers
and its Organization for Community Defense
you see it all makes sense
Now
that video recorders dun came around
But it didn’t to Rodney King’s jurors
who saw his Black ass take a beat down
from six cops standing around
Naw
six cops actively participating
in the demise of an uppity ass negro
cause who he think he was
that he can get away with running from the fuzz
It only took a dahz
of whites
to say
Hell No! To Black Liberation
if that shit didn’t disturb your sleep
Why are you surprised of white criticism
when Beyonce speak
of Female Black Liberation
so join Her Formation
But again this ain’t nothing new
in the Red White and Blue
maybe because whites refuse to have
that conversation
about Nationhood reconciliation
don’t talk about chipin in dem funds
for reparations
They can for the First Naytion
and American Japanese
but when it comes to Black folks
we only get sympathies
from overseas
Because whites don’t wanna
do nothing about changin
the situation
about Black acclimation
into fabric Americana
wit your dirty lies
about apple pies
and second amendment aggrandization
Cause when was there ever a time
we could do
what we wanted to do
as a Black man or woman
legally armed
with a gun in our hand
Change California law
when Huey went to the State capitol
opened and carried
Killed Philando Castillo
in Minnesota
as a illegally armed
Black motorist
Standing on her own property
as a licensed gun owning Black woman
Michigan would rather imprison
a pregnant Swatu Salam Ra for two years
than let her use
their “Stand your ground” law
Due take notice
these were all liberal States
It’s like fake news
in prison blues
that’s why my pants sag
and my Blue Rag hangs low
I’m all that’s negative
bet believe
If I didn’t make myself that way
they would have
wit their lies and alibis
targeting
A great wrong was done to
you my Black children
A great wrong was done to you
my Black child
A suspicion has been casted upon you
it’s called revenge
Revenge
for the wrong done to you
Revenge
for the wrong done
by hands pure as the white of snow
They just don’t know
when you will recomeuppance
You’re under suspicion
My children
My child
Just look into their eyes and you’ll see
Dis is why me brudda
Dis is why mee sistah
Dis is why mee children
you’re under suspicion
What y’all brewing in da kitchen?
We know it gots to be a special stew
full of wicked concoctions
each with our signed I.O.U.
CAUSE YOUR God is dat Voodoo
so we know He’s stirring dat stew
so we don’t want nothing from you Black America
cause we know you’re itchin
to get us in your kitchen
to serve us this brew
and watch it see
do what it do
So Black man whoa
So Black woman whoa
and that’s why you’re always remain
a threat
Da Black man or woman, with self-respect
So Black man whoa
So Black woman whoa
and that’s why you’re always remain
a threat
Da Black man or woman with self-respect
Editor’s Note: To For more epic poems by this poet, check out: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF OUR AMERICAN CIVILIZATION (This Is Not A Manifesto)
STRADIVARIUS: Play Her Like
It Must End! (BLACK FEMALE BOYCOTTS AGAINST BLACK MEN IN THE PEN)
Here are audio links:
The Criminalization of our American Civilization (This Is Not A Manifesto)
STRADIVARIUS: Play Her Like
It Must End!: BLACK FEMALE BOYCOTTS AGAINST BLACK MEN IN THE PEN
The Ebony Mystique
Not borne
from fake hair
and fake tits
It’s dark hue
is as true
as make-up
is fake
All the ladies
want to be you
You can’t see that?
Golden knights
in tight
mini skirts
Like psychic menstruals
untold
unfold
the true story
Ebony Eyes
Like true lies
a confession
obsession
a miss
a curse
enough is enough
positive
a negative
a brush of God
a gush of Lust
a gris
a cuss
a muss
unearth
the tantalizing view
of you
darkly hued
rich
in Ebony glow
let it flow
the skin you in
a cue
a curse
a burst
of Spring
that radiates from you
nobody gets to view
that that is true
the Ebony hue
in you
by C-Note
Copyright 2018 Donald “C-Note” Hooker
Model: Mirembe Priscilla
The Ghost of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol
by Donald “C-Note” Hooker
In Honor of: Alice Marie Johnson (Imprisoned African American playwright)
The Ghost of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol is a play about an assisted living home (past), a boys home (future), and a transitional home (present). Every Christmas, the boys home, and the transitional home, go into the woods to cut down fresh Christmas trees for area assisted living homes. Besides cutting down and donating trees, they also help with the decorating of the trees with the residents at the assisted living homes.
