CZM Book Club: Poems by Incarcerated Authors -- with In The Belly Magazine

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Book Club book Club book Club book Club. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I, or in this case, the authors themselves do it for you.

That's right. We have an author read episode this week, a bunch of authors, three different authors, because this week we are continuing our collaboration within the Belly Magazine, which is a revolutionary abolitionist publication by and four incarcerated people and their communities. And they do really good work and you can go check them out. I first learned about them when I went to a fundraiser benefit show for them and had a real good time and danced a bunch And this week end up not talking as much.

It's so nice and instead of me talking, I'm gonna let these incredible poets share their words with you from inside the prison system, which obviously means that the audio might not be up to our usual standards, but our amazing audio engineer Eva has been working really hard and making it sound okay. And also what do you expect?

They are calling from inside a nightmare from the nightmare factory that our society keeps like the omlass child just sitting there. Only instead of one child in the omloss hole, it is almost one percent of the US adult population. And I don't think prison is a good idea. I don't think it worked anyway. Part of the reason that we're doing this collaboration, when we're doing it, is because this past week abolitionists celebrated June eleventh, the International Day of Solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners. And we know and you know that under racial capitalism, all prisoners or political prisoners, and it is an honor and a duty to support an uplift prison rebels. Anyway, I'm gonna shut up,

and you can hear these people I'm talking in their own words.

This first poem is called the Process. I need a personal strove light. I need the shadow box with my goals because still sharp and still right, because success is what I make, and the recipes may vary, because amateur Knight provides a learning.

Curve that you can never tire of.

Because I might just step my game up as the game excels itself. If I may, can I progress and let my actions be just as rhetorical as the question.

Let my mind.

Build a wall against all these immigrant thoughts. Let innocence dying the name of growth and adversity, aspire, muscle on is marithion ahead of me.

Let the song stop.

If I fall out of rhythm with the universe, produce and let nature take its course. For every seed that threatened the sprout, I need a game time decision before the schedule even comes out. I need a caption before the camera flashes, a canoe before the river parks on the sea of opportunity. I need my mileage before the road is paved ahead of the curve so much I couldn't help but fly straight. Let the routine take its told that labor of lood at work, ethics transpires, that excel is well deserved. That inner push, that intuition sets off that exhaustion that exfoliate's advancement. The sweat, the tears, and anger, the joy is all a part of the process we need to stay in bed with in order to give birth to everything we desired.

That's the process.

This is Matthew Garcia with another raw reflection and Bunny. We should take more photos, pictures to capture important fixtures that connect us to moments of consequence where we hold deer to the essence of the actions we cherish so much, keeping track of our histories for a prentice where eye contact and conversations work in tandem to express the value of social interaction and the moments that shouldn't be forgotten no matter how much gratification came after. Still some things we have to hold on to, like soft kisses or the interests we invested in. Wishes that one day we will make it and retribution will be made, and repayment for everyone that generated a pleasant fragrance and gave occasions

that felt like celebrations low times when they gave you elevation, and even now when you replay it, it's recognized as something sacred. Take a look in your ars photo bull and don't just reminisce for benefit. How can we forget the people own tears were shared all together? You got backed up after you selling blood, stories that narrate a purposeful pass, those who shared their last and made you last, the rhythm that persuaded the unforgettable dance. Because life is too short and goes by too fast.

This first one's called was It a Drug? It's about the same old song really goes like.

This Was It a Drug Deal? Gone wrong or was it gang related?

It's like our life leaking on the pavement, hums out of tune, out of tune to their ear drums because frequently too frequent to me.

They misquote our.

Lines like our red tie dyed teas, don't scream to the world like feedback. They composed notes for the news station about the new statistics, but their disharmony sounds flat to the unheard, whose street language confounds and stage presence insights imitation.

Yeah, our slang be resonating.

We were born refugees, orphans with no songs from our homeland. We record our melodies in a mournful octave in brick tense cities where the anthem is survival of the fittest who relate to their gangs. And it's only natural to select the art of the drug deal and pitch in pursuit of happiness.

When the law of the land is we got the right to.

Their arms and stand our ground on our blocks and defend our castles.

We call that a remix.

