Gibran

oh yeah, due to our "messing up" it opened up the door for the Gentiles to be "grafted" in. Hooray for them. I don't wish to sound racist, but my primary focus is to awaken the so-called black man and black woman in America up. Had to know it was coming early on when Jesus chastised the Hebrews telling them that if the works he did in front of them had been performed elsewhere, the people would have bowed down and got right, but not us. But how can you blame anyone for trying to get in when they fit in. Check out the video. I will post a video

yes, there was a lot of intermixing. We were warned about this very same thing. We were cautioned by God not to intermarry and to keep our line pure. But there was this fascination with foreign women. And you are right, there were white folks that were in Egypt prior to Moses, and a lot of times when I say black, I mean black not actually skin tone as David was ruddy and this causes confusion because most people assume ruddy to meant reddish which it does, but redddish like a light-skinned person. Malcolm X was ruddy. During our flight from the Romans, some of us chose to remain in place and these are The Igos and the Lembas, who though still in Africa are Shemites. The rest of us are scattered. Like the Lembas like to say, "We are not lost, we are scattered."

Everyone knows that the Jews are God’s Chosen People, but everyone believes that the Jews who now occupy Israel are the trues ones spoken of in the Bible. Well, they are not the ones, we are. Thankfully, God said that He would leave a mark upon His people that would serve as a sign for who they are. I welcome you, at this point, to pull out your Bibles and turn to Deuteronomy 28. This was a very defining moment for us because it is through these specific passages that we are DEFINED. Please permit me the simple pleasure of telling you just how important that moment was. It was big for us because we are the only people that God Almighty made a covenant with. The Ten Commandments were meant specifically for us. God was not talking to any other people except us---His Chosen Ones in the exact same way that Jesus mentioned on more than one instance that he had come only to the lost sheep of Israel. As harsh as it may sound, Jesus’ whole ministry was not to save the world, but to save us, the Chosen Ones of God, the lost sheep of Israel. For the record, Jesus was from the tribe of Judah, the exact same tribe that we are from. In essence, Jesus was our homeboy. Okay, one other regression. Hitler knew who we are. There is a film as well as a book where Hitler patiently explains to his top generals who the true Jews were. He told them that the blacks were the real Jews. I guess that Hitler wanted it known that he was not killing God’s people because he once remarked about how America would one day be punished for enslaving God’s people. As bad as Hitler was, he was not foolish enough to tinker with God’s Chosen Ones. He left that up to Uncle Sam. Now, back to the story. Upon the Mount that day, Moses informed the newly-freed Hebrews whom he gathered together and proclaimed before them the news that on that day: “Take heed and listen, O Israel. This day you have become the people of the Lord your God.” He went on to spell out to us in clear, specific terms about what was about to go down. Moses told the Hebrews that if they obeyed God that they would be blessed. He also told them that they would be cursed if they failed to obey the commandments of God. We, via our forefathers, disobeyed God by worshipping false idols, and sure enough the aforementioned curses fell upon us. Since it is by way of these curses that the true Children of God are marked, let’s take a peek at them. Well, read ‘em and weep. Deuteronomy Chapter 28, verses 14-68. I implore, encourage, urge, and pray that you will study the video on YouTube called (1)THE CURSES OF TRUE ISRAEL. (2) THE CURSES OF THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY 28: 14-68. There are others. Please see for yourself. This is no joke. At last, the truth is before you. God, Most High, declared that if we disobeyed Him that He would send us back to Egypt in ships. What did that mean? Let’s break it down. Biblically, Egypt was known to the Hebrews as “the house of bondage” so when we were told that we would get shipped back to Egypt, God didn’t mean the physical place named Egypt. What was referenced was that we would again be sent into bondage, only this time in ships. Sound familiar. Ever wonder why we seem to be everywhere. Well, it is because God said that He would scatter us among all the nations of the world. In those verses, God tells us that we shall betroth a wife, but that another man shall lie with her. That happened quite a lot in slavery, don’t you think? We were also told that we would build a house but another man would live in it. What else was said? Oh yeah, what about the verse that says that our sons and daughters would be taken away from us and sold and that there would be nothing we could do about it. God told us in those verses that He would send against us an enemy from afar, a nation whose tongue we wouldn’t understand. He said that we would became “an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword” among all the nations where He would send us. I mean, shoot, we are an astonishment to each other. Just keeping it real, I have to admit that the black youth of today are an astonishment to me, but I remember how parents in the 70s were astonished at the youth of that time. As for bywords…..what about nigger, coon, monkey, Sambo? All these biblical markers identify us as the Children of Israel, God’s Chosen Ones. And sure enough, God punished us as any parent would when their children are disobedient. We openly disobeyed God and the aforementioned curses are the reason why we are suffering today, but are you ready to hear about the remedy? That’s right, there is a remedy. And given the cruel nature of our suffering, it would seem almost implausible to suggest a remedy that is so distinguishingly simple that it almost defies logic. However, God has told us that He will end our suffering if we REPENT and turn back to Him. However, there is a slight spiritual catch, namely that we must repent as a nation! It’s that simple. All we must do is to collectively REPENT. This has always been the key for us. Whoa, wait a minute. If that has been the key for us, does that mean that this is not the first time we have had to do this repentance thing? Let me pull your coat to something. The Bible ain’t nothing but our history book. The whole Bible is about us------and not about any other peoples on the entire face of the earth! And yes, due to our stiff-necked disobedience to God, we have been slaves practically all of our existence. Let me pause for a moment just to allow a moment of reverence for what now is. All at once, our complete heritage is before us. We can, at last, KNOW. We no longer have to assume shit. The truth is here, and the unadulterated truth is that of all the people on the planet, we are the only people that God calls His Own. Celebrate that, although the behavior of our forefathers was less than stellar and due to the choices they made, we were doomed to the misery we now suffer. It’s all about us. US! Okay, let me stop stalling. The truth will no longer permit me to be soft or apologetic so I boldly assert that God is personal with us. All those prophets in The Bible did not come for any other people. They came to warn us and to call us back to the right path. Not them. God Himself says that He is the God of Israel. In the Bible, God laments over our disobedience. In essence, we disappointed our God, who chose us to be His representatives on earth. We were supposed to teach the world how to live. We were to be the leaders of the world. Look at us. Even in our depraved state, the whole world emulates us. I don’t give a damn what we do, the rest of the world immediately follows suit. They want to be like us, they emulate our style, our dress, our culture. We are the best athletes and entertainers. In biblical lore, Judah was known as “the praisers”. Imagine that. We are praised all over the world for our abilities. Brothers and sisters, we were born to lead the world, but we are leading them to hell. Just remember that we can rule again as in the days of Solomon. All we have to do is to REPENT as a nation. To show how personal it is between Almighty God and us, His people, check out Isaiah 3: 18-26. Here, God chastises the black woman, known as the Daughters of Zion. It is and has never been any secret that the black woman is the most beautiful in existence. However, due to her great beauty, the sistas became “all that and a bag of chips”, and had to get straightened out. God Himself said that sistas were “haughty and walked with outstretched neck and wanton eyes.” Sistas were so sassy and fresh that God Almighty said that he would strike the Daughters of Zion with a scab on the crown of their heads. The verse reads that “Instead of well-set hair, baldness.” God said that this hair problem was meant to brand the sistas. Don’t get much more personal than that, does it, sistas? Now, you know exactly why your hair won’t grow. God also said that the brothas would die by the sword. We may be His children, but He doesn’t play with us. If, by chance, you have a few more minutes to spare, I would enjoy the privilege of taking you on a brief biblical journey depicting a spiritual snapshot of our trek into spiritual darkness and physical damnation. If you think we are something else now, rest assured that we were just as something else way back then, and it was this attitude that kept getting us in trouble with God. I mean, it has always been personal between God and us. He said that He had set us apart as His personal treasure. Wow….that’s deep. And it is good for us that God also said that he would never cast us away because we started acting up almost from the time we left Egypt. Anyway, due to our disobedience to God, we were enslaved by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, but it was the Romans who did us the most damage, and the reason we were even on the West Coast of Africa is that we fled there to get away from Roman persecution. Is the picture getting any clearer now? Oh yeah, lest I forget, I must add that by the time of the Roman slaughter of us, ten of the twelve tribes of Israel had been dispersed and the two remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin, simply became The tribe of Judah. Now, for a review. Judah was the name of the Israelite tribe that fled into Africa to get away from the Romans, and guess what happened to Judah? It shouldn’t take much to decipher that it was Judah who the Africans sold into slavery and put upon the ships going to America and elsewhere. Once more, we are the descendants of the tribe of Judah. Moreover, we are Judah! Okay, let’s get back to the part about repenting. On each and every one of those occasions mentioned above about us being in captivity by some other people, the suffering always ended when the people, as a nation REPENTED. It worked every time, but during all the other periods of our enslavement, we went in bondage together so whenever we got tired of worshipping other people’s idols, all we had to do was to get together and to repent. With us, it is different this time. You see, in those earlier captivities, we knew exactly who we were. We were just rebellious. In this present period of affliction, we do not know who we are so we don’t know what to do to get right. God was so through with us that this time, he split us up and scattered us to the four corners of the globe. This unarguably was going to be a major obstacle to any national day of repentance as in times past because we are scattered. But right now before your very eyes, black people all over the world are waking up to who we are. This is The Great Awakening. This is real. Look on YouTube and check out videos from people like The Kingdom Preppers, Truth Unedited, The School of Hebrews, The Seed of Israel, and countless more. Let me take a second to check all those who say that black skin is a curse. Not true. Remember Moses. Well, Moses had a sister named Miriam whom God cursed because she had spoken against Moses. Guess how God cursed Miriam. He cursed her by turning her skin white, making her a leper. Ain’t trying to be racist, but, hey, just saying. If anything, white skin seemed to be cursed. Again, just saying. But for the record, do you want to know what Miriam said or did to get herself a cursing. Well, she got into God’s business by fussing at her brother Moses for marrying a foreign woman. In a way, she was right in that God had warned us not to mix our seed with other people, but it was not for her to chastise Moses for it. Let me tell you something. God loved and favored us so much that He wanted us to remain pure, free from the taint of others outside our tribe. We are God’s special people, a people that He set aside for Himself, but we are too stubborn and hard-headed to get right, and to enjoy the blessings. But God did say that one day He was going to gather us all up. It would be then, after we REPENT, that all our woes will be over. Lastly this. Here is scientific proof that supports unequivocally that we, the so-called black man and black woman in Amerikkka, are the folks in the Bible.

