I keep coming back to Green Windows because I really got motivated when Peggy first invited me to the class to get over past things and express myself more. 

While I was taking the class, I went to a women's group and we had incense and candles and meditated and were asked to take whatever was on our mind and bothering us, from childhood to early age to teen to young adult to adult, and write it on a piece of paper, then read it to ourselves, then ball it up. It made me get rid of what was bothering me. I had been feeling like I had been tortured since a little girl. But as I wrote, I released things through the tears in my eyes, from my stomach, my belly, to my lungs to my throat, releasing it, throwing it up, freeing myself. So my writing is more like a journal: Instead of using my voice, I'm using my writing, screaming so the world can hear me. Instead of marching in the streets with the 99 women's march, I'm the 100th woman, marching with words.  

Young women, girls and teens are speaking up with their voices. You know, some people can't speak. Some people can't hear or talk. But they can read with their eyes. Reading, and other people reading your poetry or stories, is inspiring in either a happy way or sad way. They can learn to relieve what is bothering them, too. 

Now I'll hand a person a pencil, ink pen, or crayon and say, "I would like to hear your story. Would you like to write it down?" People think homeless people want money or food. Some people just want people to hear their story, to sit and listen, or release something, or just be quiet together. So asking them to tell their story, what's bothering them, they are like. “Oh, I just wanted you to hear this." Sometimes it doesn't make sense, but I don't care. They just want someone to listen. Most people don’t have time. 

For 2019 I would like for the city of Oakland or Green Windows to have an open mic where women, men too, but women, can say what's on their mind or what they went through, or what they want to release. Then we can give each other hugs after and let each other know we are loved no matter what gender, race, color or nationality. 
​
When I think about the violence done to people of color and queer people, I want say, “No matter your gender, we are praying for you, be strong, keep your heads up, know that you are loved. I hope they catch the racist haters out there who try to torture you. We are going to kill them with love because love is what makes the world go around.” 

Below is a piece of writing that I wrote in a Green Windows workshop. It was published in the 10-year anthology, ​Writing from Green Windows. 

Who’s Your Daddy?
     By Sister Roxanne Rocksteady Jones

Trick or Treats 
Mamas’ babies
daddies’ maybies
Who’s your daddy?

Ok! Soul Sisters
Girls, here we go
Dancin’ to the beat of Aretha Franklin 
and Lady of Soul, Diana Ross 
and Lady Sings the Blues

Here near downtown Oakland 
the block of 22nd, Telegraph and West Grand Ave
which is now called Uptown

Here on the sparklin’ psychedelic rainbow dance floor
in this ol’ ol’ ol’ red brick building
used to be the Pancake House 
which is now called Disco City
Shakin’ our money maker 
as the mens would say
Shakin’ what your Mama gave you 

Shakin’ our bootays
Droppin’ it like it’s hot
Girls just wanna have fun 
Actin’ like our Mamas’ drinkin’ brandy 
Courvoisier 
Vodka with pineapple juice 
and Gin
Strawberry margaritas 

Laughin’ havin’ fun
Cryin’ talkin’ about the good good ol’ days
about the no good men who almost stole our hearts
Rememberin’ the good good good ol’ ol’ ol’ days
When our Mamas was also on the dance floor 
Partyin’ and shakin’ their old money makers 
Their groove things
Their asses, as the ol’ men would say
Drinkin’ brandy with milk 
7 Up with Courvoisier 
Vodka with orange juice
Gin with apple juice
Dancin’ to the Temptations
the Whispers 
Gladys Knight and the Pimps
Dancin’ til’ the funkadelics the freaks 
Come out at night

Dance song 
Shakin’ it
Droppin’ it like it’s hot
and our Moms cryin’ about our no good daddies 
on the dance floor 
as the Godfather of Soul, James Brown 
Sings the number one song 
Hot Pants
I like the girl with the hot pants on 
She can do the boogie woogie all night long

Oh my God, he’s singin’ about my Mama
who’s your daddy?
James Brown, Father of Soul 
Goin’ back to the good good good ol’ days

Trick or Treat 
Who’s your daddy? 
Mamas’ babies 
daddies’ maybies

​When I was a teenager, I was very ambitious. I was convinced that the stories coalescing in my head were so vivid and important that I would make a great working writer, sell enough copies to support myself, maybe have my works taught in English classes, and follow in three of my relatives’ footsteps. What I didn’t fully understand, however, is that being a working writer requires a day job—or in my case two—especially if you’re publishing books by yourself. The major traditional publishing companies were, and sadly still are, the gatekeepers of literature, and generally wary of investing too heavily in unproven writers, which is why I was so determined to do it myself.

