Category: The Beat Without

-Chris Krych All the time spent cannot be given back to me to relive with my familyAging poorly within a political systemThat stacks the deck against freedomsOnce you are gone, you are gone, but hopefully not forgotten!Another avenue of punishmentLucky to escape with your life, the dead speak(One hundred and three plus so far)!Nobody gets to relive life that has already passed byMothersota makes me cry lakes (ten thousand tears)Angry citizenry pain for lack of political shame!Layered barriers of political fraud, democracy cremated!Eight hundred plus wounded and breathing humansNeed to be made whole againAnother avenue of punishment Is freedom worth having?

-Jeremiah G KelleyBefore I am dead and goneAnd I finally rest in peaceI hope to leave behindAn unforgettable legacyEver since I was a childI wasn’t confident or convincedI would never reach my full potentialLife never made too much senseOne day I picked up a penAnd my hand began to writeI couldn’t believe what I wroteSuddenly so much came to lightI wanted to be successfulBut my mind would have to expandIt was obvious I had a giftThat gift is in my handI had to keep on writingSo, my talent would be exposedAnd as I kept on writingSomething beautiful began to unfoldI

 -Samuel “Shady” Cruz The question has never been “Why?” because the answer has always been there in front of me. I need you to please sit there and hear me out one last time. This will never be spoken again. I just need to let it all out once and for all. Part of my story begins at the age of seven. After my mother abandoned me and left me in the middle of the street all balled up crying, begging for her to come back, she did not! At that moment of my life, Sammy stopped existing. It became

-Freddy “Mr. Positivity” Huante Jr I think about David and coming to The Beat Within. I am keeping up my personal dedication to keep pushing us to help kids in the system; to help them make better decisions and succeed in life. I don’t want to see the youth come down this path and continuing to grow as a human being.  My personal goal in life is to change and it’s all because of someone named David. I was blessed to spend time with David and I am going to continue to keep David’s legacy and what he left behind…

-Johnny Rodriguez Confronting criminal thinking takes an honest person to be real with themselves. Once you understand how to manage denial to get to the core of where it all began, then can you potentially help yourself.  Some individuals do not want anyone to know about their personal issues and it’s perfectly normal and okay. It’s so important that you first protect yourself by learning how to healthily think out what you normalized.  Talk to yourself what you normalized, and write out to yourself what you normalized while growing up even though you do not want to have family members

-Kelon Williams Under the warm sun, as the moisture from the ocean’s breath pacifies the hue of my skin, I swing ever so rhythmically like a Baroque era violin crescendo, of which I have yet to know. Music has been my first love, when love was just a resonating hum from the throat of her that cradles me in her arms. How sweet that melody! That part of me the conductor’s wand ignites instantly; unconsciously, when perceiving the tune, I am in the  the loom of that full scale womb.  I think that even the true voices of the Creator

-Michael Peterson  When I was eighteen years old, I enrolled in the United States Marine Corps. When I got off the bus at the front perimeter of Paris Island, a drill instructor recruiter ran over to me and yelled really loud, “Why do you want to be a marine?”  I answered that on my dad side of the family, there has been a Marine in every generation going back to the first ten men enlisted into the Marines and tons tavern. One of those ten men was William Jewell Peterson, enlisted as a captain and in charge of arranging special

-PoetryIt is a courageous battle we fightTo bear utter darkness and hunger for lightTo look beyond this cage into the starsWe dare to dream behind prison barsTo embrace the beauty beneath our scarsThe audacity to hope within lock and keyTo create harmony in this turbulent seaTo understand who we areValue who we could beThough physically confined, we are spiritually freeI once was blind, but now I seeThe tiniest seed becomes a treeWe learned a truth, do no harm by touchDo not judge anyone but lift everyone upTo not be a hurdle, strive to be a bridge, in the least a

 -Demar M. Nelson I’ve been walking and dreaming in prison for a long time — fifteen years to be exact. It amazes me how much I misunderstood the seriousness of life and now my mission is to get back.  At the age of twenty-one I stood before a judge and from the bench he looked at me but didn’t see me. Seeing me would have meant thinking of my past, my parents, my traumas and what led me to him. But the system does not allow that because if he were to approach his task of sentencing humans beings in

-Adam My self-image is complex. I am a strong minded, easy going, down to earth fella, who can accredit his mistakes to poor choices and negative behavioral patterns. Through periods of time I’ve been someone I don’t want to be; cowardly and insecure. I have, after so many past attempts, been successfully fighting to become the man I am in my most honest form.  This has taken failure and perseverance, mistake and success, but it’s taken a major amount of desire to change and be better. Honestly. When I transfixed my mind to improvement and that goal of enhancing and