I have learned to embrace my ugly truth to perhaps help other people open up to theirs.
“Loss”
Women are supposed to give birth
Therein lies their worth
Ultimate femininity
Expanding the human race
Leaving a piece of me
Forever multiplied in someone else
Infinity in the soft soil of a womb
Me
22 years old
Sentenced to life
Sentenced to be barren
My body a dry desert
“Loss”
Women are supposed to give birth
Therein lies their worth
Ultimate femininity
Expanding the human race
Leaving a piece of me
Forever multiplied in someone else
Infinity in the soft soil of a womb
Me
22 years old
Sentenced to life
Sentenced to be barren
My body a dry desert
Oh, child of my womb
I sometimes swear I feel your heartbeat
Your restless soul move
I see you in my dreams
A little girl
Ribbons the colors of cotton candy.
My baby girl
Trapped within me forever
Serving life in the prison of my womb.
I even named you
Epiphany
My awakening to womanhood
But I am just a girl
Never a woman
If I can’t let you out.
The emptiness taunts me
Like a bully on a playground
“You’ll never be truly feminine!”
Half a woman
An unfinished piece of art.
Begging the sculptor to complete me.
“Body”
You locked up my body, but you’ll never own me.
You gave me a number so you could count me every day, while you do everything to remind me that I no longer count.
While you were caging me in and tightening the locks, my mind struggled free. My spirit soared past the fences and wall, and left you behind.
My body remains locked up, but you will never have my soul.
I am free because I will not let you confine my mind.
While you were walling me in, I was walling you out.
Your man-made fortress is no match for the one I constructed around my heart, mind, and soul.
All your attempts to break in, damage me, demean me, derail me, and defeat me are futile. I decided long ago to never grant you entry.
Like mad scientists in a lonely lab, you concoct potions to bring about my demise.
Your mistake is that you never counted on the resiliency of my spirit.
I turned your hate into love, and emptied my pain into a river of good.
While you plotted to kill me, I planned to live.
The struggle rages on; I can never rest.
You are a relentless enemy, lurking and stalking, but I am a fierce warrior.
You may have my body, but you will never own my soul.
I am a Human of San Quentin.
My father only had a third grade education and was content simply knowing how to write his name. My father and mother bore nine of us in 21 years. There is no doubt he was a busy man. On weekends he would tie one on with his favorite beverages, Ten High or SonnyBrook whiskey.
Little did we know that he was a functioning alcoholic, nipping throughout the week. He showed his love but it was more conditional when it came to his sons. The characteristics he wanted from his sons were aggression, assertiveness, defending his own beliefs, dominant, forceful, independent, leaders with a willingness to take a stand and to take risks.
My life changed forever in the summer before seventh grade when I was introduced to the female anatomy by a woman forty years my senior. Fortunately and unfortunately, I learned to be adaptable, secretive and tactful, I was well on my way to toxic masculinity. Once I reached high school, I thought I could ride on my athleticism.
Boy was I wrong. I started ditching classes and was expelled for a week and that angered me since I had an attitude of entitlement. I had one foot in school and one foot in the streets. The streets won out. Several prison terms later I made my way back to school. My school experience replaced the cockiness of my youth with confidence.
Of all my mentors at San Quentin, I accredit much of my self awareness to Dr. Karen Louvass and Dr. Jennifer Fisher. They helped me shed my biases toward gender. My true process of becoming a better human being started with my mother. She taught me to be affectionate, compassionate, understanding, tenderness, warmth and sensitive to the needs of others.
I have so much to live for today and I’m ready to give up that lifestyle that at one point I thought I would die for.
I moved to San Francisco back in 2009. I was young, just 19 years old, and I quickly fell in love with the city. Some of my most cherished memories are from here, and even some of my more painful ones as well.
The date of October 17, 2015 is my happiest, I remember speeding down Geary Street in a yellow cab to watch the birth of my son.