In college, I intended to collect my rejection letters to remind myself not to give up. Unfortunately, some time after my sixth rejection, I had a serious health emergency, then life caught up with me, and I misplaced my collection. But at least I never stopped reading, or watching movies, or listening to music, and finding things in life that inspired me, because those experiences help maintain the vibrancy of my stories, and even to help ground them in reality, to make more sense of them. Even generative writing programs like Green Windows have been invaluable. As Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once wrote, “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”

Nobody can really tell you how to write (no matter how much they might want to), because the creative process is an extension of your unique, individual thoughts, feelings and ideal method of expression. When we write, that process is the crystallization of concepts that we wish to transmit, however raw they might be at first. Editing is the process of cutting, refining and burnishing those ideas like gemstones. When we read, watch or experience other things, we are mining … looking for the things that resonate with our own experience.

In summation, we need to look for the things that inspire us, and we will know that they’ve inspired us when, all of a sudden, in spite of whatever obstacles that external forces throw in our way, our world-views and the stories connected to them begin to make sense again.

Below is a piece from a previous Green Windows workshop. Enjoy!

Excerpt from
“THE HEARTSCAPE FACTS” THREADS ON WWW.MAPPINGTHEHEARTSCAPE.COM, DATED 07/29/2011
     by Rachel Golden
​
FACT
It has long been believed that Atlas Galt, the keytarist for Heartscape, was named after the Greco-Roman god who supposedly held up the Earth on his shoulders. Whoever first started that bull-crap was clearly an Objectivist twat, because any fourth-grade textbook will tell you that Atlas was the Greco-Roman god who held up the SKY on his shoulders, which was no doubt an easier job because the sky is way lighter!

RighteousPath: LOL!

Howitzer: LOL!

VMyson: LOL!

PantherHands: OMG LOL!

RocketSauce: FUCK OBJECTIVISM UP ITS FAT WRINKLY ASS!!!!!

Diogenes: LOL nice one, Rocket!

RighteousPath: Damn, that got political pretty fucking quick.

BigNo: Not even the internet is totally free of politics, sadly. Up north, we have a contemptuous asshat named Stephen Harper to thank for that. Part of me is tempted to go scale Mount Everest for that very reason.

Howitzer: Fuck Stephen Harper!

LunarRover: Wait a goddamn minute… I think I know the smart-ass piece of shit who wrote this post in the first place.

BigNo: Do you, now?

LunarRover: I’d accuse Biggie, but that’d be too easy, and frankly he’s not one with an affinity for Greco-Roman gods. Diogenes the dog, I accuse you! Do you hear me? J’accuse!

Diogenes: Ruh-roh! Guilty as charged.

SidPernicious: LOL!

LunarRover: More like “guilty as fuck”!

VMyson: Bad dog. No biscuit. LOL.

Diogenes: LOL!

Howitzer: Holy shit, I love this fucking forum so much!

LunarRover: And the forum loves you, too, Howie.

SidPernicious: I don’t love Howie, gaymo.

VMyson: That’s because you’re an asshole, Sid.

BigNo: LOL!

RighteousPath: LOL!

Howitzer: LOL TRUE DAT!

SidPernicious: I’d rather be an asshole than a gaymo, like you gaymos!

Diogenes: Aw, sorry to hear you’re not comfortable with your sexuality, Sid. You might want to get in touch with someone at PFLAG, and maybe get some shit off of your chest.

SidPernicious: Why the fuck would I do that, when I have you chodes to get into bitch-fights with?

BigNo: I think what my associate meant is that you should do yourself a favor and “get some santorum off your chest,” Sid, because I’m pretty sure I can smell it from here.

RocketSauce: Yeah, Sid, it’s not our fault you’re so deep in the closet, you’re finding Christmas presents!

PantherHands: ROFLMAO!

LunarRover: ROFLMAO!

RighteousPath: Embrace your queerness, Sid! We believe in you!

Howitzer: LOL!

PantherHands: LOL!

VMyson: OMG I’M DYING!