It was a preemptive strike against an adversary who had weapons of mass destructions and was known for committing war crimes. And now the world is a safer place, your honor, and.

Now there's going to be an AD and there's not really going to be an ad transition. It's just going to be ads now.

And Rebecca, this is Matthew Garcia with another raw reflection, Roses.

I sometimes wonder if I hurt more people than I benefited. It's hard trying to evolve when you've limited adoption in the peril of horstole my innocence, violence and drugs, and the feelingshes ruins the parents, which ultimately poison the kids. I network building bridges, fighting my heart out on friends and foals witness my commitment, and trying to be the difference.

Still condeming to hate the crabs and the barrel wicked. It's changed his happening, independent, limits shifting, But this isn't America, God telling it and no golden ticket. I used to think it a lot, just to kick it, thinking my perseverance would persuade folks to get it. I was just wasting time, like I could spare minutes. How does that make sense when you're living with a life sentence thought I found love a time or two. You could crumble when you find out today one is lying of you.

Confused with close because you know better. Yeah, you broke some hearts before, so you know better, said, I can't stand those serpents. I've seen some of my heroes get killed by their closest. For me, my moments are urging. I want to be on the other side before opportunities, door closes, before I die. Giving me my roses, I want them now now, when I'm in the ground like my falling soldiers. Please bring me soup when I need it.

Don't come around when it's bad. It was beating knowing I'm depleting and you're still eating. I'm out gunned and they still cheating. I guess when the outcome is victory, they'll start believing.

Thank you.

I got another one for you, man. This one is called I Am.

I wrote this while I was in silitary confinement and just represent everything I needed to get off my test at the time.

I am.

I am a dog, not in the sense of my bark, my bite, my breed, instinct, or characteristics, but in the sense that I'm handcuffed behind my back with a black leash hanging from between the cuffs. Two white correctional officers hold the leashes. They leave me outside to another cage about the size of a bathroom and a mini mansion twenty twenty one, And I wondered what my ancestors are saying, What are they thinking? How do they feel about what they are witnessed from above? From below? I wonder what Stird Good Marshalls thoughts on the thirteenth Amendment legalized slavery Under the guy is a criminal punishment. I am a co star and a documentary on social just is Gone wrong, A victim of an aggregated sitting sanctioned by a hypocritical

judge who only saw what he assumed my face represented, not with my soul represented, a distant memory buried in the cemetery of his cloudy judgment, carelessly wiping away my life like sweat from his brow or dust off of his shoulder, legally thrown out the window. Only evidence wave was my creed, color, culture, age, dialect, and tax bracket, the latter at which I never considered because it was too low to acknowledge. The master I mean correctional officer and locks my cage. It's time for me to go inside.

What everbody I am, He has a job to do, and my job and his eyes is to make his job easy as I being led to a smaller cage, my cell the size of your bathroom if you live on Section eight. Other prisoners stand at the sail gates looking on Lungoldie. I can't stand in sight, but I'm accepting of it. At the same time, my sail door shut and the see O give me that look.

You know that one. It's smugged.

And if superiority he had an expression, that would be it. I am locked up on top of being locked up for having the audacity to buck against the system. And they exude pride in the way that they view a bad influence, like the runaway slave who dared the protests. I have to be disgracing this mantle publicly in order to keep their train moving. I am a prosecutor's dream, not the one with mixed feelings, but the one with no integrity, hungry formed vestment during election year, newlywed with a chip on his shoulder and a healthy mortgage. Who do you think he's willing to sacrifice? If justice ever had a blindfold on, this is the time for her to take it off. If there was ever a time for him to do morning bend, the ruse why not

now when he's up against me young blacking Society's footstool, their doormat to the back door.

Yes, I say back door, due to.

His deviousness, some planning evidence here alive to there by man a uniform and man of the cloth. A false statement reiterated by an officer the court wouldn't hurt too bad?

Right? Why not? What's another life?

As long as the piece is fitting to his makeshift puzzle, as long as he can prove that you are already on the wrong path anyway, and as long as your faces on most of the newsreels. I am too high spirited, and the cell that's meant to diminish it in the system that says lord my pitch.

I am casual and calm.