Scene One: Takes place in the woods and consists of half of the transitional and boys home cast. One of the transitional home members received a phone call that due to van trouble the other half had to turn back and will not make it. This means they will have to take on double the workload.
Storyline: Based on those who resent having to take on more responsibility versus those who are willing to do so for the greater good.
Scene Two: Takes place at the assisted living home. One of the residents has just died.
Storyline: Based on each individual’s relationship with the deceased; along with personal introspection on how they have lived doing the long arc of their lives.
Scene Three: Takes place at the transitional home and consists of the half that did not make it to the woods.
Storyline: Based on starting something and not seeing it through, or getting in one’s own way.
Scene Four: Takes place at the assisted living home, and involves the whole cast, delivering and decorating the tree.
Storyline: Based on coming together and community.
Cast:
Assisted living home:
Marco
Miguel
Pedro (Cuban)
Boys Home:
Eddie
Jesus
Huan
Transitional Home:
Tafuga
Kwame
Micheal
[Scene One]:
Scene One takes place in the woods. TAFUGA, EDDIE, and JESUS, Are waiting for the arrival of the rest of the transitional, and boys home to join them. TAFUGA receives a phone call that due to car trouble no one else will be arriving.
TAFUGA: [Mimics just ending a cell phone call] That was Kwame, no one else is coming.
[EDDIE and JESUS, both are exhibiting physical disgust.]
JESUS: What happened?
EDDIE: What do we do now?
TAFUGA: Cut down some trees.
JESUS: All these?
TAFUGA: Of course, why not?
EDDIE: That’s not fair.
TAFUGA: They’re depending on us guys.
EDDIE: No, they’re depending on a whole lot of other people too, not just us.
JESUS: Why we got to cut down some Christmas trees for a bunch of old people anyway?
EDDIE: Yeah, what’s in for us? Ain’t no old people ever done anything for me, for free.
TAFUGA: What about your foster mom Eddie, you talk about her all the time since she’s passed?
EDDIE: My foster sister told me she was getting a government check for me. She was always ranting and raving about the mailman, and did the check arrive yet, or go get the check.
JESUS: One time our pastor took members of our church to feed some homeless people.
TAFUGA: And how did that make you feel?
JESUS: I felt good.
TAFUGA: See Eddie, good can come from helping others.
EDDIE: You see those trees over there [Pointing.] Yeah, that one, it’s gonna to take six people. That’s double the work. This ain’t slavery.
JESUS: He’s got a point Tafuga. This ain’t slavery, and besides, we can come back later with the rest of the crew.
TAFUGA: Unfortunately we don’t have that type of time schedule. Besides, sometimes in life you have to pick up the slack for somebody else.
EDDIE: Picking up the slack is one thing, doing double the work is another. And them church people who be cooking that food ain’t never had a kind word for those who don’t show up to help them out. And one thing them church ladies taught me, “God don’t make no fools.”
TAFUGA: [TAFUGA starts walking towards some trees.] Come on Jesus. Come on Eddie. Let’s get started. [JESUS walks towards TAFUGA, and together they walk off stage. EDDIE just stays put and walks off stage in the opposite direction.
Scene Two:
[ Takes place at the assisted living home. MARCO, MIGUEL and PEDRO, are all mulling over the recent passing of Pedro’s cousin JUAN who lived at the facility with them.]
MIGUEL: The nerve of that guy. You hear him. The corner just took Juan’s body to the morgue, and these guys are already discussing who’s moving in his room.
MARCO: I tell my daughter all the time when she comes visit me, that these people are heartless.
PEDRO: Maybe it’s a woman.
[MARCO and MIGUEL state simultaneously]: What???