SidPernicious: FUCK YOU PUSSIES!
SidPernicious has logged out.

VMyson: LOL what a dumb-ass!

Howitzer: Some motherfuckers just don’t have the introspection to be able to laugh at themselves.

LunarRover: Wait a sec, do kids these days still say “gaymo” when they want to insult people on the internet? Seriously?

Diogenes: I know, right? It’s so last decade…

​BigNo: Kids are so unfashionable.

​I heard about Green Windows on an aimless walk through downtown Oakland at dusk one Spring.  I remember the sky was pink and I was climbing my way up from rock bottom and pure Hell.  I think I was only a few months sober.  Back then, Green Windows was hosted at the original Rock Paper Scissors Collective art workshop on Telegraph Ave.  I opened my mouth for what seemed like the first time since I was a kid and spoke about what was really important to me.  We sat on unassuming chairs in a paint-splattered room and people listened to me.  I never did AA or any kind of structured help program.  Green Windows was it for me.  Every month I would join a friendly assortment of colorful people, I would write, I would share and I would listen.  In this way, I built myself up from broken, devastated pieces into a positive member of a tangible community for the first time in my life.  
    In Green Windows, you always have the option to pass on sharing a piece of writing.  I have never done this.  I have written pieces of writing that scared me into shaking, pale-skinned jello in these workshops.  Sharing them in a safe, confidential space with warm, loving people who all share their stories in turn has brought me healing that feels divine.  Again, you don’t have to share if you don’t want to, and plenty of people choose not to, but I have made serious progress emotionally and spiritually just by saying what I need to say, even if I’m terrified.  
    After a while of coming to these workshops, you start to see the same people.  You admire their writing and then get to admire them as people.  None of us are big-shot prestigious writers (at least not yet).  Almost everyone is available to talk or share a ride home or a slice of pizza after the workshop.  The community of people I’ve met coming to Green Windows over the years is what keeps me rooted in the Bay Area.  It brings me pride in my home and I feel like I’m releasing stagnant energy and rejuvenating by writing, reading and listening.  
    As long as I live in the Bay Area, I’m going to keep coming to Green Windows workshops.  This community has played no small part in making me the person I am today.  Peggy, her helpers, and all of us do a lot of work to keep the space open to truly anyone who wants to come through these doors and write.  The participants in these workshops feel like a cross-section of Oakland and the greater Bay Area and I haven’t seen this diversity in one space anywhere else.  Green Windows writers have the privilege of coming to awareness of what life is like for people different from us. This work is important for keeping myself humble and keeping myself engaged in the struggle for justice and in building community.  Here, I have the space to dig into myself and find veins of painful, traumatized gold to bring into the light and inspire others.  I am grateful to live in a time and place where this is possible.

Below is a piece of fiction I wrote in a Green Windows workshop. I hope you enjoy it. 

Alec West is a Bay Area native and has been writing and publishing since he was twelve, when a fierce middle-school teacher taught him that he was worth something.  He has been published in Slingshot Magazine, The Anthology of Poetry By Young Americans, The Moon,   and The Highlander.  His first book, “What Happened When I Stopped Watching TV” will be available in print and e-book in December 2018. Follow Alec on Instagram.

I’ve been telling stories since I was three years old. The best years of my childhood were spent guiding my friends on narrated adventures in my backyard (which I would later learn is called “live-action role-playing”). Unfortunately, not all of the stories I told were, in truth, my stories, spun out of my own head, nor written by my own hand… The truth is I didn’t master handwriting until I was 12 (and before the widespread use of personal computers, this was a serious set-back), and a good majority of the stories I told were based on movies and TV shows I had watched, memorized, and faithfully replicated in my own little voice.

In retrospect, I suppose I had to start with the oral tradition before I could move into transcription. There was a good several years of my life where I was able to recite the entire poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, by heart and without prompting, not because I fancied myself a poet, but because my grandfather used to read it to me every night that I stayed over at his house, and it became stuck in my head. It took me a long time to figure out how to tell my own stories, or at least to perfect my own voice when I told them, but if I hadn’t practiced with the masters, I wouldn’t have learned that every idea comes from something before it, that “new” stories are essentially built upon pre-existing narrative structures, and that it is physically and metaphysically impossible for creative impulses to exist in a vacuum.

