Category: The Beat Without

by Joel J. Baul May today’s presence find all of you well in spirit and health. The world outside this tomb is beating like that of a heart, yet as we know it’s falling apart!  It saddens me to know that (Jim Crow and McCarthy’s) are no longer dormant?  I can only hope with all that is manifesting itself, there is a unification of enlightenment to ensure we haven’t lost our way and that we acknowledge we do need each other more so in these times than we know: Life is fragile, so too is our reproach. The four poems enclosed

by Michael D. Johnson My name is Michael Dwayne Johnson and I am a thirty-six year old man incarcerated in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations. My convictions are first degree murder and second degree robbery and my crime is gang-related. I’ve been in prison since I was sixteen years old and I have served a total of twenty years and five months.  That’s approximately seven thousand four hundred fifty days of hell and a whole lot of thinking, crying and begging God for mercy. However, this whole experience has taught me a few things; 1) The gang lifestyle

By Miguel Quezada Seventeen years ago, at the age of sixteen, I sat in a juvenile hall holding cell waiting to be booked in on first-degree murder charges, three attempted murders, a gun charge and gang enhancement. In writing this, I had to think about how I ended up in that holding cell.  What advice could I give that would help you avoid some of the mistakes I made? How could I put into words the destruction I caused in so little time to myself and so many other people in a way that could be lesson? I asked myself, what