PEDRO: You know a mujer.
MARCO: Pedro, man, that was your cousin.
PEDRO: I know. But he would want me to have a little fun with the ladies. They didn’t call him Donito Juanito for nothing.
MIGUEL: And look what that kind of thinking got him. Broken and alone. That man had 19 kids from 17 different women, and not once did he get a visit.
MARCO: Even I get visits from hijos, and I wasn’t there for them growing up.
MIGUEL: Just face it Pedro, your cousin wasn’t smooth, but rotten.This bottle of medicine [Holds up bottle], it goes down smooth, cause that’s how medicine goes down. But Juan was poison, and went down sour, or bitter.
PEDRO: What’s your beef with Juan, cause he wouldn’t let you beat him in chess?
MIGUEL: Its not that. Your cousin was a good man, once you got to know him. But that’s just it, no one seemed to know him. He had a real mean streak.
MARCO: You mean that temper?
MIGUEL: Yeah, that temper. Come on Pedro, even he treated you like crap sometime.
PEDRO: Sometime? Hell, a whole lot of time. And one thing about that bastard, he never not once apologized.
MARCO: Then how is Father Mahoney going to eulogize him?
PEDRO: Shit, who’s going to notify his kids?
MIGUEL: What makes you think they want to be notified? None of them ever came to visit.
MARCO: But they have a right to know; he was their father.
PEDRO: [Begins to cry.] Shit, why did he have to die? He was my only familia.
MARCO: That’s not true Pedro; your kids and grandkids come see you.
MIGUEL: Yeah, Pedro, don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?
PEDRO: [Sobbing.] You don’t understand; we are from Cuba! Juan was like my brother over there. Look at me! My familia has no love for me. My kids are raised in the United States, and they dumped me off at some assisted living home. There is no respect there. That’s not Cubano! We love our abuelos and abuelas We would never dump their wisdom and knowledge off to a bunch of strangers. [Scene change.]
Scene Three:
[Scene three takes place at the transitional home. KWAME, MICHAEL, and HUAN, are discussing the repercussions of not meeting the others in the woods to chop down Christmas trees.]
MICHAEL: Damn, Kwame, you just got a new transmission put in a week ago what’s up with that?
KWAME: I know. There is nothing I can do.
HUAN: I was looking to get out of the city.
KWAME: I know, me too, But what can we do?
HUAN: Did Tafuga sound upset?
KWAME: Nah, you know him, don’t nothing bother Big Tafuga.
MICHAEL: This is rotten. How many trees can they cut down without us there?
HUAN: There’s going to be some very disappointed old people at those homes.
KWAME: Who cares about those old people, their families don’t.
MICHAEL: We’re their family now, Kwame.
HUAN: It’s the only time I see them light up. With their cigarettes, and dancing to old music.
MICHAEL: Look, if none of us don’t get our own acts together, we are going to be just like them, old and alone.
KWAME: I don’t see your point. They’ve lived their lives. They’re winning. You and I can get snuffed out at any moment.
HUAN: You don’t feel a little something that you won’t be able to come through for them this year?
KWAME: I suppose.
MICHAEL: I’m thinking about Tafuga and the others, they don’t have us around.
KWAME: Tafuga knows we got his back.
MICHAEL: Yeah, like you did last year Kwame?
KWAME: That was a mistake. That couldn’t be avoided. We talked, and we’re cool.
MICHAEL: Well I’m just saying Bro. You’re always not on point.
KWAME: I see your cigarettes you be hiding around here, not letting the counselors see you smoke.
MICHAEL: Oh, you’re just going to put my business out there in front of the kid.
HUAN: Man, what you talkin bout. I see kids doing more than that in the boys home.
KWAME: You know what Michael, man, you’re always trying to make it about me, it’s never you.
MICHAEL: Look Bro, I’m not trying to make it a career staying at this place.
MICHAEL: You couldof fooled me. What’s it been, six years?
HUAN: Dwag, man, you’re a lifer.
MICHAEL: [Scratching the area of the arm, where it bends. Between the upper and lower arm.] It’s not that, sometimes I got issues.