. WE ARE SHEMITES! One of the first steps to achieving truth is to tell it. Okay, here’s the truth. BLACK FOLKS ARE GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE! That’s right, we are the people mentioned throughout the Bible. I will prove it. Beyond doubt. And as I do so, I will also show you why we are in the condition we are now in. I will present both biblical and scientific proof. Let’s examine the biblical evidence first. Remember on page twelve of this book where I mentioned the fact of Jesus being a brotha? Well, let’s expand on that. The earliest picture of Jesus is in the Coptic Museum in Cairo Egypt. Josephus, a historian from that period who had personally seen Jesus described him as black. In fact, know this. The portrait of Jesus that countless black people hang on the walls of their homes is actually a pic of Ceseare Borgia, the gay lover of Michelangelo, who painted the portrait. Google it. Jesus was also called The King of the Jews. Keep that in mind, but let’s go back to Moses. Moses was also a Jew who was sent to deliver the Hebrew people, his people, from bondage. Again, the Egyptians during this time were black. I can’t emphasize that enough. Do your own research, perform your own due diligence tests to see if this be so or not. There were no so called white people in Egypt until Alexander the Great conquered it. Anyway, Moses was adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter and raised up as an Egyptian. What does this mean? Moses, though not an Egyptian, looked so much like one, that even the Pharaoh was fooled. Does it mean anything to know that Pharaoh was black, and that if Moses looked like him that Moses, The Deliverer of the Hebrew people, was likewise black. Let’s go back even further. What about Joseph? Remember him? His brothers threw him down a well and he eventually ended up in Egypt. Years later, during a famine in the land, Jacob, who was Joseph’s father, sent his sons (also Joseph’s brothers) to Egypt to purchase food. By now, Joseph was top dawg in Egypt, second-in-command only to the Pharaoh, but when his brothers got to Egypt, they did not recognize Joseph, their own brother. Why was that? It was because Joseph looked so much like an Egyptian, having adopted their dress and customs that his brothers had no idea who he was. If Joseph would have been white, his brothers would have immediately picked him out among the black folks, but that was not the case. These were all brothers, as black as the ace of spades. Shortly thereafter, Joseph sent his black brothers home to fetch their black father, Jacob, and to bring him to live in Egypt which is how we got to be in Egypt in the first place. Hopefully, it shouldn’t take much to assume that if Jacob was black that his twelve sons were just like him, black. As nature would have it, black Jacob had a father, who was black. His name was Isaac whose father was Abraham, also black. Don’t forget about Abraham as we will need to look at him again later. I realize how simplistic that formula was, but it is an accurate account of who was who, leading to the mystery of who we are. One thing we are not is African. I know. I know. We have always cozied up to the notion that we are the descendants of Africans, but nothing could be further from the truth. We simply look like them, and that is why we blended in so easily with them. And that is why any time, the Hebrews, the Children of Israel, had trouble at home, we always fled to Africa to hide among them. Let me put another false notion to rest. During slavery, there were widespread rumors of Africans selling other Africans to the white man. That is not true. The Africans were selling us, the Hebrews, into slavery. The Africans were fully aware of who we were and since we were not African, they had no scruples about selling us. In fact, the Africans despised us, viewing us as interlopers on the West Coast of their country. There are online records that clearly state that the ships were filled with black Jewish slaves----us. Let me invite you to a piece of homework. Check out Zondervan’s Bible Dictionary, and look up Ham. What you will find is that Zondervan, an authority on biblical stuff, declares that Ham was the father of the black races, but not the Negroes! Hello. Any guesses about who those Negroes were? Yep, us. We are the children of Shem. Please look that up because I don’t want there to be any doubts. Yes sir, yes ma’am, we gonna get it right today. We just look like those African brothers. They ain’t us and we ain’t them. Here is the passage from Zondervan taken from online: {“Ham: The youngest son of Noah, born probably about 96 years before the Flood; and one of eight persons to live through the Flood. He became the progenitor of the dark races; not the Negroes, but the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Libyans and Canaanites.” – Zondervan Bible Dictionary[ You probably have never wondered why Jews are called Semites, but it was due to Shem, the father of all Hebrews. Now, you know. Does it surprise you that we are referred to as Negroes? Ha! And we used to think that the word Negro had ugly connotations. Google this. Search for the map of Negroland. What you will discover is a priceless map from 1747 which shows a place on the West Coast of Africa named Negroland! This is where we lived in Africa. Dig that. Also take note of the fact that Negroland was also known as the Kingdom of Judah! It’s on the map. That is where our ancestral homies stayed. Sometimes, the place was called The Kingdom of Ouidah which is another pronunciation of Judah. Okay, let’s get back to Moses, who, although Hebrew, was mistaken for an Egyptian when he helped those sistas water their flocks at the well. In any event, there is no dispute that Moses led the Children of Israel out of bondage, but what comes next is undisputable proof about who we are and why, precisely, we are in the condition we are in. READ ON! PLEASE.

