I Am

by | Oct 1, 2020 | Detention Center Writing Contests, Poetry

I Am

by Derrick Barnes

 Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August, 2020

I am a colorful bowl of experiences and

A mosh pit of circumstances

A cosmic collission of parents and a micro drop

Of seemen defined

I feel no one should be able to judge me because

I’ve walked alone through time

I have been shown that remnants of ancestors

Coated the pedals of eternity on this earthly

Plane

My existential knowledge has many of those

Who don’t understand me thinking I’m completely

Insane

But I would venture that none would be willing

To carry the water of my life’s pain

I was never alone in the realm of physical

Space

But my deamons were real and shielded me from

God’s grace

I am a firing of synapses that have awaken

Electrons trapped in my mind

A simple realization of abandonment in hopes

Of the sublime

I’m a singular organism bound by my environmental

Conditions

Filtered by worldly renditions guided by

DNA preminition

My so called memory of ideals that are

Encased in predetermined events as destiny

Had molded me

I am a zygote by identity, an embryo by

Determination, a fetus by choice, a boy

By birth, and a prisoner by a mistake

But yet I am still Human

A Face of the Epidemic

by | Sep 29, 2020 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, Non-fiction, non-fiction

A FACE OF THE EPIDEMIC

by Ebonie Warren

 First place winner, nonfiction, Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August 2020

I remember walking home from school by myself on one of the rare occasions that I went. My mother had not showed up and I was 6.

I can see the house up ahead. Maybe she’s not home as usual but as I approach I somehow know that something is wrong.

See I took care of her and my sisters and I hated at 6 that I couldn’t stop the insanity that was my life.

When I walked into the basement which was part shooting gallery and part our living space, I immediately start looking for my twin sisters and when I find them in a corner rocking back and forth I know that today will change my life.

Then I heard a man’s voice and I followed it to the back and there on her knees was my mother and 3 men standing in front of her and one of them had a gun.

I knew in that moment I could deny her nothing.

I took care of her when she was drunk or when she nodded out with a needle in her arm. I pulled it out.

So when she looked at me and said “Mommy needs a big favor” I somehow knew that my needs didn’t matter. Everyone else came first and sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the survival of everyone involved even at the expense of your very existence.

So that day I traded my innocence for her life while she held my hand through it all. See I’ve lived in an epidemic long before the world acknowledged it.

I am a 5th generation addict. Addicts are beautiful, misunderstood people who just want a break sometimes because life can be cruel. We assume our realities are all consuming and our feelings will strangle us.

Jail gave me the opportunity to be clear headed long enough to see that my life can change. I don’t have to die a statistic and my mother’s life was not a prophecy for my future.

I almost turned it into one and only I can do that. I am not evil, evil was just done to me. I am not my mother, I just came from her and life is bearable.

Being in recovery is only one dimension of the many that make up me. I am an intergration of all my experiences, failures, and successes. I am a mother, a sister, a good friend and a fragile women. I mess up sometimes, but that only makes me human.

Get to know the stories behind this epidemic because that’s where the healing starts. Every one of us has a story to tell.

We are more than numbers in statistics.

We want help managing our disease.

What is Your Vision of What Hope and Change Looks Like?

by | Sep 29, 2020 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, Non-fiction, non-fiction

What is Your Vision of What Hope and Change Looks Like?

by VE

Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August 2020

Do you hear me?

Am I loud enough or is my silence too profoundly compendous for you to bare?

Is it a sin that the hue of my skin is Black?

Is being Black a condemnation to death?

Why do you hate me so much?

They’ve deemed me a menace to society, they’ve even called me a super preditor, morally demonizing and dehumanizing me and those who look like me. I’ve been racially profiled, discriminated against, the justice system looks the other way when injustice is done to us.

The law claims that your innocent until proven guilty, but they obviously left out the part that says unless your Black. Do not be oblivious to the smoke screens and the propaganda. I’ve been asualted, I’ve had my nose and my lip busted on several occasions. I’ve been maced, tear gassed, tazored on my left collar bone which could have left me parallyzed. I’ve had to plead with law enforcement officers “please don’t shoot my brother” repeatedly. Thank God I was there because they would have killed my brother that night.