My father worked for IBM for 30 years, so we were among the first in our neighborhood to own personal computers in 1994, which served me well in my transcription practice. One of the first writing programs I used to transcribe my stories was appropriately called “Creative Writer,” which you could tell was purposefully designed for small children because it was full of colorful cartoon characters that cracked lame jokes and stale puns, as well as weird-shaped buttons that made squishy fart-noises when you clicked on them. Other than that shameless bit of pandering in the software’s design, “Creative Writer” basically functioned like Microsoft Word, with many spacing and font options for each project, plus much fancier-looking clip-art to use as needed.

Thankfully, I took to typing much faster than I took to handwriting. My middle-school teachers were disappointed that I continued “hunting and pecking” for the keys I needed, despite their pathetic attempts to cover my hands with a thin (but not thin enough) box over the keyboard. I’m pretty sure they only wanted me to master QWERTY-style so that I could become somebody’s secretary, and if I’d been allowed to curse, I would have gladly advised them to “fuck that noise,” but the truth is that I wasn’t allowed to curse until I got to high school and then all bets were off.

Instead of embracing social milestones for most teenage girls—like learning about makeup, armchair-studying fashion in magazines, and/or getting a boyfriend—I spent the vast majority of my high school and college years absorbed in story-driven computer games, like “StarCraft,” and writing fanfiction for multiple other writers’ stories. The important thing, again, was getting as much practice as possible; I wrote before classes, I wrote at lunch, I wrote at the library, I wrote after dinner, and I wrote well into the small hours of the night, and yet still managed to get up in time for school.

Jordan was one of my best friends since I was three, and she introduced me to Green Windows in 2015. These workshops have allowed me to challenge my time-use, to focus on staying positive, and to hone my narrative voice, as well as to listen for that which resonates with me, even if I don’t immediately understand why… It feels to me as if we are essentially building on pre-existing structures and adding our own flourishes in order to express the ideas we generate, with the goal of learning how to share them with others. While most of my computing experience is centered on word-processor use, I figure if the process of writing is at all like I hear coding can be, then Green Windows must be one hell of a hack-a-thon.
​
Below is a piece from a previous workshop. Enjoy!
​

EXCERPT FROM “THE HEARTSCAPE FACTS” THREADS ON WWW.MAPPING-THE-HEARTSCAPE.COM, DATED 02/02/1998
​
By Rachel Golden

FACT
Frank Riordan, the guitarist for Heartscape, is not just musically competent – he’s also an astrophysics prodigy. When he was 16, he was placed in an advanced mathematics course where he composed a 10-page essay on the practicality of faster-than-light travel as featured in the classic film, Barbarella. Within a year, this work earned him the attention of the Canadian Space Agency, which offered to pay for his university tuition if he helped them develop a perpetual motion machine. He even took time to help a fellow musician—Philip Taylor Kramer, the bassist from the band Iron Butterfly—on a Top Secret time-travel experiment in the U.S., but good luck getting him to break his non-disclosure agreement with the CSA and NASA.


HighPriest: OMG MIND BLOWN!

BigNo: LOL!

Howitzer: LOL!

Diogenes: Holy shit. I don’t even.

LunarRover: Sounds plausible. I mean, the guy is a genius, after all.

Diogenes: Where to start? I mean, it’s total bullshit, but I have to say it’s the most entertaining bullshit I’ve read this week. Kudos to whoever posted this – you’re a funny bastard.

Howitzer: Dude, it’s not bullshit—don’t ever say Frank Riordan isn’t a goddamn genius, because he totally is. Anything else is fightin’ words!

LunarRover: Whoa, down boy!

Diogenes: Are you seriously polishing his balls right now, Howie?

Howitzer: They never found Kramer’s body! He fucking disappeared off the face of the earth! How the hell do you know Riordan didn’t help him with a time-travel experiment?

Diogenes: The same way I know that Riordan didn’t write a goddamn paper on FTL travel in Barbarella. The premise of undertaking such an endeavor is absolutely impractical, completely insane, and totally stupid!

LunarRover: Jane Fonda is a total fox, BTW.

Diogenes: Don’t get me wrong, I love the shit out of that movie and yes, Jane Fonda is a total fox, but good goddamn, it’s called SCIENCE FICTION for a reason!

RocketSauce: But at least the post is funny, right? You did say it was funny, and that whoever posted it was a “funny bastard,” right? Yes?