When I need something from the CEOs, a counselor union managerer, parole board, because that's the only way I have a slight chance of getting it. To be alert, proud, or outspoken or pride for will leave me helpless. The prived to bear necessities is minutest toilet paper. My body is not enough. They want my self esteem, self respect, dignity and everything that incompassed my soul. They wanna humble pie me until my thoughts turn the mush, until my fire turned into a sparkle, and until my voice is non existent.

They want a shell of a man, until I'm nothing but a mannequin.

For the store front of CCX. I am a nasty taste and as your's mouth.

The caucade want the lists going on paper to represents everything bad. The one who's never knew a black man personally unless he was a standout, you know, the obamagainst the football star his ninety percent white high school, or the biracial guy that he used to work with that spoke so proper who ended up becoming CEO.

How the hell am I supposed to live up to that.

They're his proof that he's not racist, and I'm his proof that he's not the oxymoron that benefits no one. They justify his those actions against me, and I justify his thars actions against them. I have to convince eleven more people like him, for better or worse than I'm innocent of a crime to fish my stereotype, all under the guise of them being my peers, all under the system would hid and fix a voter suppression unjust lost to targeted communities along with the job market that bleeds discriminate the story practice, which leads to the ineligibility of being a jury.

So what the hell was I thinking?

I am a fire cracker, this borderline legal depending on the setting, in need of a drone to take me away, if only mentally. I am in prison and the hicktowns of all hick towns with the kind I never met, the benefits off of my presence but hates it. At the same time, I am on call, but for who, I don't know. That's just how I feel. Like I'm waiting on some type of ignition, some super conscious valid reason to blow and go kama, COSI I am offbeat and constantly trying to align myself as they consistently switched their alignment. I am a patient and this mythical hostage known as the penitentiary, and the only reality, the same thing that's trying to kill me will set me free.

This next one, it's called futile plea. Just because we reproduce it, does it mean we ain't products of it?

You know, we did not invent this.

You know this heaviness pressing down on us and us pressing down on them who are also us. You know, for half a thousand years, the slaves chained and the whole of the ship have to eat, sleep, shit, and piss in the shit and piss that falls from above the same as how it falls on those below. Everybody got a shit and piss. Somebody got to live at the bottom of the slave ship. We did not invent this.

We were born here in this shit, and we climbed through it if we could figure out the shackles to the top, stepping on anybody who can't figure out the shackles. So even at the top, we don't feel clean, even when we say we do. Some of us broke the rusted shackles and began to climb, but got trapped mid escape, so we got murdered or maybe just whipped and chained up tighter.

And now we play cards in this shit.

The hands we were dealt our hands wet, slick from the piss and the.

Shit, and we act like we don't notice it.

From the bottom of the hold of the slave ship, we watch the world, We look up and watch the shit fall. We look around and hate each other like we forgot who invented this shit. In other words, it's easier to blame ourselves than come together and capsize this boat.

This ain't our boat.

Please remember, contrary to the stereotype, we have always known how to swim.

And now there's going to be more ads, and these are the ads that support this show, and we're back.

This is Matthew Garcia with another raw reflection, liberation. I thought I lost everything when I lost freedom. Then I discovered that I was never free when time bra hand being freedom's meaning. For a long time, I was rebelling and grieving and fighting everything, yelling and screaming, moving off to impulse instead of understanding the essence of thoughts to rebel thinking terms come being a assay for my actions weren't confirming I'm believing in the higher power. Waking up a nightmare sending like a power, not frightening by pain a danger, but by seconds, minutes, and hours when you're stuck in the mountains, removed from familiar people on you, sensory deprivation, a part of your mind you can lose,

and because of your sentence, you can't participate in school. Only ten percent of long terms can occupy those rooms where education is being disseminated. Asking like you don't care, but you're really hated heartburn day, hoping it don't get disintegrated. Going to the law library studying similar cases working labor, shiys and pennies out of payments. Have you ever wanted something so bad that even in your feet you're crazy.

It's not money, it's not set it's your liberation, not purposely but overwhelming. It's a pull system because you're telling them you don't want to die here. You don't think they listen. Confirmed with so many enclosed quotas, no wonder why there's friction, persecutions for long embraces with his sami like long husincuss these no visiting rooms in the center centuries are the strictest, and complaining about these conditions retort off in crickage. What would you do.