KWAME: You can say that again.
HUAN: You’re using man?
MICHAEL: What makes you say that?
HUAN: It’s what Kwame said.
MICHAEL: Fuck Kwame, he ain’t said nothing.
KWAME: You know what Michael, I’m about tired of your shit. Yeah, I lied. Ain’t nothing wrong with my car.
MICHAEL: I knew it.
HUAN: Last year you got me in trouble with the judge. He tacked on another two years of community service.
KWAME: That judge is an idiot. This is his favorite community service, that’s all.
HUAN: [Seething with anger, pushes KWAME.] That’s all?
[KWAME socks HUAN in the eye. HUAN falls to the ground; holding his eye. KWAME goes in to hit him again while he’s on the ground. MICHAEL grabs KWAME to stop him from going in for the kill.]
MICHAEL: He’s just a kid! He’s just a kid! [End of Scene Three.]
Scene Four:
[Takes place at the assisted living home, and involves the whole cast decorating the Christmas tree.]
KWAME: Huan, put the star on top of the tree.
[HUAN comes running up and takes the star from KWAME. KWAME lifts up HUAN from behind; hands under HUAN’s armpits, and lifts him up in the air. HUAN puts the star at the top of the tree, and KWAME lets him back down. HUAN and KWAME embrace (hug). All the cast begins to sing “Deck the Halls.”]
WHOLE CAST:
Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
‘Tis the season to be jolly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Don we now our gay apparel
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la
[This will be the final stanzas, and must be sung as tho it’s the end]
Troll the ancient Yule-tide carol
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.
The End
Copyright 2018 Donald “C-Note” Hooker
[Editor’ Note]: Besides being a playwright, and known as the King of Prison Hip Hop; C-Note is also the poet who wrote the poem, THE LOST INNOCENCE OF CHRISTMAS . A performing artist, and award-winning painter, his works have either been exhibited, performed, or sold, from Alcatraz to Berlin. In two and a half years of fundraising, audiences have contributed north of $500,000. In 2017, Google search results, listed him as both America’s, and the world’s most prolific prisoner artist.
Today We Are Sisters
Today we are sisters
Tomorrow we won’t
unless for reparations
together we fight
I am Pro Choice
I am Pro Life
just because she’s in prison
She still has rights
About Paintoem:
Painting by: C-Note
Poem by: C-Note
Today We Are Sisters is an original work of wax on paper. Done by Donald “C-Note” Hooker in 2018. Today We Are Sisters tells the tale of the 150 California female prisoners that were forcibly sterilized from 2006-2010.
An artist update:
Anyone who observes the body of my work can get a sense that I fashon my work on history. One of the very unique aspects of the 21st Century is the faux belief that we as a species are not the 20th Century. What did the 20th Century bring us? For us Blacks in America, mass lynching and Jim Crow. The century began with a World War, mechanized killing, and mustard gas in War trenches. It went on to produce a Second World War, the gas chamber killings of millions of Jewish people, the mass killings of hundreds of thousands of Japanese through the splitting of the atom. A whole swath of humanity living in the northern hemisphere were under the threat of nuclear annihilation as a result of the Cold War. Kids who have been born post-Cold War, are absolutely clueless of the psychological burden of this everyday fear. The Cold War was an existential threat to our daily lives here in the United States and across Europe. The 20th century also brought us various notions of population control, and these ideas originated from the left of the political spectrum. In the United States, the party that is out of power professes to have the moral high ground in our society. So you get a sort of political preachiness, a righteousness about what they stand for as opposed to the group that is in power. Being a Black male in the United States, we have been orientated that the political left has our back. But in the 20th Century, the Democratic party is the party that the Ku Klux Klan came from, and listen to these lines in my poem, The World’s Greatest Threat: Being Black With Self-Respect
Because whites don’t wanna
do nothing about changin
the situation
about Black acclimation
into fabric Americana
wit your dirty lies
about apple pies
and second amendment aggrandization
Cause when was there ever a time
we could do
what we wanted to do
as a Black man or woman
legally armed
with a gun in our hand
Change California law
when Huey went to the State capitol
opened and carried
Killed Philando Castillo
in Minnesota
as a illegally armed
Black motorist
Standing on her own property
as a licensed gun owning Black woman
Michigan would rather imprison
a pregnant Swatu Salam Ra for two years
than let her use
their “Stand your ground” law
Due take notice
these were all liberal States
So when it comes to an African-American exercising his or her gun rights in Blue State America, they don’t want to extend that to them. These stories are endless and can go on and on. Republicans would argue, that in the course of a mass shooting, if somebody was armed they could mitigate the casualties. Well at a mall in Alabama on Thanksgiving, there was an African American who was a former United States Army serviceman, Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., the 21-year old was armeo and carried out such protection; however, the police showed up and straight killed him, thought he was a suspect.
