HEY THERE

Courtesy of Courtney Hanson

by Sherie Jarvis

Thanks for the strength and the courage you have shown.

People blow in the wind forgetting that with help change is growing.

People like me broken but still manage to keep the love flowing…

It was once #metoo, I am #transgender and #black lives matter even in this prison 

where the way I look keeps bad chatter.

I’ve fallen but if they’ll remove their foot off my neck I can get up and breathe.

Scattered scars, bruised heart, memories that don’t leave.

Childhood in a wild hood just now learning to read.

Understand my struggle before calling me a bad seed.

HEY THERE no one was there why didn’t they take the time to love me.

God is near, but why didn’t they physically hug me.

When the masks come off and the smoke has cleared,

when all lives matter and no one is weird just maybe I’ll make it home to say 

HEY THERE.

Special thanks to the The Fire Inside for sharing this poem and poet, published in The Fire Inside, Issue Number 61, Summer 2020 

The Fire Inside is a Newsletter of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners

4400 Market St., Oakland, Ca. 94608 

For Vickie

Help i can’t breathe
Was her only plea
But it was not met with urgency and now beautiful soul gone too soon
Preventable yes
But CDCR is never accountable for their mess
So we stand here and protest
We shout the names of our lost loved one
Vickie we love you
Vickie we will fight for you
Vickie you won’t die in vain
Vickie we are sorry
Sorry because we couldn’t save you from a system that enslaved you
The same system that claimed they wanted to help you
Failed you
We, your sisters and brothers, are sorry that we are still powerless in 2019 from preventing these systems from destroying our families
CIW u r guilty
Of inmate cruelty
I have no reason to lie
I once was a victim you see
No more hiding behind these gates
The truth has been told
We’re shutting you down
I promise you that
even if cost me my soul
Screaming no more deaths is becoming a little too old
We are taking the power back
We will see that to it that you get closed
For good
Thank you

by Taylor Lytle

[Editor’s Note]: Originally published in The Fire Inside (Newsletter of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners), Issue Number 60, Fall 2019.

IN ANY EVENT

IN ANY EVENT
Manifesting a dream by sticking to the script on the team of the righteous what can be better than this
Probably guided although there’s a tendency to drift
The race is not to the Swift
Not to the gifted
But to all who patiently preserve will be uplifted

IN ANY EVENT
it’s not the goal but the process to which we endure
it’s not the gold but the struggle to become pure
sure to win with the love of God
rising above sin to beat the odds
what we’ll receive in return is blessings of the spirit
The ability to discern written down in lyrics
To serve as a legacy never-to-be-forgotten
A theme that can never be switched

IN ANY EVENT
we’ll make it make sense
IN ANY EVENT
By sticking to the script
IN ANY EVENT

Copyright 2020 Kenny Jacobs II
aka Kool The Poet

Unprecedented Quotes

These are The Words of a Genius

UNPRECEDENTED QUOTES

created by way of desire to inspire hope
Now they know when at first they didn’t
Now it show and many are smitten legitimate skills learned through self-education self-made elevation earned as a chosen occupation
These are its revelations
equipped with remnants of the greats that passed away
Reminiscent of the beauty and brilliance that’ll never decay
Always its sway seems to resurrect even through extreme poverty and disrespect
It’s been tried and true
It’s rise is expedient
Producing good fruit
The words of a genius
Never before known but exceptional and sound
originated to epitomize perfection and cultivate a style
service with a smile used as a mechanism to cope
who knew it would give several people hope
These are the words of a genius UNPRECEDENTED QUOTES

Copyright 2020 Kenny R.Jacobs II
aka Kool The Poet

AUDIO: Can’t Black Lives Matter Too???

DAREALPRISONART · Can't Black Lives Matter Too???

by Donald “C-Note” Hooker

Keep On Living

When when you feel that life is a blank
It’s a sure time for you to give thanks
Search your subconscious it truly knows
It’s a true friend of all lonely Souls

Life is a struggle from the time it’s conceived
It’s all worth living if you only believe
The greatest gift available has been given to you
Be thankful and be true to life and see what it does for you

We’ve all got something coming some good and some bad
In our search for happiness we learn what it is to be sad
It’s the way of the world and Nature’s always fair
Never showing just one of anything but always revealing a pair

So take hold of your life it’s preciousness is divine
The things you can never get enough of are truly life and time
So be considerate of life and consciousness of time
For in their true Essence their neither yours nor mine