It is a wonderful truth. I will shed as much as I can shortly. I am excited to share it.

Yes, of course, The Lembas of Africa as well. You know more.....I'm sure

We are Shemites! A most excellent point about the jilted lover! Excellent! But why "he"? as an ex-lover. Is this to mean that there are no jilted women? No, this is not serious. I know precisely what you meant by using the pronoun he.

THE TRUTH HURTS 3 In prison, the thing most constant on a prisoner’s mind is freedom. Remember that. I remember a guy that stayed in the same cellblock where I lived, and one night when it was time for Soul Train, I ran excitedly to his cell, giving him the good news. Soul Train was now airing. He looked me in the eyes and said that the last thing he wanted to see was sexy women. He said that he had a life sentence which meant that his career with women was officially over. That, in and of itself, was almost enough to make you want to escape. The next time I saw Biggs was about five years later at another prison. He was on the Mental Health Unit, the so-called ‘nut ward’. He was a zombie, so heavily medicated that he didn’t even know who I was. Looking at him, I thought that it would have been much better for him to had tried to escape than to have let this happen to him. He was, for all practical purposes, dead. As a friend, I would have much rather to have seen him physically dead from an apparent escape attempt than to view him mentally and spiritually dead. That was always the thing with brothas. We would rarely try to escape. We thought we were tough, so we would grit our teeth, and suffer. White convicts would jump the fence. Me, I didn’t think twice about trying to get missing if I had half a chance to pull it off. Damn! If we could have pulled off that escape from Petersburg in 76′, that would have been one for the books. And we almost did it, and would have accomplished the mission, had it not been for someone telling on us. Snitching was almost unheard of back in the 70s, and virtually nonexistent in the prison system, but yeah, someone got us. Man, I still get goosebumps from just reliving those moments. Like I said in another piece about the escape, I was scared although not scared in a cowardly fashion. No, this was the fear that men felt when they understood that death was right around the corner. Now, thanks to the new ‘get tough’ laws, convicts face another fear, one even greater than the fear I experienced at four in the morning, lying in damp gravel atop a two story prison building, desperately waiting for the flashing lights of our getaway car, informing us that it was a go. Can you imagine the fear that ensued when we realized that our getaway car was not coming? We were trapped outside the dorm, and could not get back in so there was nothing to do but continue the escape with the bad news that there would be no transportation and guns on the other side of the fence. We were, basically, abandoned, left to suffer whatever would come next. What came next was the fear of getting shot at with automatic weapons. So what could possibly be worse than a four a.m. execution Well, it is the very real fear the convicts face of never, ever seeing their loved ones ever again!. It is that one gnawing fear that will give way to ‘the new hell’ that awaits this country. And couple this with another very, very real fear that every convict lives with. Right this moment, convicts fear Donald Trump. Know why? The public may not be aware of this but convicts certainly are. There is a law that certifies the wholesale death of convicts in the event this country is ever invaded by a foreign enemy. In that eventuality, the prisoners would be locked in their cells and gas will be administered through the air vents. What a lovely way to die. This is no old wives’ tales, or a lost book from Mother Goose’s fairy tales. It is a thing that convicts believe with all their hearts. What would be a greater strategy than for an invading army to free the prisoners, many of whom would gladly take up arms against the country who had spit in their faces, and locked them away, throwing away the key. But even if the convicts didn’t take up arms, it would be a logistics nightmare for America to attempt to round the prisoners up, and to fight a war at the same time. It would be anarchy! With Trump in office, convicts are sweating, never sure if he will do something foolish, calling forth war. Things are already tense in the world of foreign affairs, and with the US and North Korea selling wolf tickets, who knows what the fuck might happen, and convicts might just decide not to stick around to find out. Busting out of jail is lot better than getting gassed while you are asleep in your cell. Join the campaign to reform prison now. Your life depends on it.

At every fork in the road on your journey to successful living, there are many distinctions to be made. One such distinction to be reckoned with is the line between what you ACHIEVE and what you RECEIVE. While there is never any uncertainty about what you receive, the same is not true with what you achieve since many people go through life filled with doubt about their achievements. An achievement is the personal nourishment of your individual worth whereas receivership is merely the reassurance that you exist. Once you make the discovery of which is which, you will be able to understand the intricate synchronization between probabilities and possibilities, knowing which is a celebration of your merits and which is an invocation of chance. Don’t make a career out of waiting-to-receive because sometimes the hand-outs stop. Explore the possibilities of your individual merit by achievement. It is a happy appointment with yourself.

My 1st bust A little later as I cruised past Pep Boys near the intersection, I felt my bowels churn as I recalled this as the ‘site of my very first bust’. At nine, I had jumped out my bed like a chocolate Jack-In-The-Box and had thrown on my clothes, not caring in the least that my socks were mis-matched. Out in the front yard, I had hopped on my bike, a fading green English Racer, and had pedaled like hell up and out of First Ward to Pep Boys. Having already worked out the details of the ‘heist’ in my head, I had entered into the store from a back entrance. I then sneaked down a narrow hallway where the pungent fumes of spray paint attacked my nostrils while the sickly smell of new bicycle tires made my eyes water. At the end of the hallway that now felt like a tunnel, I had paused just inside the opening that would lead directly into the main interior of the store. Earlier reconnaissance missions of the store had revealed that to the left would be a cashier’s desk. To the right would be where I needed to get to. Sticking my head out like a turtle, I had stared to my right and the shiny horn beckoned to me as though it was the Hope Diamond. I had to have that motherfucka! For the first time since I had started believing in luck, the bitch seemed to have been smiling on my ass that morning. The clerk was not at the counter! As far as I was concerned, that was a divine mandate for me to go get that motherfucking horn. And that is precisely what I had done. I had boldly sauntered over the row of bicycle horns and had snatched the one I had wanted off the rack and had then stuffed the motherfucka under my shirt. Inside my head, I had also followed my exclusive, paint-by-number getaway and as planned ended up by the front door without a hitch. I was scot free. Almost. “Put that damn horn back, nigga.” I had burst out of the front door. The clerk gave hot pursuit. I ran fast. Suddenly aware that I may have misread the happy ending part of my plan, I had scurried around the corner and had dashed down the backside of East Ninth Street, running into the parking lot behind Robert Hall’s Clothing Store. By and large, I should have gotten away and it is very likely that I would have had it not been for that damned fence. I hadn’t even had time to wonder when the motherfucka had been put up before the store clerk was on top of me. “Man, you crazy or something,” I had said. “You done run me down heah all ‘cause of a damn horn that ain’t even yours. Better look around. You in nigga-town now and all I gotta do is whistle and all my cousins and them gonna come running. You’ll get fucked up pretty bad. I wouldn’t be able to stop them even if I wanted to ‘cause them niggas tough and they don’t like no crackers.” “You gonna give me the fucking horn or do I have to take it?” “White boy, what the fuck wrong wit’ you? Didn’t you just hear what I just tole’ you ‘bout my kinfolk stomping a mudhole in yo’ ass.” “I heard, but I think the police know what to do with tough niggas.” Then the cops were there and off I went to the police department. That morning I had came to know that Lady Luck was indeed a bitch. In later life, I would come to realize that Justice wasn’t that blind after all. Ho always saw me coming.