In 2017, while listening to Los Angeles Public Radio Station KCRW local news program Press Play, hosted by Madeleine Brand, the topic was reparations for forced sterilization here in California. From my programming notes, forced sterilizations were legal from 1909-1979, 20,000-sterilizations took place between 1919-1953 (majority of sterilization), and Spanish surnames were disproportionately sterilized. What shocked me, was from 2006-2010, 150-women prisoners were forcibly sterilized, and these are the alleged reported cases. Now this whole news story was about righting the wrongs of California’s Eugenics program by providing reparations, and that they were actively seeking victims of this practice in order to give them their due reparations; however, nowhere in this conversation was the reparations for these women-prisoners. This is why in the paintoem Today We Are Sisters it contains the following lines, “Today We Are Sisters/tomorrow we won’t/unless for reparations/together we fight.” In the 20th Century Eugenics was legal in California and outlawed in California. But why in the 21st Century the state was authorizing eugenics against its women prisoners? And why did it take until 2014 to outlaw the practice? But they really didn’t outlaw the practice. In the United States, the practice of slavery isn’t outlawed, there is a constitutional exception if a person has been duly convicted of a crime they can legally be enslaved. With the 2014 law, “Such surgies can be performed to save the life of the mother,” SB 1135.
As an artist, I like to give voice to the voiceless. In my work Life Without the Possibility of Parole the story of women doing life without the possibility of parole in a California women’s prison, the vehicle for telling that story was a white woman. In Strange Fruit, the story of mass suicides in a California women’s prison, the vehicle for telling that story was a Black woman. So I was looking for an opportunity to tell a Brown woman’s story. And since the story of eugenics in California was the targeting of persons with Spanish surnames, this gave me an opportunity to tell a Brown woman’s story. Me being an absolutely stupid guy, and using my observations, women are very catty, and they themselves are always discussing how they don’t support one another. This is why the piece is called Today We Are Sisters. Because no matter what side of the abortion debate you are on, forcef sterilization is anti Pro-Life, and is anti Pro-Choice. But remember I said I was just a stupid guy, and I will stick to that story. So imagine my surprise when this work received no love from several women who told me the point of view, as I was informed by them, assuming they have more expertise than I do, as I am not a woman, that some women should not be in the enterprise of reproduction.
[Editor’s Note ]: This Paintoem, like all Paintoems, are given to the public, to have free use rights, so long as acknowledgement is given to the artist(s).
Links to other Paintoems:
Mprisond
My Dilemma
Tears of the Mothers
Black August-Los Angeles
More Paintoems
Today We Are Sisters (Paintoem) available in prints
CAN’T BLACK LIVES MATTER TOO???
Tic
Toc
goes the clock
On the mystery
of the history
Of
who am I
And
who are you
And
who are we
Maybe
to better understand me
I should try and understand you
So when I heard of the demise
of the Indian tribes
from the White perspective
was that they had put too much trust
in the treatise they signed
Now you
can better understand
why Sandra Bland
told that policeman
I HAVE RIGHTS!!!
and ended with
losing her life
But that has nothing to do
with the perversion
of the aversion
towards the Chinese
whereupon our first immigration law
was to get rid of them all
or the Japanese version
who will tell you
that internment is a diversion
it was imprisonment
You see history
is His story
but what about
Her story
now that you’ve heard
some of Their story
all we ask
is just a simple task
Can’t Black Lives Matter
Too???