By Eric W. Davis aka Sami A. Mateen

Black Rose

Artwork, “Black Rose,” by Donald “C-Note” Hooker

Unique and unexpected this black rose.
Its Essence is of a rock, the strength is within…
With the stiff fluffy it does not wither.
My black is beautiful, my black is tough.
Imagine it rising from the concrete?
Think of its scent?
Here, take a whiff,
the eloquent fragrance, it’s Heaven Sent!!!!
The possibilities are endless,
just visualize its song?
The month of February Marks Its Beginning.
You see, in the mind’s eye its resilience is encouraged by the spirit of Mother Nature…
Envision this complicated living, Thug the label I was giving but I didn’t want this.
Runaway slave because I refuse to be crammed in on a slave ship.
Abandoned and rejected like Jesus Christ,
not protected as an adolescent,
not loved by Society, but Still the Lord bless me,
because every time folks strut pass me:
they gawk in amazement because I’m #Mixedish…
Hope you realize you blessed?
The trials and tribulations of a ghetto kid.,
who once didn’t love his Black skin.
Still standing strong through many storms, fingerprint of God.
Nurtured by those with loving hands facilitating its growth–
re storing Justice and healing it’s wounded pedals.
Gorgeous black rose with the life blood of a million Souls Rising through its roots straight from the concrete.

By Darryl Burnside

Institutional Diaspora of Black Americans will be Represented at 29th Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry.

On Saturday, February 2nd, 2019, in Oakland, California, at the Oakland Public Library, West Oakland Branch, Multi-Purpose Room, from 1 p.m. through 4 p.m., will be the 29th Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry. This year’s theme is aligned with the 2019 theme of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Association for the Study of African American Life and History (EST 1915). ASALH’s 2019 theme of Black Migration emphasizes the movement of people of African descent to new destinations and subsequently to new social realities. While inclusive of earlier centuries. This theme focuses especially on the twentieth century through today. “When speaking of the Black experience, I’ve coined the phrase ‘Institutional Diaspora’ as the mass migration of Blacks from their American homes to America’s prisons,” says Donald “C-Note” Hooker. Inspired by the theme of the event, C-Note created an original work for the event entitled, American Negro: A Migrant’s Story. It poetically chronos the mass migration of American Blacks from their West African homelands to America’s prisons.

Catch the recital of American Negro: A Migrant’s Story at the 29th Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry or read it online at Mprisond Poetz.

Event: 29th Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry
Date: Saturday, February 2, 2019
Time: 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Location: Oakland Public Library, West Oakland Branch, Multi-Purpose Room
1801 Adeline Street, Oakland, CA 94607 (510) 238-7352
Contact: Oakland Public Library, West Oakland Branch, (510) 238-7352 or event organizer, Ms.Wanda Sabir (510) 255-5579 or info@wandaspicks.com

Mprisond Poetz
American Negro: A Migrant’s Story
https://mprisondpoetz.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/american-negro-a-migrants-story/

American Negro: A Migrant’s Story

Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
From my West African Motherland
to an island in the Caribbeanne
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
To a plantation in a Southern State
to Emancipation from which I could not escape
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Back to enslavement
because the 13th Amendment says they can
because of convict leasing
just ask any historianne
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Went home to the Maker
from being hung from a tree
cause the Ku Klux Klan
thought that’s how it ought to be
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Jim Crow
a great friend of the Klan
so I left the South
to become a Chicagoanne
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Congress cut off funding
for Wars in foreign lands
created a drug called Crack
from the Columbian Hinterlands
Started a Drug War
aimed at the Black community
and locked us all up
with impunity
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Now I’m a part of this new diaspora
from Miami, L.A., Brooklyn to Peoria
21st Century Jim Crow.
Now a penitentiary cell is my new home
Back to bread and water being a full-course meal
just like an 1841 so what’s the big deal
THIS IS THE AMERICAN NEGROS’ MIGRANT STORY
went from a plantation Hell
to a Warden’s prison cell
Now we’re just lonely and alone
and the songs we once heard
we don’t hear no moe
“Brotha over there
in the next cell,
‘Are you still listening for the drum beat
the drum beat?’
I don’t”
Oh Lord, just put my heart to sleep
heart to sleep
American Negro: A Migrant’s Story

by Donald “C-Note” Hooker

Artwork by C-Note

My Concrete Hell

I sit here and I look around
I can’t believe this is where I’m found
This is my world, in this cold, dark, cell
My concrete Hell

A tray of food through a hole in the door
There’s no chairs to sit on
So I eat on the floor
Nice cold showers three times a week
From a knob on the wall it comes out weak
This is my day
In this cold dark cell
This is my concrete Hell

The clothing I wear a stained, and used
From my bra, to my underwear, socks and shoes
No one to talk to,
No one to care
So I sit on my bunk, and that the walls I stare
All alone in this cold, dark cell
This is my life
This is my concrete Hell

My 3″ mat on a concrete bed
A stainless steel toilet
Is my right next to my head
I sit on my bunk, and look around

This is the place where I am found
All alone in this cold, dark cell
This is my punishment
My concrete Hell.

by Katrina Blasing