If you ain't kill nobody?

The life's the census and you're surrounded by snake farm with so much venom? Our position is your own feeling like the devil sent them? The clock is taking you getting more praise. You was a child when you came in eighteen years old? What's the age acting like you're not heard? But it's acting you're the protagonisty in play right word that's the word, but the narratives don't change. Deperation, deboration, Depration is what I need. Depration, deporation, the libertion. I believe theberation, debration, vibration.

I hope, I see, thank you.

So this last one, it's called bioluminescence. It's a little bit more optimistic. We the wretched, receive no respite. We revolve, living forever in revolt, some revolution. Yet we weather daily and by generations, rather than bloom, a new creation folded in.

Frustration, hard cold.

I'm studying mechanics so I can know how things work, so I can build something and destroy something. I'm studying explosives and foundations and structures. I'm studying engineering so I can know how things stand, so I can bring them down so I can make them fall. I'm studying demolition and making plants. I'm studying plants and how they begin in darkness, unseen, and some are known to burst through cement, but really they just found a way through the abstraction in the concrete, the substance used to lay the foundations, hard, cold, but not impenetrable by beauty, formally concealed in dirt, which some call soil rich dark and filled with nutrients, mainly those needed for plant life, without which we'd all die. Nitrogen, phosphorus,

potassium NPK, the ingredients listed on the labels of fertilizers used to bake bombs, which break foundations and bring down structures.

We're all made of the same stuff.

I'm studying seeds and soil and fertilizers and mechanics and engineering because we the wretched, remain concealed until we realize we're rich and dark, surrounded by everything.

We need to break through foundations to bloom.

So I'm studying horticulture and photosynthesis because we don't need to receive anything.

We don't need a recipite.

Yes, we have been surrounded by death, which precedes decomposition, which deposits what life is composed of. We're all made of the same stuff. Back into the soil, which makes it rich in nutrients. We are seeds hidden in darkness. We are surrounded by richness potential, concealed beneath foundations.

That are hard and cold.

So I'm also studying warmth, which is found in we in closeness. Some organisms that grow in darkness make their own light, which.

Is called bioluminescence.

Recently, science have discovered this phenomenon in humans. I'm studying we the wretched in closeness and darkness, surrounded by death. How we are rich and how we make our own light, and how we will break through foundations and destroy structures by becoming gardens, wild and untended, blossoms and trees tangled together, vines and weeds rooted in richness from death, making life light boom.

Thank you for listening.

Poetry just has that power, and art in general, I think has that power, whether it's visual or you know, whatever medium happens to be the way that you express yourself. So I really think that in the belly has to be a part of that. Right, we're doing political education at the same time where humans growing into humans, you know what I'm saying. So that's part of that goals and development process.

It's not just.

Essays and and analytical thinking and logic and and.

Understanding the politics.

It's understanding ourselves and each other.

It's dope because Polo told me when I said you anything could be a poem, right, And it just made the way I look at the paper different because I started realizing how to like use white space, how to put words in different places to kind of change the rhythm and change you know, how you have to say it when you speak it out loud. I think one of the poems while I really really play around with that and and try to utilize that is biolumin essence.

And it's you know, it's one thing to hear it, well, it's looking at it on paper. It just looks and you know, it's different it, you know, how I put it together. And also in that same vein like line breaks right, and you know, sometimes when you go to the next line, the last word that you stop on before you go to that next line, if you keep going, it means one thing, but if you stop right there, it means another thing. And sometimes when we're expressing something, we're talking to each other, it means both things, you know, like they don't just mean one thing, you know. And so that's kind of where I like to see how things, you know, kind of mean everything, how things are relative and how they relate to each other, and also analogies

and metaphors. I'm always trying to figure out how these things fit together and how they're the same, you know, how is what I'm going through the same as what you're going through. And how is it universal to the truth that we all kind of recognize and experience even if we can't articulate them, Like I can just keep going over a piece over and over again, and you know, and just looking at it and re seeing it, right, like seeing it all over again and saying, hold on, wait a minute, what if I do this?

What if I change this? Is? How am I getting closer to the truth?