POSTED ON NOVEMBER 4, 2017 BY SOULFIRE BURIAL GROUNDS 2 Sadly, in the days since I wrote the first part of this blog, two more prison officials have died from the brutal prison attack last month. I watched a news segment on local stations where a former correctional guard bemoaned the fact that these deaths occurred, but he pointed out that such incidents are sometimes the aftermath of the prisoners having nothing to strive for. He revealed that “when you took away a prisoner’s promotions’ that he has no restraints to deter him from violence. By promotions, the former guard meant any incentives the prisoner may have been motivated to strive for as these would dramatically improve his chances for release. Any time a guard writes a prisoner up by issuing a disciplinary report against him, the prisoner faces serious sanctions that range from being locked up in segregation to losing his canteen privileges, or to forfeit good or gain time which tended to retard the prisoner’s release date. Minus these incentives, there is no need whatever to obey the rules, and untrained guards are pitched into a dangerous maze where they are compelled to navigate their way through an inferno fraught with prisoner anger on the one hand, and institutional corruption on the other. Despite all the sensationalized failures of the penal system, one of the things the penal system has been great at over the years is the brilliant disguises used to cover up the widespread and wholesale administrative corruption of prisons. In essence, the prison culture is rotten to the core and rife with corruption from the top to the bottom I’ve been in prisons where the warden acted like a mafia don and where the guards were simply his goons, but I have also been in joints where the warden and all the staff were mild-mannered and laid back. Basically, in the overall scheme of prison life, each individual prison is a reflection of the warden’s personality where day-to-day affairs as well as any other social interactions are colored by that particular warden’s governing style. In the exact same way that small, neighborhood churches morphed into the modern-day mega-churches of today. prisons followed a similar path. I hear my Christian friends complain about how their beloved church is a colossus that has no soul. I could understand. Not only in the transition did prison lose its soul, it also lost its sense of fundamental fairness. And suddenly, prisons, like the mega-churches, turned into big business. In the federal system of the late 90s, many warden were nothing more than the scowling face of corporate America. Businesses, of all stripes, such as Hewlett-Packard, Victoria’s Secret, Texas Instruments, etc, competed for a piece of the economic pie that flowed from the slave labor of the Bureau of Prisons. Prisons were now sweatshops where the government procured million dollar contracts, paying prisoners a little over a dollar a hour! Even Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist spoke out against this slave ring, insisting that it would lead to mass incarceration as prisons would need scores of bodies to grease the machinery of capitalism. Was it any surprise that from this scalding cauldron of corporate greed, stringent drugs laws became etched in stone. With one stroke of the pen, “the pen” (prison) became the illegitimate bastard child of corporate America. During the initial evolutionary phase of prisons turning into “instruments of commerce”, courts began to impose fines upon prisoners such as restitution for attorney fees, restitution to the victims of the crime, and in some cases, the Bureau of Prisons even acted as a surrogate bitch for outside bill collectors who demanded that prisoners continue to pay child support. All of this was merely a ruse to extort prisoners, and to force them to work in the prison factory as the rules stated that a prisoner who owed money to anyone could not be released until his fine was paid in full. Therefore, prisoners had no choice but to labor in UNICOR. Many of the more socially/politically conscious prisoners refused to work in the factory, and would work only in a job non-esssential to UNICOR. I was one such prisoner. I worked in the dormitory as a janitor for twenty dollars a month. In any event, to demonstrate just how much influence, corporate America had on prison policy, I recall an incident where a small gang-fight has gotten the entire population locked down. As a so-called security measure, we were locked in our cells 24 hours a day. We were fed cold sandwiches, and allowed to shower once a week. After ten days of this, the warden got a call and the word was that some corporate big-wig told him to open the prison back up. He didn’t give a damn about any violence that may have ensued. His primary concern was that he had a million dollar contract that he wanted finished, and there was no way the job could get done with the prisoners on lock-down and unable to work. Now with the internal morality of the prisons in the hands of corporate-sponsored wardens, prisoners became a compliant workforce, but in an environment where danger lurked around every corner. When I got to the fed joint in Atlanta for the second time, the tension between the prisoners and the guards was so thick, it was suffocating. It was a menacing presence that could be felt. All the prisoners felt it and openly spoke of it, each fearing that any day now, the lid was going to blow off. As mentioned earlier, the makeup and personality of the warden sets the standards for the running of the facility, and there were basically only two “traditional” types of warden. He was either a “guard’s warden, or he was a “convict’s warden. Trust me, it mattered. A convict warden is one who sympathizes with prisoners and keeps the guards in check. The other kind of warden lets the guards do what they damn well please. Dig this. People in the free world think it is bad when say, a Republican replaces a Democrat in the White House, or vice versa. Oh, the agony. This is nothing compared to the stress of an incoming warden, especially if the outgoing warden was a convict warden and his replacement is the other sort. Anyway, this goes to say that the housecleaning or the ‘draining of the swamp’ can get nasty, especially when the warden and the head of the guards’ union operate from different ends of the spectrum. Want to read more…..