Diogenes: Thanks, Rocket. You actually made me smile today. Congratulations are in order, for that is no easy feat.

RocketSauce: Fuckin’ sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

BigNo: Wow, and here I thought Diogenes might actually secretly be Frank Riordan, posing as an average poster and getting his jollies by trolling the crap out of everyone.

LunarRover: No, no, that’s me.

RocketSauce: HOLY SHIT LUNAR ARE YOU FRANK RIORDAN?!!!!!??!!

LunarRover: No, I’m the average poster that’s getting his jollies by trolling the crap out of everyone. I like to think it’s basically my job.

Howitzer: OMG, if Frank Riordan actually posts on this site, I’m going to freak the fuck out and literally shit myself.

RocketSauce: You and me both, man!

BigNo: Gotta say, Howie, you are a class act.

HighPriest: I think you mean, “clact ass.”

BigNo: No, I don’t, King Pothead. Get your eyes checked.

LunarRover: …the hell does that even mean?

BigNo: It means HighPriest has been hitting the bong too hard and needs to drink some coffee.

HighPriest: Fuck you too, Biggie.
​
InfinityPrincipal: All right, all right, enough of this. This all has gotten simply too silly. Thread is locked. Now for a complete change of mood…

I recall being an unusually keen and observant child, and there seem to be a myriad of stories and memories confirming such. For instance, I was told that from birth until about the age of two, I seldom spoke beyond uttering the Korean words for mother and father, or other short, one-word phrases. Over time, my parents grew concerned and considered taking me to a pediatric developmental specialist, but one day, I requested a glass of water in a full, complete sentence. While I myself have no recollection of this happening, it also doesn't surprise me in the least. I like to collect and gather bits and pieces of things before deciding what to do with them. I especially love stories and storytelling---stories are how I understand myself, others, and the world around me.


I was also a child who experienced extremely intense emotions and did not know what to do with them. I had intrusive thoughts that I knew were troubling and abnormal. There was a lot of yelling in my household, both around me and directed at me. My mother in particular would fly into fits of unpredictable and  unrelenting rage. One reason I really enjoyed school and learning was because I could see my friends, my teacher, and get away from my traumatic home environment.


And in my mind, school comprised of two distinct parts: writing, and everything else that wasn't writing. The act of writing itself brought me such great joy. As silly as the stories and poems were, sometimes unoriginal in their content, they were something I got to make myself. I never wanted to stop. Writing was a place where I could let my creativity and odd thoughts be, and sharing my work with others felt fulfilling. I was proficient in other subjects, sure; advanced, even, but I quickly grew impatient waiting to review yet another example for concepts I already understood. I did like reading to an extent but often felt dissatisfied and crushingly disappointed with most of the books I encountered. They simply couldn't hold my interest. 


Life continued on and I found myself writing poetry on occasion. Different topics, but usually something abstract and vague. However, my reintroduction to poetry came during my sophomore year of high school. I had just left therapy and was still struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide. After talking to a friend about my feelings, he admitted that he didn't understand what I was going through but wanted to, so he suggested that I try writing a poem. I wrote this very personal poem on the topic and ended up competing in a youth slam where I received a perfect 30. Scores aside, what moved me most was the overwhelming support I received afterwards. People I didn't know showed me love, said they liked my poem. Some of them even thanked me, saying they were going through something similar or knew someone who was. It was the first time I felt heard and realized my voice was powerful. As a sad young person, it meant the world to me.


Thereafter, I became very involved in an organization called Youth Speaks, who also hosted the slam I first competed in. I attended countless writing workshops, open mics, slams, and shows, all free, and served on their youth advisory board for three years. I loved every moment of it and had the chance to apprentice under teaching artists who mentored me. From time-to-time, I performed poems, helped out at events, and sometimes facilitated a workshop here and there. In college, I found my place in CalSLAM, a student-led writing organization, and June Jordan's Poetry for the People program.


During this time, I was also named the first Oakland Youth Poet Laureate and received an award for my writing. Since then, I haven't really prioritized my own writing but I'm hoping to change that. My last year of college, I felt extremely burnt out and all I wanted to do was write again. I veered away from the career path I was set on and at this point in my life, I'm thinking of pursuing my writing professionally.