Right?

I actually wrote that in a poem.

Reason I'll say it's art if it's true, right, because that's how I feel like it's That's what I'm trying to reach with each one. It's some truth of the you know, what is the the root of this thing? I'm trying to say, How can I get all the way to.

The bottom of it?

How can I cut away everything superfluous and get to what is the root of it? You know, the the bare truth of it? And revision is like so necessary for that process. I'm in conversation with, you know, the people who I think may read this, or the people who I'm imagining I'm talking to, even if no one's ever gonna read it, or you know, I'm in conversation with George Jackson in France Finan. I'm in conversation with Ames Cesse. I'm in conversation with Angela Davis. You know, I'm thinking about Aside of Shakur and and what she would think about this as I'm as I'm coming up with this idea and what I'm trying to say here.

You know what she agree or what she argue with me. You know, I'm I'm never alone when I'm writing.

Upon That was the voice of Yayar, one of the inside editors of In the Belly. Our poems today were in order that they were read the Process by Remy, Bad Bunny by Matthew Garcia. Was It a Drug by y a Year? Roses by Matthew Garcia, I Am by Rennie, Futile Plea by a Year, Liberation by Matthew Garcia, Bioluminescence by Ayear and her authors are.

All right.

My name Jeremy Mulligan.

I do a lot of writing under the pseudonym Remy ak Rio.

I published six books.

You can check me out on Amazon dot com or Prpublications dot org. You can also find me on my podcast Walk in the Track. I want to shout out my brothers, that's all along with me on this ride and here ya here for giving me this opportunity.

Shout out Matthew gar said.

Check him out to on his Facebook and you want to see any other my writings there available in minutes before six dot com as well, so you know, check me out, man, I'm here, I love to write.

I'm ready to go piece to everybody. My name is Randy Carter aka YAYR. For y'all who don't know me, I'm currently held captive in the Pennsylvanian prison industry. I'm an organizer, facilitator, student, mentor, and sometimes a poet. I'm also an editor and contributor for in the Belly magazine. You can check us out online. Support us on Patreon, follow us at belly Zane, follow me at underscore Yair.

Also support my fellow in the Belly editor Pierre Penson aka Polo go to support him at Freepierre dot org. One shout out to my bro Jeremy Mulligan who writes under the pseudonym Remy aka Rio. He's a author, educator. Find him on YouTube for his podcast Walk in the Track. Another shout out to my brother Matthew Garcia. He's a dope poet and author, also runs a mentorship program here at scich just to called real Rat. He gives a platform for men like me to teach classes to the younger generation who got caught up in this system. So you can follow him at matt Raw Underscore nineteen eighty.

We also heard from Matthew Garcia from his substack quote Matthew is incarcerated at sci Chester in Pennsylvania. For him, poetry isn't a hobby. It's how he maintains his humanity, processes his experience, and strives to remain the provider he wants to be for his family. You can find his poetry on substack at the Garcia project or on Instagram atmatt Raw Underscore nineteen eighty And thanks again in the Belly, who you should absolutely check out and support, and thanks for helping us get audio from people like Obviously, a lot of work went into this episode for you all, and if you want more and you want to support their work, you can find them at Instagram at bellizine and subscribe to the newsletter in print magazine at patreon

dot com Slash in the Belly. You can also learn more about June eleventh, the International Day of Solidarity with long term Anarchist prisoners at June eleven, but that's not spelled out. That's like June one dot no blogs like noo blogs dot org, and you can find a pen pal and start writing someone today. My name is Margaret Kiljoy and I'm incredibly grateful to Hazel who helps with the episodes, who made this episode happen, and also shout out to Eva who does her audio and went above and beyond this week to help make this work. And so yeah, see you next week for more probably short fiction.

We'll find out.

That was good. That's back in twenty twenty one. I wrote that.

But uh, yeah, I hear you from Columbus too. Man, I'm from Detroit. You go from the Midwest. I used to be in Columbus sometimes out that way.

Yeah, it could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources where it could happen here. Updated monthly at cool Zonemedia dot com slash sources thanks for listening.

CZM Book Club: Poems by Incarcerated Authors -- with In The Belly Magazine

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