While black folks can usually place the sundry misdeeds of white America within a particular era of our history such as (1) The Slave Era, (2) The Jim Crow Era, (3) The Civil Rights Era, and (4) The Black Power Era, we missed what was happening during The Corporate Negro Era. Like damsels-in-distress, we were so caught up in the esteemed behavior of the white hero as he vowed to use his money to help us out of our sticky situation that we never understood that these new niggas were the surrogate-heroes who were to take over the role black preachers had always held in the black community. This manipulation. while it did involve the social metamorphosis of a select group of black males, it was unlike most conversions since the new brothas were physically separated from the group they were supposed to control. However, the inevitable gimmick was that the miraculous transformation of these surrogate-gatekeepers would be so awe-inspiring that everyone would aspire to it. One idea that was hardly new was the destruction of self-love which was the intended consequence of a wholly Euro—centric education. These brothas, lacking the love of self, or the ability to sympathize with the plight of their people, would, at the price of making them more pompous, help to destabilize the ghetto. These establishment brothas, domesticated by their own self-interests, and further as a matter of principle, trumpeted America’s benevolence, elaborating in their persons just how great the country was. These brothas were, in effect, an extension of white America. In the 1970s, the goal of making black America more productive was curtailed by cost, and given the wide range of other government expenditures, it became a much better idea to make them dependent, and to further this goal, welfare dollars began to rival the cost of public schooling. What was hoped for was that dependence would begat submissiveness because hardly ever does one bite the hand that feeds it. At least that was what was hoped for, and given the ever-present hostilities between the government and black America, welfare was conceived of as a facilitating mechanism, and swept along by its own rhetoric that “one could trap more bees with honey than with shit”, white America attempted to unite black America through benevolent paternalism. And these suit-and-tie brothas were to become the legitimate purveyors of “what Mr. Charlie can do for you if you are good”. The Santa Claus Syndrome. In this context, the government was Santa and these suit-and-tie brothas were his little, black elves. Occasionally, the suit-and-ties would appear to be autocratic, but mainly their task was to present a ‘visual’ for their bossman, a sort of real-life, eye-popping aesthetic experience that would ooh and ahh black adults in the same way that a Christmas display at the mall would mesmerize small children, and using an assortment of visual toys----their car, their women, their money---these elves produced a very pleasing picture. In practice, though, the Santa Claus Syndrome was more than just a bright idea by the government, or a way for the elves to make a name for themselves because Uncle Sam knew precisely what he wanted and would accept nothing less. These ‘look-at-me’ brothas, evolved organically from a western-style education, were developed to adjust the psychological and emotional life of the ghetto by invigorating them with the fantasy of middle-class niggerdom. Uncle Sam wanted to manufacture a never-never land, a black fairytale existence where they could reside if they played by the rules. However, the ulterior motive was to forestall black folks’ sense of impending doom by instilling them with false hope. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... The CWA was founded by Executive Order where the President transferred 400 million dollars into a government program to provide jobs for individuals out of work due to the depression. People all over the country applied to join the CWA, and the program was so successful that another 950 million dollars was allocated for it. In theory, the CWA was simply a measure to instill pride in people who refused government assistance, and though there were examples of men sweeping streets that didn’t need to be swept, half a million miles of highways were constructed. Thousands of bridges were built; school, churches, and hospitals sprung up and almost 600 airports were built, not to mention the many municipal parks and other recreational facilities that emerged all across the nation. The entire face of America was given a facelift by the CWA. America was truly a pretty bitch now. Additionally, they were jobs set aside for teachers, and 10% of CWA’s budget was earmarked for white-collar workers. Even artist were supported via The Public Works of Art Program, and historians were paid to go on digs with archaeologists. Thanks, in part, to Eleanor Roosevelt, there were programs for women who drew salaries for sewing and other home economic projects. Guess what? The hood didn’t get shit! And in typical fashion when hood rats in Jackson, Mississsippi petitioned for CWA money to put brothas to work fixing up the ‘hood, the Mayor said that he “would not give them a damned thing.” And so it was all over America. Everyone benefited from the CWA-----except black people. In total, the CWA, during 1933, with its 1 billion dollar expenditures could have spruced up the ‘hood, and helped to eliminate the blight and desperation, but since white America decided that black America had no pride, there was no need to include them in the good works of the CWA. Instead, it was determined that welfare was a better experiment for us. White America wanted our dependency. In most respects, this was the ultimate disrespect. White America forced us to watch them feast and wouldn’t even throw us a bone, but that was not the first or last time. Some thirty years later after John F. Kennedy was ushered into The White House, money was set aside by the government to revitalize the inner cities. Schools and hospitals were to be built, roads were to be paved. Finally, the hood was going to be cute, and there would, at last, be a chicken in every pot.

My agenda is quite different from that. In every phase of my life, I hate hated what this country has dished out, and I have acted accordingly in the very limited way I could and with what limited resources were at my disposal. In the circles I travel, we don't feel that black men should look for acceptance and like I may have mentioned: in a war for everything, YOU DON'T FIGHT FOR EQUALITY, YOU FIGHT FOR SUPERIORITY. i do not subscribe to the notion that we are of African descent because of the overwhelming evidence that demonstrates quite clearly that WE ARE NOT! I can understand why some blacks are reluctant to let go of the notion that they can fare well in this country as is. It is the same reason why a jilted lover stays in a relationship, hoping to make it work, You have invested time and energy into the project, and you don't know of other options or you are afraid to explore them.At any rate, I wholeheartedly agree that a new way of looking at thing is needed. It is already here. But this has to be the one time, we don't telegraph what we are doing to keep the advantage.

This is what I personally think about blacks in the gay community. No matter what their religious, political, or sexual preferences, if we are to achieve anything significant as a collective, then all black people must be included. We cannot afford to deny anyone a seat at the table when we are struggling to do what right's for the whole tribe. We simply keep our differences to ourselves and deal with our difference in-house. Back when I was young, we had a thing called "not airing our dirty laundry in public" which meant we kept our private bickering to ourselves. If we were divided and fractured internally, that was our business, and you deal with that in private. This has to be done to show that we will always present a united front to the outside world. This way, they can't divide and conquer us. I don't give a damn if you like men, women, or chickens, if you love black people, then let's work together to break our chains. The incidental, in-house fighting must be put on the back burner until we get to a point where we can operate from a position of strength. In today world of FB, we take a special delight in airing our dirty laundry in the biggest public forum ever. Here is something I wrote years ago in THE UNMAKING OF THE BLACK MAN.( ** After enduring the atrocities of slavery, in what was to be the first full-scale attempt at black genocide, we opted for individualism. Invariably, though, not surprising, blacks pretty much celebrated their release from bondage by going their own ways, something so unconventional and contrary that it defied reason. The whole point of freedom…….Well, there should have never been a puzzle to freedom, and the very first steps should have been to remain intact as a collective, and then to evolve into a community. In practice, individualism was the greatest blow to the stability of the blossoming black community. Partly through progressive individualism, we failed to establish a coherent set of values that would have been conducive to the development of a positive image. Additionally, following the Great Migration, black America evolved into a pluralistic society with each half only willing to invest in their own self-interests.**) ""Here is another passage from that same book and that same paragraph. (In contrast, African-Americans had no image, no national identity to fall back on, and without an image to spell out their mission, we had nothing to aspire to. We had no glory to recapture, or no honor to reclaim. Instead, we were without vision. Thus, with blacks, a new standardized response to suffering was introduced which marked both a defining moment as well as a turning point in our evolution."") This somewhat speaks to something that evidently bothers Chevdove (and me 2) because it was then in our evolution that we started to pull the "Victim" card. Yes, long before the proverbial "race card" there was the "victim card" and we still play it with unimaginable gusto. Black men have always been victimized, but when has anyone ever been listening? If no one could believe black men were getting lynched, who the hell was going to believe they were being molested, so they shut up. Until now, So, yeah, we gotta become more inclusive. We get so charmed by upward mobility that when we get to the next level, we talk shit about the people we just left behind. WE move up, we get exclusively more fractured as a group. It is this willingness to exclude others because of differences is why our communities are still fucked up. We shun niggas coming out of prison like they suffer from a plague, but who the hell do you think holds the key to healing the community? We are the ones that fucked it up. We know how to fix it. We are the ones who set most of the practices in place that the young ones follow. We set it up, we know how to dismantle it. If you want a cure for snakebite, damned what the doctor say, you get the cure from the m***f***g snake. Peace & love. Plz. note that my opinions are my own and not an attack upon anyone's belief.

