PRISONERS' VOICES

Howard Gibson

Deep in the garden
of my heart
there grows
a flower
A flower that
grows
and is shaded with
love
Love and happiness
for you

Change
There must be a
cadence of change
If the past echoes
loud and clear
Then that person isn't
truly seeking to change
his or her life

Keep teaching
I'm learning
You show me
I'll grow

Within
Herein lies
a lesson
To grasp
and be free
To understand
and accept
That all
is within from god to me

Have life, will share
Have hands, will hold
Have arms, will cuddle
Have heart, will give
Have mind, will communicate

I am what I am
In my struggle to be
To be what I am
I struggle with me
If I struggle alone
I am in darkness too
For self has no meaning
and nothing to share
For self has nothing to give
to care for.

Shakaboona

Prison camps with razor sharp steel teeth
Feasting on walking corpses
Begging with the crooked grin of a beggar
To be fed more and more
On assembly lines of fractured lives unaware of their precarious
Fate with prison and a death of regulation of the state
To feed and feed
A predator's appetite of capitalism
For human flesh and super profits
To quench an eternal thirst of greed
And a lust for power and control
While the poor and oppressed cries of anguish
Echo from many modern day slave plantations
The screams of two million convict slave labors'
Escaping the walls and barbed wire fences of the compound
Only to fall on the deaf ears of a people
Who consider themselves to be humane
Accomplices to amerika's criminal acts of a genocidal prison solution
Citizens remaining silent
Remaining resolved in their complicity
Remaining... violators of human rights
Unconcerned with amerikan institutionalized racism's
Machinations of a manufactured prison
class of poor
Oppressed and non white peoples
Labeling them criminal for amerika's new slave era
And while the masses and mass media mouths'
Continue to be sealed by the racist judicial system
And prison slave industry
The great beast devours many.

Todd (Hyung-Rae)Tarselli

C.S. Daniels

Often when freedom is discussed, it seems to me, it is viewed as a doorway to do whatever it is you want to do.
I have come to view this as wishful thinking of the deprived and oppressed. There is no such thing as absolute freedom, for everything is subject to some limitation. All freedom must be manifest inwardly before it can be manifest outwardly.

Self-mastery is the key to opening freedom's elusive door. When we shake off all the internal perceptions that promote self-destructive behavior, we are freed from the vices that distort our view of reality. Our caged spirit is set free to harmonize with the natural order of things. The natural order dictates that we honor our responsibility to self and kind. This is the power of freedom; a power that won't allow us to impose our will in an oppressive manner on anyone, or allow us to accept such a will being imposed on us or on others.

If everyone could do whatever tickled their fancy, sometimes at the expense of others, the world would be even worse than it is today. We should function in a way that is mindful of others. The truest freedom is wanting for our brother what we want for ourselves

Jerome Coffey

You have blessed me with your love,
the sacrificial love shown me since birth,
the comfortable love of family,
the caring love of friendship,
a mother's love,
deep and enduring.

You have raised me
with a delicate blend of
tenderness and strength,
reflecting God's love.
Your Christianity is more than a creed:
it is your way of life.

Thank you, mother,
for your work of love,
for the beauty of your person,
for the values I cherish