You see no one knows
what the Poles went through
in World War II
where six million died
half of them Jew
or in 1891
the single day
worst
mass lynching
in America
took place
in Louisiana
against the Italians
cause being a Catholic back then
was like being a Muslim today
or that
in 1848 through 1860
in a twelve year span
out here in California
they lynched
163-Mexicans
You see history
is His story
but what about
Her story
now that you’ve heard
some of Their story
all we ask
is just a simple task
Can’t Black Lives Matter
Too???
No one knows what a Black woman goes through
cause it was a Black woman who started
hashtag Me Too
and White privilege
means many different things
to many different body
but to the Black family
it means access to their body
How many times did the slave masters rape Black women
so many times I ain’t got a clue
so you’re not a clown
when you look around
and see a lighter shade of Brown
just ask the African, the Aztecan, and the Mayan
how that happened
These women had no choice!
there was no Twitter to give them voice!
Some say Thomas Jefferson was a great man
but how many times did he have to rape that woman to produce six children
and when we called him father
he denied us
and all of America told us
Yousa lie!
But in 1998 DNA gave us proof
that for over 200-years Black folks had been telling the truth
then I heard somebody scream who did not look like me
HOW COULD THE PERSON WHO WROTE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HAVE ENSLAVED HIS OWN CHILDREN!
You see history
is His story
but what about
Her story
now that you’ve heard
some of Their story
all we ask
is just a simple task
Can’t Black Lives Matter
Too???
I want to set the Record Straight!
hashtag Black Lives Matter ain’t got nothing to do with no cops
It got something to do with a civilian
and his name was George Zimmerman
and he shot and killed an unarmed Black teenage boy
by the name of Travon Martin
and there was NO JUSTICE FOR US!
and just like all the other civilians before him
with Dey Lynch Mobs
and Dey Gang Rapes
so much was going on Rosa Parks had to investigate
and this was some twenty years before she refused to go to the back of the bus
80-years removed from slavery so much horrors had been thrusted upon us
In 1944
in Alabama
Recy Taylor
was twenty-four
she was walking home from church
when she was abducted by six Caucasian boys
She said, “Please don’t hurt me, I have to go home to my children.”
Five hours later
Her father found her on the side of the road
beaten and raped
Now I comes from a woman!
We all do
And when I heard this story
I cried
but when I heard her sister tell it
I died inside
Dem boys wasn’t content with just raping my sistah
Dem boys played inside my sistah
My sistah never had any children after that
Dem boys went all up inside my sistah’s body
My sistah never even gotten pregnant after that
Dem boys played inside my sistah’s body!
You see history
is His story
but what about
Her story
now that you’ve heard
Our story
We have a daunting task
Such an overwhelmingly daunting task
For YOU TO ASK
CAN’T BLACK LIVES MATTER
TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is the audio version:
CAN’T BLACK LIVES MATTER TOO???
Editor’s Note: To For more epic poems by this poet, check out: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF OUR AMERICAN CIVILIZATION (This Is Not A Manifesto)
STRADIVARIUS: Play Her Like
It Must End! (BLACK FEMALE BOYCOTTS AGAINST BLACK MEN IN THE PEN)
The World’s Greatest Threat: Being Black With Self-Respect
Here are audio links:
The Criminalization of our American Civilization (This Is Not A Manifesto)
STRADIVARIUS: Play Her Like
It Must End!: BLACK FEMALE BOYCOTTS AGAINST BLACK MEN IN THE PEN
White Noise
High ceiling
windowless room
soundless
except the white noise
of bright lighting
humanless
except me
furnitureless
except door’s knob
queasy
of uneasy
a hot mess
but nevertheless
I wait
in this Twilight Zone
of a disaster
seconds
turn into minutes
minutes
turn into hours
still feet
a quickend pace
a slow jog
complexity of thought
rise and fall
like a statistical graph
wondering
searching
Did I see?