NOVEMBER 11, 2017 BY SOULFIRE THE TRUTH HURTS 2 For anyone who mistakenly believes that things have gotten better in the criminal justice system, then here’s something you need to know. It hasn’t. And guess what” You had better brace yourselves for what it to come next. It’s not going to be pretty. Most jail-breaks aren’t. At some point, perhaps, in the very near future, what is going to occur is that ex-convicts are going to start busting their friends out! Do you find this unthinkable? If so, you had better rethink the concept. Whether you know it or not, but the strongest bond between men is forged in prison, and these friendships cemented in the blood, sweat, and tears of an agonizing, organized hell, endure. These bonds, sometimes, are more stronger than family, and more vital than religion. Sometimes, it’s not merely enough to send your comrade a few dollars, a few pictures of naked women, a card at the holidays. Sometimes, you want him out! I personally know convicts, who, once they had been released from prison, robbed a bank and used the proceeds to hire a lawyer in an effort to get their friend out. And, by no stretch of the imagination was this is an isolated case. However, that was back in the days when a man could still get a fair shake in court. In today’s political climate, such an effort would be like throwing good money away, so why not just bust him out. Let me relate a personal account that shows that people are not afraid of busting friends out of prison. In 1984, after I had been sentenced to prison for a crime I didn’t commit, I was in the mountains at a little, small, gun camp. Anyway, there was this white guy that was there, and he had been fascinated that I had been a bank robber. He loved to listen to my “war stories” about robbing banks. I even sent home for my transcripts of my bank robberies trials. He cherished them. And then one day just before he was to be released, he told me that he would break me out if I let him rob banks with me. He saw me as some bank-robbing hero, and he was dead serious about busting me out. Plus, he already had it all planned out—and guess what, it would have worked! I turned him down because I thought Oprah was coming to my rescue. I had written Oprah, 60 Minutes, Geraldo, The NAACP, The ACLU, etc. about my case. I was innocent! I didn’t deserve to be in prison. I really, truly believed that once my story was heard………..Anyway, no one came for my black ass, and I ended up serving over a decade in prison for a crime I did not know a damned thing about. Should’ve taken my white friend up on his offer, but I found out that he didn’t need me after all. He became a pretty good bank robber on his own. I forget where I was locked up at, but I was reading the newspaper and, VOILA, there was a big article about him. He was real smooth. I felt proud. I was sad that he had gotten busted, but I was prouder than a motherfucka that he was true to the game. I guessed I said all that to say that it doesn’t take much to want to knock a prison over. I will give another testimony. I recall a point during one of my earlier bids where a whole lot of convicts admired the Palestinians who used to hijack planes and then exchange the hostages for their comrades in captivity. I mean this was really given a lot of thought, and several guys I knew had a list of the convicts’ names they would ask for in an exchange. Here is another tidbit to ponder, if you dig the truth. There was this Jewish gangsta that I had bidded with in the fed joint in Atlanta. We were not extremely close, but we were aware of each other, mainly because of my gig in the kitchen. Anyway, just under a decade later, we meet again. This time in the jail. This was in 85, and I had been back in state prison for two years for the crime I did not commit, and I had won a hearing due to an appeal I had filed. Anyway, my old, Jewish acquaintance had just gotten busted for smuggling in a few tons of reefer, and was in the jail cell when I got there. He was old, and when he used to get high, (He had weed in the cell), he always talked of dying in prison, something that haunted him immensely. Shit, I was in virtually the same boat, but knew that with the right lawyer, I could beat this rap, so I offered him a proposition. He knew about my case, and I promised him that if he would hire me a good lawyer that could whip this case for me, that I would break him out of prison! I meant it and I honored it with my “convict” word. As fate would have it, I was called to court before C. could get the lawyer for me, and my worst fears were confirmed. I lost at the hearing. If, by chance, I would have gotten the attorney, and would have beaten the charge, I would have honored my word, and I would not have given a damn about where he was, I was coming to get him. Marion (Illinois), until recently, was the toughest fed prison, and when I was there, there was a respect for a convict who had been there. There had even been a big article on him in The Rolling Stone, called The Gangster of Love. This guy had two women, (a mother, and a daughter,) to attempt to bust him out of prison. And if that wasn’t enough, he ran for President of The US from his prison cell! At any rate, when the mother failed in her attempt, getting shot and killed in the process, the daughter took it upon herself to continue the quest. Anyway, stay tuned.

HER Even now, years later, I still wonder what gave me the right to think that I deserved her. How foolish was it of me to somehow start, all of a sudden, to believing in miracles. Yet, I did…….because of her. Because of her, I so willingly surrendered to the mistaken notion that ‘my day had finally come’, that I, of all persons, now stood wonderfully perched on the beginning of my ‘happily ever after. Damn, it all felt so good, so right, and so real. And what was she thinking? Did she know that if she had truly permitted me to possess her, how strange a couple we would have made: an angel and a mortal!

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 BY SOULFIRE The End Game It was reported this morning in the Charlotte Observer, the hometown newspaper, that guards were abandoning their jobs in the North Carolina Department of Corrections in droves. And while this is a seemingly new phenomenon, I simply wondered what took it so long to happen. In a deadly game of chance that has been going on for decades, what is now being made manifest is the end game in a war of attrition that convicts knew one day would come. For those of you who may be a little slow to grasp this, I’ll be blunt. The prison system is now entering a phase where “The inmates will be running the asylum” The first volley in this revolution has already been sounded, and what it will signal is the death knell for the way things used to be. Sheer penal oppression and legal tyranny has pushed convicts to the point where they are more willing and more eager to stop living like caged animals, and to take their freedom by any means necessary. The maiming and murder of prison guards are nothing more than the collateral damage of the evil men do when they have no hope. When I first started doing time, you could usually count the guys who had life sentences on your hands and toes, but now it seems as though one out of every five convicts have a life sentence. Do you know what that means? It means that these men will never see the light of day again, and when you crowd hundreds of such convicts in pressure-cooked prisons, what else exists but a disaster waiting to occur? Imagine what it must be like for a man when he suddenly awakens to the reality that he will never have sex again, that he will never taste his favorite foods again, that he will never see his children, his parents again. Oh the rage. You put this rage together and a pretty potent recipe for evil can ensue. But this outrage is not the sole province of the lifers because the trickle down effect wreaks havoc on others as well because with the eradication of parole, you damned near do twenty years on a twenty year sentence. And that’s a long f****ing time. But it is much deeper than that. The abolition of parole is the primary, driving force behind the recent spates of crimes where the culprits shoot it out with the cops, or kill themselves. They know that it ain’t no parole no mo”, so they opt to “Hold court in the streets” (shoot it out). In a lot of these ” street court’ battles, what works somewhat to the police advantage is that the culprit will kill himself rather than risk leaving it up to the cops who may only wound him. The one and only objective is to die! But does it stop there? I wish. Another offspring of this country’s “Get Tough On Crime” mandate is a change in the mindset and attitude of the criminal. Once the new laws, with their extreme appetite for eating men alive, took away all the safety valves that had once promised judicial leniency, Holding Court In The Streets got a makeover. Now, these street court sessions had to be sensationalized. Why? Because today’s gangsta want to “go out in a blaze of glory” That debilitating angst is multiplied manifold inside prison, and one day the convicts are going to demand their liberation. Over the course of my locked-up years, I had engaged in, listened to, or heard about conversations that spoke to a very important fact of prison life. Know what it is? It’s that each and every convict knows they outnumber the guards by twenty to one! For some, this morsel of data may not mean much when he initially stumbles upon it, but given time this morsel will have exactly enough time to marinate in its own juices, and then lo and behold, the convict will grasp this prized knowledge to his chest, nurturing and nursing it until it is ripe enough to explode. And guess what else? In the same way that great minds think alike, yeah well, oppressed minds think alike also, and when enough minds come to the conclusion that they can take their freedom by overpowering you, then there you go. Like hungry vultures, the convicts have watched and waited for this moment, knowing intuitively that it must, of necessity, one day come. History has been partner to this “manifest destiny” time and time again, and what has happened to the prisoners of America is what historically has happened to all oppressed minorities throughout the ages. What happens is that one day they realize that the tables have turned, and what will emerge from this realization is REVENGE! When it comes to prisoners, not only has history been ignored, but science has been mocked as well because aren’t we taught, at some point in our lives, that for every action, there is a reaction. If, for some reason, you didn’t get that memo, I’m quite sure you know what a cat will do when pushed into a corner. If so, then you understand more than you thought you did. In later blogs, I will acquaint you with the culture of prison as well as the criminal culture. If you are not afraid of being hurt by the truth, follow my blog on this site.

