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
Drawing by Herman McDonald, inspired by VE’s poem “Beyond These Walls”
by redclay | 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?”
by redclay | Sep 29, 2020 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, Non-fiction, non-fiction
Be Strong Black Man Don’t Cry
by VE
Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August 2020
Be strong Black man don’t cry. So I’m forced to wear this mask and mask my pain. How much more can I take when it seems as if every other day I along with the rest of the world watches yet another unarmed Black man die at the hands of law enforcement.
While deep down inside I feel ostracized, unloved, unwanted, affraid and perplexed. As a Black man in America it seems as if I don’t even have the right to be vexed, they’ll be quick to say there goes another angry Black man behaving savagely.
Society puts obstacles in the way of Black people such as police brutality, job discrimination, discriminatory practices which inhibits us from acquiring home loans and business loans in our desperate attempt to acquiring financial freedom, slavery, lynchings, voter discrimination, redlining, food deserts in our neighborhoods depriving us of fresh produce, healthy and nutritional foods as we suffer the aftermath of the disparities such as high blood pressure, diabetes, weak immune systems, clogged arteries, heart disease, strokes, matriculating into the corona virus ravishing through the Black community with fatality rates as high as 75% to 80% within the Black community.
Though we make up minute minority of the United States at only 13% society puts all these obsticals in the way of Black People then turn around and criticize us when we don’t rise above it.
When Trump said “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” That broke my already severed heart. But then again who am I kidding he was only perpetuating his deeminor and rhetoric fueled with violence, hate, racism and discrimination that we as the American body have endured throughout his presidency for the past three and a half years.
On the other hand concerning the mass protests that have been proliferated throughout the United States and eighteen other foriegn countries and counting.
As the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. I am overcome with a sense of hope seeing thousands of our Caucasian, Hispanic, and Asian Brothers and Sisters Standing in Solidarity with us. Thank you for finally being empathetic to our pain, trauma, and grief.
God intended for us to be alleys to each other not enemies. God created the human race with 46 chromosomes with 23 dominant and recessive allelies not Black, White, Hispanic, or Asian race. God said in Malachi 2 verse 10 “Have we all not one Father?” “Has not one God created us?” “Why do we deal treacherously with one another?” “By profaning the covenant of the Fathers.”
Studies have proven that since 2014 over one thousand Black men and women are killed consecutively each year at the hands of law enforcement. Studies have also proven that one in every one thousand Black men and women are subjected to die at the hands of law enforcement each year for the past six years since 2014.
They say slavery has been abolished but yet they still use the hanous tactics that were used on our enslaved ancestors only 155 years ago on us till this day.
It is 2020 but approximately six Black men have been lynced in California, Texas, and New York. What’s even more disturbing is that their deaths were ruled as a suicide with no foul play.
I can in no way phathom that any Black man would commit suicide by hanging themselves on a tree knowing the history of Black people being lynched in the United States.
When I was a boy in my country Cameroon West Africa I dreamed of living the American dream only to come to America and continuously watch this dream have the propentency to be shattered, dragged off and washed away everytime that I see another unarmed Black man’s lifeless body be driven off the scene DOA, DNR, dead on arrival, do not resistate and watch his blood be washed away as I watch the American Dream that was never intended to be mine or anyone who looks like me.
At that very moment symbolically and metaphorically the American Dream be washed away with our blood on these streets.
Be strong Black man don’t cry.
I’m a strong Black man but sometimes theirs nothing left for me to do but cry.
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