I Am

By J.

I am nobody,

a brother and unwed father.

I am a person who has dreams.

I am a Black male with no place to go.

I want to become a better person.

I want to make a living.

I do not want to know what I know. 

For My Sister

By Raheem

When people ask me if I miss you,

I wish I could turn back the hands of time.

I never wanted any harm to come your way.

I wish I never had to live through that day.

I hate it that you died at such an early age.

I wish I could have you for a quick minute just to kiss you

and to let you know

you have my middle name in memory.

Thinking about how you died kills me.

Writing

By Michael

Writing has taken me to a lot of places.

It has taught me to be respectful to others

and how to treat them, too.

By sitting down and thinking about things,

I want to do things I never did.

I want to finish school and get a decent job

and just be a husband and a father.

I want my daughter to grow up not being like me or her mother.

I want my daughter to finish school and be somebody.

I'm not a nobody.

I am in this hole doing a county year

trying to get my life straightened out,

trying to be a man

so I can take care of my responsibilities of being a father and husband.

I love my wife and daughter, and I don't want to lose them.

They know my struggle.

I pray to God every night wishing to have a better life

and not having to sell drugs and ending up here anymore.

I just want to change my life.

I want everybody to look at me differently.

I don't want them to look at me as a drug dealer

and a gang banger.

I wish I could go back to when my grandfather was alive,

and I was never in this.

I just wish a lot.

Trying

By Angel

I spent many hours wandering through life

with no real happiness,

trying to fill my soul deep inside,

drinking and smoking,

and the next day it was there again.

This led to jail,

to unfulfilled days

that turned into forgotten weeks,

to lost months

that can never be recovered.

I am trying hard to find true happiness.

Writing

By Bruce

I write because it helps me when I'm mad.

Sometimes I write

so I can learn how to write better,

or just to learn what I'm thinking.

I write because

there is nothing to do sometimes.

I think people write to express their feelings.

I am the type

who just writes poems

because the stuff I think about just comes out.

When I write poems it's like talking.

What I Have To Say

By Rodney

I have to say

the day I lost my baby

I wanted to leave everybody behind.

I have to say

my baby was my heart and soul.

Now I feel empty handed.

I have to say

the day the hospital called my house

telling me I had to come,

I knew something was wrong.

I have to say that things aren't the same anymore.

There is a big difference now.

I have to say

my life is upside down

and is being thrown around

and not like a ball on the rebound.

My baby is in heaven.

I have to say that I feel pain

even when I don't think about what happened that day,

December 20th,

powerful pain,

tears come down.

It is over.

I am so sorry.

My truth is stronger than this jail time I am facing.

My truth is solid,

concrete, pavement, and steel mixed together all into one.

My truth sometimes leaves my head

the comes back again like life after death.

My truth is dangerous,

more dangerous than a hurricane, a volcano, and a burning building.

This is my truth.

Where Do I Belong

By Dominique

Where do I belong?

Life is confusing, and I've been trying forever to find out where I belong.

I have learned that to know where I belong

I have to know who I am.

I have to look inside my heart

and find myself.

This is hard

because I have taken so many roles in my life,

I don't know which one is really me

or if any of them are.

I have more than one side,

and I get mixed up in them

so I don't know who I really am

or where I belong.

Can You

By Matt

Can you picture me?

Can you picture a teenager full of pain?

Can you picture a teenager as a criminal?

Can you picture me as a criminal?

Are you trying to terminate my rights?

I mean no harm.

Do I offend you?

Can you picture me

as someone like you trying to make a living?

I have always been diverted or misdirected or corrected.

Just answer the question,

can you,

can you picture me as a father who has kids who are not harassed

and shoved into cages.

Can you, can you, can you

picture me as a college professor?

Locked Up

By Reggie

Being locked up is crazy and stressful,

the things you go though before you're sentenced,

like people talking about their bids,

and fights

and everything.

The other crazy thing

is the way you can be treated anyway

and be talked to anyway.

I tell myself

I put myself in this predicament,

and that's one of the stressful things about this.

Another stressful thing

is missing a lot of things

like family,

a good opportunity to get me somewhere,

having the opportunity to do something good,

and I'm not there to take it,

or I was there and I didn't take it.

Jail takes the place of my life,

and that's what's so stressful and crazy.

Being locked up

I think about all the things I want to achieve.

I think about all the positive and negative things

I ever did.

I think about increasing the positive

and decreasing the negative.

I think about my family

and what I am missing while I am locked up.

I am not there for my kid,

and I know my child needs me at all times.

I think about the days and the nights I am not there

and what goes on

and I am not there to tell him what to do.

Being locked up

I think about poverty

and the killings

and people coming to jail on drug charges.

Jail is time for me to think

about how not to come back.

Untitled

By Tyrail

Have you ever felt lost and all alone

with no one to call

and say I'm coming home?

Have you ever hurt and been in so much pain

that your heart was broken

and people poisoned your brain?

Have you ever felt you were lost and all alone,

ready to give up on life

so you drank and used drugs

thinking you could stop the pain?

Have you known you were killing yourself

and when you tried to change,

people kept judging you by your criminal past?