THE GIBRALTAR WRITING STYLE THE WRITER’S EDGE 1 PRELUDE 2 WRITING Let’s take a moment to deal with what I call “the blank page syndrome”. Just what is this syndrome, you ask? Well, it is the transition your book takes from being an actual mental byproduct into becoming an actual physical product, but before you jot down a single, solitary word on paper, you must understand how to bridge this gap between the mental and the physical; this yawning chasm where you will be compelled to make bricks without straw. What process do you employ to fling open the floodgates of your inner creativity? More importantly, how do you defeat the writing demons that lurk outside the gateways of your ongoing originality? Even more important, how do you maximize your writing potential? One word pops up: DISCIPLINE. You must be disciplined to get the best out of your writing potential. In addition to being disciplined mentally, there are “externals” that must be put into perspective, and though they may vary from individual to individual, they exist. You must select the ideal workspace. Seems simple enough, but the truth is that certain environments possess a better ambiance for writing than others. Find your nest. You must choose a best time to write. You must learn how to develop ideas as they come even if it is not your best time to write. Above all else, you must enjoy your own company. Only then can you hear your true inner voice. So, let’s say that you’ve done all this, then what? You then move for the conscious to the subconscious, that ever-lasting fountainhead of ideas and inspiration which brings us to a thing called “COGNITIVE FITNESS”. Just how important is cognitive fitness? Well, cognitive fitness is to the writer what physical fitness is to the marathon runner because it is via your cognitive fitness factor that you will develop your writing strategy. Can I let you in on a little secret? You can develop a winning writing strategy by tapping into either one of two sources. Well, actually only one is a source. The other is a resource. And there is a difference. Remember that in the literary world, a source has limits whereas a resource has none. Okay, but how does this apply to writing? Here’s how. When you write, you do so by tapping into a writing foundation that is either a source or a resource. Now, about these foundations. One is what I call “Train of Thought” writing. The second I call “Stream of Consciousness” writing. One provides ideas. One provides inspiration. Also keep in mind that ideas and inspiration are as different as the sources from which they are drawn and no matter how tedious it may appear, you must decide which one will better suit your literary aspirations. Odds are, you’re in this for the long term so I dare you to disturb the writing universe. However, if you are content to write beneath your potential, then be patient, failure will soon come. What I would like to do right now is to have you examine what I call a “writing event”. In a short term writing event such as FaceBook, Twitter, texting, and personal letter writing, it would be your best bet to tap into your Train Of Thought “TOT”. Why? Because the psychic costs are low. Always remember that TOT writing is discount writing where your greatest investment will be emotional, and that is exactly how most writers approach short-term writing events—with their emotions. This is great for FaceBook and the other above-mentioned venues because it can be done without a lot of mental sacrifice. Don’t get me wrong because even with TOT writing, you have a lot of info at your disposal and it may even provide you with a sense of literary control and power, but the truth is that it is not sustainable as a long-term writing tool. Why? Because of its superficiality. It is due to this superficiality that TOT writing is invested or possibly infested with what I call “universal literary fatalism”. This is because the ideas come and go. They don’t gather much mental dust. Basically, the ideas don’t belong to you. Now, let me expound briefly on the merits of SOC writing because this is the key to your long-term writing strategy. In fact, you will extend your writing career by employing the SOC method. Trust me, the SOC is the sweet spot for writers. Why? Because SOC provides you with a certain literary leverage, but even with this new-found leverage, you still must think outside the box and to take certain calculated literary risks. Let me offer a quick word about SOC writing which I also call “Alpha writing”. When you become an expert at this type of writing, what you will discover to your utter delight is that you acquire a definite mastery and control over the reader. SOC writing will allow you to get into a reader’s head to disrupt his/her plans. The reader may have every intention of going to bed at ten, but your book is so good, that he/she can’t put it down until two in the morning. Now, that’s power. That’s control. And this may be the only time during the course of your entire existence that you deliberately set out to control another person’s life, so you have to ask yourself: Am I ready for this? Am I big enough and bad enough? Can I handle this? I say you can! But for the sake of argument, let’s say that you’re not cut out to be the quintessential SOC writer and for whatever reason, you find the domination of another human’s senses unappealing, then I’m here to tell you that another option exists. It is also Alpha writing ,but it is where you write with such exquisite lyricism that your every word is savored for its immense beauty. It is where you write with the velvet glove rather than the iron fist, where you fuse each word with such vivid charisma that the words virtually jump off the pages. Understand that in Alpha writing, there are only two styles: Impulse writing and compulsion writing. In impulse writing, you go for the reader’s mind. In compulsion writing, you go for the reader’s soul! If you would like to read more of to study my “Gibraltar Method” of writing, please follow my blog for more.