I was only 15 years old.

I’ve had law enforcement officers put their knees on the back of my neck as we’ve all seen being done to George Floyd obstructing air to my lungs on two different occasions in Toledo Ohio.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

8 minutes and 43 seconds of pure evil fueled with hyperkinetic energy as we watch another unarmed Black man die at the hands of law enforcement. I’ve seen so many unarmed Black men die at the hands of law enforcement that I suffer from hyper vigilance and post traumatic slave disorder.

They say slavery has been abolished, but I beg the differ. The new Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex, systematic racism, racial profiling when will it all stop?

You can’t be free if the cost of being you is too high. To my black brothers and sisters, let that resonate for a minute. You can’t be free if the cost of being you is too high.

What is my vision of what hope and change looks like, to me is to become the hope and change that I would like to see.

My vision of what hope and change looks like is from being confined to a jail cell serving a two year sentence as of March 8th 2019 to being released early on October 2020 on good behavior accumulated through working eighteen months of the nineteen months that I spent incarcerated at Arlington County Detention Facility.

My vision of what hope and change looks like is leaving from this correctional instituition to picking up where I left off in school. Begining classes spring semester January of 2021 to graduation from UDCCC Sumla Cumlade with honors 3.75 GPA or higher. As a certified and licensed Aviation Maintenance Technician /Aircraft Machanic along with an Associates Degree.

My vision for hope and change is then transferring to the….Okalhoma University’s Aviation Mechanical Engineering Program fall of August 2022, thus applying and becoming a recipient of the Academic Excellence Transfer Shclorship which requires a 3.75 transfer GPA or higher. This will provide an $18,000 scholarship at $9,000 a year for two years.

My vision of what hope and change looks like is graduating from the….Okalhoma University with my Bachlors Degree as an Aviation Mechanical Engineer with a minor in Business Administration and a concentration in Aviation Management. Then furthering my education to acquiring my Master’s Degree.

Do you understand the inertia that I am ready exert towards my dreams, goals and aspirations? How dare I attempt to spark change in the world if I’m not willing to look from within and change myself. The greatest appology is changed behavior, to my mother I’m sorry.

I’ve changed once I’m released from incarceration in due time my actions will prove likewise. The preparation and experience most necessary for understanding and valuing a gift is experiencing its opposite.

“The body is the greatest canvas, and each day you have a chance to create how you wish to see yourself.” Caprianna Quan.

What do you do with your most prized possesions? You buy a safe and lock them up. God loves me so much that he locked me up, to realign my soul with his preeminate purpose in my life and the lives of others, so I could be a soldier in his army to spark the change the I want to see in humanity.

But first it must start with me. From the words of Henley the great philosopher “I am master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

My mentor the great Mrs. Watkins once said “Don’t chase love, money, or sucess. Become the best version of yourself and those things will chase you.”

I vow from here on out to live by that model.

In closing leaving you with luminosity the opposite of quandary. How do we bring good things into our lives?

The act of manifesting means dissolving beliefs that are holding us back while simultaneously aligning ourselves with the vibration of our desires. There’s a frequency to everything. So we can align with the energy of love mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

The key to happiness is having dreams, the key to success is achieving them.

What is my vision of what hope and change looks like? Here I stand before you Black and proud, King Vic I am a God from the continent of Africa Cameroon to be exact. Je ma pelle Victor. Je pallé Francé, le mere Madamaselle Hanna, le Pa Mesier Victor. Como sava? Sava bien. Como tallé voue? Je ney say qua?

God is a Greek word derived from the Ancient Aramic words “gumar”, “oz”, and “dubar” which means wisdom, strength and beauty. As the Honorable Minister Louis Farrkhan tells us “we have been turned backward. Instead of calling ourselves God we say, yo what’s up Dog?”