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 

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

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

by Donald “C-Note” Hooker

A Healing Place

A single Hawk Glides across the sky, a sign of Hope. Alone, i stand marveling at this beautiful place. A place of healing wounds that cannot be seen. War a distant memory. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Here he provides me all that I need. A quiet place. He allows me to lie down in Green Pastures, a water bearer to lead me to rest beside These Quiet Waters. A pleasant place to restore my soul. Yes, I’m considered blessed no longer stressed, even though I didn’t travel through muddy waters a search of a mother’s love. Condemned, because of my father’s past transgression. Through it all I fear no evil; for you are with me. When I bowed down on one knee, trembling in defeat, it was you who Lifted me and led me to this Pleasant place of grace and mercy. Surely healing and loving kindness shall follow me all the days of my life.

Inspired by Psalms 23

By Darryl Tyrone Burnside.

Visions From Within

There are times when visions of the sleeping demons which reside within are brought forth from chambers of Darkness within my mind. Even now, they stir and are restless as I hear the echo of the Lock and Load mechanism of 9 mm, Mini-14 and pump shotguns… As I wait for the sharp crack of the shouts everything seems to go black. Had only a second or two gone by–or was it longer than that? I had no idea but as I focused and brought myself back from the abyss, I realized that it was not me that was hit, but one of the vatos in front of me. It was not my own brains, blood, and shards of bone that was spattered everywhere… It was his–the vato that was laid out in front of me. With the screws yelling commands, whistleblowing, alarm sounding, and the familiar sound of keys rattling in rhythm with running footsteps… All I could do was step over the vato’s body. My boot coming down into a pool of blood that had already formed under the collapsed corpse. What’s gacho about the experience was I couldn’t even kneel down to help the vato for if I or anyone else would have done so the movements would have been construed or interpreted as aggressive and would have been placed in the same peril. An unknown and inexplicable hatred and rage surged through me for the animal that had just blown this vato’s brains out all over me. I was forced to step over him, walk away, and do so without showing any emotion whatsoever. For many years I was somewhat psychologically affected due to the blood I can never wash, sandpaper, or polish off my boots. Though at times I buffed out such a shiny gloss that the boots resembled mirrors. The stains seemed never to completely disappear. Perhaps the stains were only so deeply engraved into my subconscious that no matter what I did I could never remove them. As I relive the scenes and sequences of those events I can physically feel the anxiety, tension, and fear, as well as hear screams and sounds of chaos and disorder. The visions and images within are all alive and well. The memories of endless carnage and bloodshed are impossible to escape from or forget. They are as vivid as if I had only lived them moments ago. As I know not how to control these Demons of darkness which refuse to release the visions of chaos, madness, anxiety, death, angry hatred, despair, and fear, I can only hope to contain them. To witness grave injuries or the deaths of warriors who have stood beside me in peace-time and in battle is a heavy burden to bear, especially when one cannot reach out and help those Brave Fallen comrades. At times it’s almost unbearable to sit and hear the screams from within as their echoes reverberate through the chambers of my spirit. As pintos it’s not each to live with these conflicts, memories, and visions but what other choices do we have? As Warriors we are men of many wars, visions, and injustices. Our environments often dictate our actions, and although alive and seemingly healthy on the outside, within is a constant battle submerged in turmoil and conflict, the spirits of darkness which control those images, visions, and memories will never completely relinquish their hold on us. Though it is difficult to relive these memories they will forever be a part of us. So difficult to understand, as terrorizing as many of these visions are, they will always contribute to our inner strength and struggles and in them we will continue forward…and make it.

by Robert J. Garcia
PSP SHU
Copyright 2000

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

The Girl of Yesterday

I’m trying to find my way
Back to the girl of yesterday
Back to the girl I used to be
Back to when I was free
Free from the darkness of today
Free from the sadness inside me
How I get there I’m not quite sure
I only know I have to try
I Won’t Give Up, lie down, or die
I’m out there somewhere, I know I am
So I’ll keep on looking and I’ll find my way
Back to the girl of yesterday

by Sandy Blazinski

If

If
yesterday was today
and today, tomorrow
where ever you’d be
I would follow

by C-Note

©2018 Donald C-Note Hooker

Da Woman

I seen the sunrise the other day
and it was incredible
But not incredible as you
when I first laid my eyes on you
Then my soul had a quivah
my core a tighting
my eyes a blinking (cause I had to look twice)
What was before my eyes to see
was quite, quite the woman

by C-Note

©2018 Donald C-Note Hooker