Imagine…
Nothing. Darkness. An abyss that stares back. This is what it felt like to be arrested for crimes I didn’t commit at 21 and given two life sentences at the age of 24. I was devastated and I didn’t know how to cope. My still developing mind couldn’t comprehend the loss of everything, how my children who were toddlers would never know the comfort of my arms when they cried in the middle of the night, that I’d never be able to take them to the zoo like I promised. That I would be locked in a cage because I was too poor to afford justice, too Black to be considered human, too expendable to be of any value…
I tried to kill myself.
Fortunately, they were able to pump my stomach and saved my life. It was on that prison hospital bed that I truly understood the value of my life. In the midst of my despair, I tried to bury myself, but I didn’t realize that my essence was a seed, and at my darkest point, that seed sprouted a spark and that spark became the guiding light that allowed me to see my own shadow in the darkness. I became my own light at the end of the tunnel. In the attempt to take my life I found it, and it gave me the impetus to BECOME which empowered me to CREATE. That’s why my first book was called “Glory of My Demise” because the glory I found in my attempted demise was myself. Thus the first words of the book contained my joy, pain and rage:
Tell no one what I have seen
and what I have done
but I hope you understand
I had to tell someone
(It was also my first attempt at trying to write a tanka.)
I wrote with a newfound urgency that bordered on obsession. Like Picasso said, “even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.” I’ve known of people incarcerated in solitary for so long, deprived of everything to the point where they had to write messages to the outside in their own blood, prick by prick. This is where the need to express becomes existential. I wrote stories, essays, poems, songs, raps. It was a rap that gave birth to my book “The Adventures of Ghetto Sam.” When you read the first chapter, you are reliving history with me, because that incident really happened! Ghetto Sam embodied my sense of humor, my sense of adventure, the wanderings of a lost soul through the excavations of nostalgia. The color was returning to my world, I was beginning to dream again, regain my swagger so to speak, my confidence returned and that energy gave the world Dutch.
Is the state ready to proceed?
That was my declaration of war to the system. To let it know that I had returned from the dead, ready to do battle for my FREEDOM. My words, thoughts, imagination and belief were being smuggled out in ink and my visions took flight. My books became films. The Dutch trilogy on BET, Sin starring Louis Gossett Jr., an Academy Award winning actor, is on Tubi along with C.R.E.A.M., Sincerely Yours, Queen of the Trap and Madame in the Mirror. I was determined to have an impact. If I couldn’t go to the world I brought the world to me. I had something to say. Create the world you want to live in. BE AN ARTIST. Even if you don’t write, draw, paint, or sculpt, you can still make your life your greatest masterpiece. The art of your BECOMING should exhilarate you, let the colors of the sunset seduce you and the wonders of nature intrigue you. EXPERIENCE this life, because life is BEYOND belief.
HER
Her sadness makes the sky cry,
her smile,
the warmth of the sun,
Her anger rumbles the earth,
quaking with each stiletto’d step,
Her skin glows like the radiance of ancient moons,
waxing full,
bringing light to the darkness,
love to the lonely,
Her touch kisses the wind,
a breeze like sigh,
wings as weapons,
spreading like the horizon,
rising like the phoenix,
rolling waves, rolling hips,
Jesus! Walk…
A trail of glitter wherever she goes,
a fragrance unforgettable,
Her hunger like a panther,
her body as dangerous as a growl,
Her ecstasy Heavenly,
Her presence,
Infinite…