Runnin’ Wit’ The Devil Yeah, I could have been something special, but one night I saw something that had rocked my world. From almost the very first day that I was able to discern the nuances of speech and language, I was cautioned against going on 7th Street at night, especially a Friday night. During the day, 7th Street, it seemed, was no different than 6th Street where I stayed, but on the weekend, something or someone—the devil, perhaps—shook 7th Street up until it vomited, throwing up all the bitterness and anger of helpless niggas trapped in a maze of hopelessness. For nine long years, I had dutifully stayed away, running into the house like a good boy when the street lights came on, knowing that what would come next would be the scream of the police sirens and the blaring horns of the ambulance. And one Friday night, just like that, I was ready to trade away all the shit i knew to be true from books for everything I didn’t know about 7th Street. Knowing better than to attempt to enlist any of the other pee-wees on the block to join in this caper, I made up my mind to slip out of the house on an adventure to see what all the fuss was about on 7th Street. The one thing I didn’t truly appreciate knowing was the fact that I would get my ass kicked if I got caught, but I naturally assumed that I could pull it off. This should pose no more of a problem than any of the other shit I was able to accomplish once I set my mind to it. The first issue was getting out of the house. This was only a minor glitch because all the fuck I had to do would be to wait until everyone was fast asleep and then just walk out of the motherfucking front door! Everything that came next, I would simply play by ear. I was ready to leave a lot sooner than I thought wise so I forced himself to stay in bed for thirty extra minutes. Why take chances? I had to admit that waiting was like a monkey on my back and I tossed and turned, as restless and as impatient as a dope-fiend anticipating his next fix. I fought this unrelenting war with time until I heard some gentle snoring coming from my mother. That was my cue and I was up and dressed in a flash. I tip-toed out of the bedroom where me, my mother, grandmother, and sister all slept, and danced through the shadows that crept in from the outside. At the front door, I realized that my hands were sweaty and pondered briefly just how unglamorous it would be to get beat with an electrical cord, but the chances of me aborting the mission was minimal. This was my very first do-or-die moment and I was facing it down like a true champ. I opened the door and stared at a night as black and as dark as a piece of the coal Mama used in the pot-bellied stove that warmed the crib. Dashing across one side of Sixth Street to the other, I ran through my aunt’s backyard and hit the alley in full stride, but slowed down because there were no streetlights on the backsides of the alley just above where my half-sisters, Bee and Cee, lived with their Mama. Coming around the corner by Anna Margaret’s house, I paused to catch my breath and considered knocking on the window of Bee and Cee’s room to scare the shit out of them, but remembered that I was not out to play no pranks, so I kept it moving. Barely able to see, I kept my fears to himself and raced towards the light in the backyard of the Egg-Man whose son, Arthur, would later become a city councilman. Although I was basically just around the corner from home, the darkness made it seem like i was a million miles away, but I refused to let it get to me. I dug into the blackness like a human mole and when I made it to Wilhemena’s, my childhood sweetheart’s back door, my braveness had returned. I eased down the alley and turned up just a few feet from where Myers Street connected to 7th Street like a crooked, black snake. Feeling like I was treading dirty water, I positioned himself between the pool room on the corner and the house next door. This was it! When I stuck his head around the corner of the pool room, what I saw transfixed me. 7th Street was both heaven and hell. As far down the block as I could see, it was a beehive of activity where all the pretty people were bathed in a devilish, red glow. I tried to cancel what I was seeing, but there it was right before my eyes. Niggas getting out of Cadillacs with women on their arms as beautiful as the Queen of Sheba. Gold teeth and diamonds sparkled in the eerie red haze like a thousand crescent moons. Niggas and bitches had on clothes that made the Sunday-go-to-meeting gear the church folks at Little Rock wore seem like tattered rags. I had never before experienced such pageantry and I watched in wide-eyed awe as the Sugar Shack filled with these patrons of the street life. As it became more and more difficult to believe what I was seeing, I spied my cousin George in the crowd, eager to prove he was an authority on everything that went down on 7th Street. It was like George had been tricking me all these years. Now, I had, at last, finally stumbled upon the mystery of why my cousin was so cool. He was one of them! Even though I was dressed like a pauper, when I saw George, I no longer felt like an accidental tourist. I felt I would one day belong here, would one day rule here. One second later, I almost choked on my own excitement when a big, black nigga stepped out of his ride and I saw the gun in the man’s waistband. This was the first real gun I had ever seen and even from a distance, I could sense the immense power of the weapon. Fuck typewriters. Fuck books. I wanted a gun! Satisfied that I had been enough of a witness to my own rebirth, I trudged back through the darkness towards home. Now, I understood why the adults didn’t want me or any of the other kids to see 7th Street after dark. It would demonstrate to us just how emasculated and poor we really were. More importantly, it would prove beyond a doubt that there was an option to being black and penniless. That night I learned a lot and the evidence was hard to refute. All my life, I had watched the few men in First Ward come home from work, day after day, tired and beat, from working on some white man’s job. All they could do would be to eat, take a bath, and get ready to go to work the next day. None of these hard-working men had shit. They worked but never got ahead. None of them had fine clothes or a fancy car. None of them possessed a diamond ring or a custom-made walking cane. In fact, working only seemed to make them poorer….and sadder. I closed my eyes, projecting myself into all the tomorrows of my existence and decided that there was no financial value in working for a living. Instead, I would hustle since hustlers were the only black people that had money and fun. Plus, I didn’t want to spend the whole of my sexual career, once it started, making love to lesser women when Queen of Sheba bitches were available to a nigga who got down the hard way. When I returned to my block, I could more easily see how the wood, stick houses rose up from the dead earth like a row of tombs on a one way street. No one deserved to live like this. And one day, I wouldn’t.

THIS IS REAL! BLACK MALES ARE AT RISK. WHO IS NEXT!?Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr photoMark Ciavarella JrAFRICANGLOBE – Disgraced Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for conspiring with private prisons to sentence juvenile offenders to maximum sentences for bribes and kickbacks which totaled millions of dollars. He was also ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution. In the private prison industry the more time an inmate spends in a facility, the more of a profit is reaped from the state. Ciavearella was a figurehead in a conspiracy in the state of Pennsylvania which saw thousands of young Black men and women unjustly punished and penalized in the name of corporate profit. According to allgov.com Ciavearella’s cases from 2003 – 2008 were reviewed by a special investigative panel and later by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and it was found that upwards of 5,000 young men and women were denied their constitutional rights, and therefore all of their convictions were dismissed and were summarily released. During his sentencing Ciavarella was defiant, claiming he had broken no laws and claimed the money he received was a legitimate ‘finder’s fee.’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubrod said comments such as these were typical of Ciavarella, according to the local reporting of citizensvoice.com:

I am of the same mind when it comes to power and the gay community. And what I find so admirable is how much of what they have been able to do as far as building a power base has been done with a sort of artistic grace that is unmatched. Therein lies the subtle genius of gays. They understand how to use their brilliance as a smokescreen to induce. or perhaps seduce the rest of the world into believing they are powerless when the opposite is closer to the truth.

Don Lemon of CNN seems to thinks that it is about time for black America to have a candid discussion about the LGBT among us. He was evidently hurt by the allegedly homophobic comments made by Kevin Hart, who amidst the controversy has given up his host job at the Oscars. The offer to host is still on the table for Kevin Hart provided he issue a public apology to the LGBT community. Throughout time, the traditional view of gays has always been one of weakness. They are the perpetual victims of a homophobic society, and accordingly has taken their fair share of abuse. But are they powerless? It just may be that the doctor who is slated to perform your surgery is gay. What about your lawyer, your accountant. Your next door neighbor! How many gay teachers school your kids? What if all these so-called powerless people conspired to take over? Hmm. What would happen? To find out one likely scenario, get my book THE TALENTED Xth. It is free and here is the link. https://amzn.to/2VFxFRE

Man, used to live within walking distance from the Chicken Box. It just moved last week, but they are still a vital part of the eatery scene in Charlotte. My oldest daughter goth er doctorate at UNC so I was there on campus a lot while she was attending. Charlotte is really feeling herself now due to all the growth. Right now in Charlotte, there is a black mayor, a black fire chief, a black police chief, a black city manager. It ain't quite like Atlanta but we trying to grab some power. But they are pushing all the blacks way out of the inner city, to get us away from the downtown area. Once this is where we were concentrated. Now, they have pushed us out in the boondoocks. Essentially, it is the same ol story. If you wh.ite, you alright. If you brown, stick around. If you black, stay black. Man, learn that poetry as a kid. Ain't nuthin' changed