by redclay | Oct 1, 2020 | Detention Center Writing Contests, Poetry
Black or White
by Walter D. Kissee
Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August 2020
![](https://heardnova.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Kissee-Black-or-White-768x1024.jpg)
![](https://heardnova.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Kissee-Black-or-White-2-768x1024.jpg)
![](https://heardnova.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Kissee-Black-or-White-3-768x1024.jpg)
It’s bigger than black or white
Its a problem with the hole world.
Cant go to deep because they might get me a long road to healing.
Is our America at a point of reckoning.
The fight for Black Lives Matter Covid-19
what happen to that the fight for racial justice,
while we have police burtaitily
all of Americains from the death of George Floyd has sparked protestesting
while in police custody and with the many others we have lost this year and years befor.
A lot 21-21 Savage.
2020 has been a hellai of year
A lot of what is going on is Social InJustice which has made it to the top.
STOP KILLING US
Its not hard due to video that are captured for the world to see of the wongful things done where you get a immedite rection.
Frist we need to stop RACISM
STOP SOCIAL INJUSTICE
STOP KILLING US
We need to change this direction
There is nothing wrong with Change or Being different
2 Chainz said it best Yea Im differents
This brings high alert cause black lives do matter more in the black community
We are a major relfection in America and we are a problem
together we have a slow world history close nothing.
But repeat itself this has been going on decades now
Im facing a decad something I throught would never happen in the land of the free.
A now Im just a son to a bastad child,
antoher Black male lost to the prison system.
Of the Black America just a product of the envermont.
More kids growing up without a father.
Unable to explain how to be a man teach them right from wrong.
At this time its been so long my son explade he dosnt know how to talk to me any more
When I left he was 4.
Now 8.
When I come home if I make it he will be.
24.
The system and systemic justice system has found mondern Day Slaver.
And with being African being our accsiter where in slaved and white suprmacy always profiting George Whasington and Andrew Jackson both notably slave owners who are framed on our money.
The Red and Blue are to Serve and to Protect.
And Im not talking bout the Crip and Bloods
Im talking bout the Biggest Gang in the USA
Who is to protect
when you see the police you run cause you dont want to get attacked or terroized.
Now the non Black Barriey and Being the Public Horrors
Due to the Network and Techonology
Finally the world is standing with us.
Black Lives Matter.
by redclay | Oct 1, 2020 | Detention Center Writing Contests, Poetry
Beyond These Walls
by VE
Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August 2020
Beyond these walls lies love that envigerates the soul and peace that surpasses all understanding.
Second chances to the once broken and incarcerated men an opportunity at redemption,
another chance to choose right from wrong in the midst of temptation
desperately urning for instant gratification.
Beyond these walls millions of people are held captive,
metaphorically they are prisoners like us but yet free without these walls.
Though we are trapped physically they are prisoners
psychologically, emotionally and spiritually to
circumstances, society’s standards, family expectations, relationships that clearly states red flags DNR, do not resistate, greed, narsacism, materialistic objects.
The need to out do others, living above their means to keep up the Joneses,
spending money that they haven’t yet earned,
perpetually cycling this vicious cycle of accumulating debt.
Addition to social media likes masking pain entertwined with pleasure and reciprocity,
fear to take risks, working jobs that they are overworked under appreciated and underpaid.
Systematically we are programed to spend one third of our lives working for different companies investing in acquiring capital gain for the companies,
thus we are restricted or time to work on creating our own businesses or companies to gain fanancial freedom.
Give them just enough to survive, but not enough to prosper,
so they’d live paycheck to paycheck and acrude debt.
So theoretically were all doing time
weather it be psycially, pschologically, emotionally or spiritually.
Beyond these walls comparison is the thief of joy and the cousin to misery.
Beyond these walls achieving anything you want is 99% intentional and 1% mythology.
The greatest moment of achieving success most would think it is the actual moment of attaining success
but in all actuality the greatest moment is when we decide.
Every Fortune 500 company or wealthy individual all began with an idea which ultimately transmutated to financial independence.
Beyond these walls if you don’t plan appropriately your asking for a disaster.
Be willing to allow changes to occur that are not what you invisioned your exact finish to look like.
Beyond these walls you don’t have to get it perfect, you just have to get it started.
Beyond these walls choose the habits of successful people if you want to be successful and choose the habits of happy people if you want to be happy.
The only things that satisfies the soul are gratitude and love.
Beyond these walls your destiny awaits you, the impossible is obselite,
their are 24 hours in a day which equals 86,400 seconds,
a week equates 168 hours the eqivilant of 604,800 seconds,
one month equals 2,419,200 seconds and
31,536,000 seconds in a year
but it all starts from within these walls.
Make every second count and what we do with it within these walls
will determine what and whom we become beyond these walls
![](https://heardnova.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/McDonald-Beyond-These-Walls-768x1024.jpg)
Drawing by Herman McDonald, inspired by VE’s poem “Beyond These Walls”
by redclay | Oct 1, 2020 | Detention Center Writing Contests, Poetry
Clean, Laugh, and Pray
by Aaron Bunche
Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August 2020
![](https://heardnova.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Bunche-Clean-Laugh-and-Pray-768x1024.jpg)
![](https://heardnova.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Bunche-Clean-Laugh-and-Pray-2-768x1024.jpg)
![](https://heardnova.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Bunche-Clean-Laugh-and-Pray-3-768x1024.jpg)
I am convinced, with a zeal of a crusader, that I’m in the safest place, a twelve by four cell. I’m a recovering addict addicted to Fox News, and I fear knowone but God. For I have with me the whole armor for germs. I have on my gloves of laytex, my mask which is the preparation for the virus, and a bar of soap and water which is sharper than any two-edge sword; may you find yours today.
I have my own swag, I wear nothing but clean. If you want what I got on then you gotta pick it up at the showers. I’m a year sober from narcotics but I picked up a mean habit of washing my hands. I told the nurse my issue, she showed me tough love, she said “you’ll live.”
My hobbies are mopping my cell and scrubbing down my toilet and sink, but on the seventh day I rest. I can say then that my quarters were pleasing in my sight.
For sport I watch Trump reflect and dodge questions during briefings; if you say he won’t make the championship then you decieve yourself and reality may have passed you by.
On my shelf I keep many books. I have literature on the respiratory system to pass the time. I read articiles about how the Caronavirus swept Rome. I practice distance-learning, I stand exactly six feet away from the television as I watch the forcast’s temperatures decline like our stock market.
I look out not only for my own interests, but also for the interests of my mother. She would always tell me “submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee. I’ll tell her “commit to using hand sanitizer, resist touching your face and you will live.” For this is the victory that will overcome the virus—stay home.
Also, bless those who are not cautious like you, and pray for those who spitefully go out and about. What profit is it to man if he goes out to gain income, and looses his health and dies.
I have no vociferous rebellion to the state law anymore. When I leave this safe place, I press on towards the next safe haven, my home. Once I make it there I can truly say, I have fought the good fight, I am home and safe, I have kept the faith.
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