My worst memory was a couple years later on an early, foggy, quiet, morning on a deserted street in the Tenderloin District, I destroyed the peacefulness with the deafening roar of a .45 caliber handgun. It only took me three pulls on the trigger to forever destroy someone’s life and my own.
The ripple effect for my actions are endless. It’s not just my life and my victims’ lives I affected, there’s the families of both the witnesses, the community, and so many more people.
My biggest hardship is that my son only sees me behind bars. At least I still have a connection with him and support from my family.
I am now accountable for my actions and I am truly working to change. I was blessed to get a 11-year deal for attempted homicide. I work hard on myself and my certificates are proof, but more than anything else my actions are reinforced.
Even though I only have three and a half years in and a little over five years to go, I have faith in my success this time because I have a good plan.
At 11 I met E. Jay who would become a big brother and one of my biggest inspirations when it came to honest work for honest pay.
Prior to meeting E. Jay, I would scour my Watts neighborhood in search of work to help beautify it. At the same time, I would find time to destroy it. I would vandalize schools, throw rocks at cars and fight. This duality of good and evil as a youth was mind boggling.
E. Jay took me under his wing and taught me trades in the construction field. He showed me how to remodel homes, the brother had style when it came to remodeling. Some of the trades stuck with me like painting, drywalling and tile setting.
Still, I resumed my normal routine of ebb and flowing through the hood. This eclectic flow would come to a temporary halt when I met E. Jay who did his best to inflict structure into my contradictive life.
When he and I met, I asked him if I could wash his car. He said, yes, and after you finish washing the car, you can cut the grass. When I completed both tasks, he said that he had a list of things that needed to be done if I was willing to do them.
Here began my lessons of honest work for honest pay, with a dash of hidden crime prevention.
After school, I would shoot to E. Jay’s house knocking down task after task. After one particular job, we stopped at a gift shop where I bought my mother a gift with my honest pay; etching the experience in my mind for a life lasting effect.
Still, I would religiously find time to hit the streets with my fellow rebels. E Jay would inspire me with his work ethic, impacting me with skills that would enable me to obtain my own handyman service.
Two years later, I would be seeing E. Jay for the last time when I entered the department of corrections for the third time. Today, I appreciate E. Jay’s attempt to erect a structure in my young eclectic life. I reminisce on all the love shared between me, E. Jay, Jacky and their children – who I miss, love, and adore.
I want to urge you to obey your guardians and to keep an open mind toward neighbors who are willing to impart stability into your precious lives.
Be yourself. Be straightforward. It sounds so simple, so easy, but not for me, an ex-womanizer and a player. Beautiful women amaze me.
I tailored my game to fit whatever personality I found the woman to be. I would customize lies to fill in the needs of whoever I was talking to.
I don’t know how I look to them, nor do I know what they see in me, but I do know the feeling when I disappoint them.
If I make a joke when they are expecting me to be sincere… OH MY GOD – I get raked through the fire! I feel hell hath no fury!
But when I’m honest and I connect straight from the heart, that is the single most greatest feeling in the entire world. I love to feel that. I feel like a 200 mph NASCAR at full throttle or a 300 mph quarter mile DRAGSTER with flames flying out of my headers!
Have you ever seen a single, solitary snowflake or watched snow fall slowly from the sky? At the moment, that’s how it feels when I hold her heart in my hand. It’s Luciano Pavaratti when he hits the crescendo.
When I speak to her from my heart and she receives me, it’s a very beautiful thing.
So why is it so hard to just be normal, to be myself and be straightforward? The same reason that jumping out of a plane even with a parachute is scary, exhilarating and bewildering, but oh so beautiful and ultimately, oh so rewarding.
Your Eyes
I have never seen such beautiful eyes.
I stand here mesmerized.
Electromagnetic energy ignites your eyes ablaze
I am utterly amazed
Your eyes are like sapphires in your face
Like the river-your eyes more beautiful than the Nile
When I look in your eyes I feel my soul smile