Crashing the disturbance
of the undisturbable
Deputy good cop
and officer bad cop
hurled accusations
of machinations
I could not have done
I remained silent
silence brokered for a cigarette
to which I refuse
until
the swiftness
of wiffness
of roasted caffeine
filled the room
[Editor’s Note]: White Noise, was a work created by the artist for the “Everything Coffee,” prisoner art exhibit in New York.
The Sorcerer’s Brew
I was first awoken
by its smell
It was carmel
smell
in my mind
roasted
and toasted
to perfection
like an erection
so orgasmic
like reaching out
for a lover again
on the morning after
washing over the tongue’s tendrils
like the baptismal cleansing
that washes away all sins
this caffeinated liquefied warmth
with all its herbal toxicants
of sugars and spice
tho it brings nothing nice
but sin
to do
again and again
Lust
a lust
a desire
an indescrible addiction
for more and more
caffeinated liquefied warmth
sips unending
its herbal toxicants
of sugar and spice
amongst the souls it treats
so
damn
nice
[Editor’s Note]: The Sorcerer’s Brew, was a work created by the artist for the “Everything Coffee,” prisoner art exhibit in New York.
INCARCERATION NATION
My country
is still not free
This sordid land
of hypocrisy
Of thee I sing
Land where my fathers died
Land where the slaves did cry
on every mountainside
Prisons reign supreme
About Paintoem
Poem by: C-Note
Painting by: C-Note
Incarceration Nation is an original work of ink, graphite, and wax on paper. Done by Donald “C-Note” Hooker in 2017. The painting was inspired by the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March in August of 2017, and is the sequel to his first political work Black August-Los Angeles. The red dots represent the location of the state sanctioned deaths of: Travon Martin in Florida; Michael Brown in Missouri; Sandra Bland in Texas; Philando Castile in Minnesota; Freddie Gray in Maryland; Ezell Ford, Wakiesha Wilson, Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) & Oscars Grant in California; and Charleen Lyles in Washington State. The poem written later in the year was inspired by the NFL players “Knee Protest.”
” I was looking at other iconic American verbal expressions of patriotism,” says C-Note. “And My Country, Tis of Thee, also known as ‘America,’ is probably third on that list. The creative juices to create the poem had nothing to do with the painting; however, together they make an excellent one-two punch, as a political work of art.”
The painting Incarceration Nation was given to the California Prison Focus as a donation. However, you can still buy prints of this piece, and other related products, at Fine Art America
[Editor’s Note ]: This Paintoem, like all Paintoems, are given to the public, to have free use rights, so long as acknowledgement is given to the artist(s).
Links to other Paintoems:
Mprisond
My Dilemma
Tears of the Mothers
Black August-Los Angeles
More Paintoems
Incarceration Nation (Paintoem) available in prints.
California Prison Focus is a 501(c)3 non-profit whose work as a prisoner’s news source needs generous public support. Click here to their website’s donation page
California Prison Focus • 1904 Franklin St • #507 Oakland, CA 94612 • contact(at)prisons(dot)org • (510) 836-7222
MR. WARDEN
They call me Mr.Warden
and in my mansion
there are many rooms
Rooms of despair
where nobody cares
If you live or die
Where nobody cares
if you scream or cry
So addicts beware
the high you receive today
Will be the low
I’ll give tomorrow
About the Paintoem
Poem by: Donald “C-Note” Hooker
Painting by: Donald “C-Note” Hooker
“I tell people all the time how important your sketch pieces can be,” says C-Note. “The painting is an unfinished work. The poem, I was thinking about addicts, addiction, and A.A., and how if drug use don’t kill’ya; you’ll likely end up in here.”
[Editor’s Note ]: This Paintoem, like all Paintoems, are given to the public, to have free use rights, so long as acknowledgement is given to the artist(s).Links to other Paintoems:
Mprisond
My Dilemma
Tears of the Mothers
Black August-Los Angeles
More Paintoems
Mr. Warden (Paintoem) available in prints.
Mprisondpoetz 