Where does Green Windows fit into all of this? Everywhere. I met the founder, Peggy, through the various organizations and spaces I've been involved in. She has been one of my fiercest proponents, one of my greatest mentors, and one of my most thoughtful friends and sources of overall support. We see each other in passing at the Oakland Public Library, an opportunity she encouraged me to apply for, and in our work with youth.


Peggy invited me to write with Green Windows sometime last year and it has been my most favorite writing group of any I've ever participated in. Peggy's passion and skill as a writer/facilitator are unrivaled, and I love Green Windows for the community it brings together. I've never written with such a dynamic, diverse group of writers not only from different walks of life but also across styles and genres. This alone has helped my writing grow. Every writer that graces the space is serious about their craft, and hearing others' work as well as receiving feedback on mine has allowed me to develop and challenge myself in invaluable ways. My writing is the best it's ever been and I know that this is in part due to the work at Green Windows.


So how might I describe my actual writing process? I find that I write in small bursts and need to have several projects going on at a time. I'm quite touch-and-go and my focus shifts quickly. Some ideas float around and some are forgotten but I try to capture those thoughts before they're beyond summoning. Sometimes I know exactly how to start, what to write, what I want to say, and other times I start with a freewrite, tapping into something my conscious mind is too busy to notice there. My style has been changing and that's exciting. I'm excited to try something new. I have a lot of stories, a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings and curiosities, and my writing allows me to explore them all together.

I thought it was time again to share some of the work I’m doing in the local juvenile hall (Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center).  For the last nine years, I’ve volunteered with the magazine The Beat Within doing weekly writing workshops in the hall and editing the writing for publication. I also facilitate a 5-week poetry workshop once a year in an English class in the hall for the Oakland Public Library, leading up to the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate application deadline (February 5th this year!). With Green Windows, I’m now regularly facilitating a weekly writing workshop with youth in the hall who have graduated from high school. Traditionally, these youth do nothing while their peers are in class. Probation staff in the hall took it upon themselves to organize classes for them: Anger Management, Financial Literacy, Gardening, Sex Ed, Chorus, whatever a staff can offer. You can read more about this program in this blog post from last June. 

These writing workshops, all of them, have gotten harder over time. I’m not sure why but I have two thoughts: 1) There seems to be more kids who have a really hard time maintaining focus. And the amount of time they can focus is less and less with more and more kids who seem to not ever focus at all. 2) The discipline in the hall has gotten more lenient, which in a big way is a good thing. But it means the kids can go through a whole program and/or a whole class talking to each other loudly, not working, without any consequence or reaction. I have no authority, so I try to convince, cajole, reward, adapt the work to the individual and sometimes guilt-trip by telling them why I am there. 

I am there to get their own thoughts and imagination on paper. And I am disappointed when I don’t, because it's a loss for me and for the world that might read them.  But just being there matters. Even the most recalcitrant writers ask me when I’m coming back. They thank me in the end for “helping me express myself.” They’ll chat with each other about their cases and gossip about their girlfriends through the whole workshop and then tell me that the workshop will help them be creative and control themselves in their future. All of this can happen and be true. I am always drawn back to the idea that just being there, regularly, even relentlessly, and determinedly demanding of them to be their true selves on paper counts. Who do they count on to show up? Who is asking them to be true to themselves? 

I’d like to tell you about the young people I get to meet. Here, now, I’ll tell you about two very different people. 

Kalani has focus and tries almost every time, almost every prompt I give him. He can write short, powerful pieces that make the reader understand a little better what it feels like to be an incarcerated young man facing an uncertain future. He also has a remarkable imagination, able to create both characters and settings that go well beyond his personal experiences. The themes in his fiction, though, are always about family bonds and trying to care for family amidst scarcity, violence and addiction. He has written about the challenges facing a boy simply coming home after school and about a man hunting in the wilderness to get food for his family. Strong bonds between brothers reoccur in his fiction.  In all the years I’ve been doing writing workshops in the Alameda hall, I have met few young people with this versatility of talent or this willingness to do real, challenging work.

A judge (not a prosecutor, thanks to California Proposition 57), recently decided to put Kalani back in juvenile court, to not try him as an adult and send him to adult prison. This is a victory. I do not know why Kalani is locked-up, though I know it’s serious. I never ask. These young people are not their crimes. Kalani is intelligent, creative, thoughtful, and kind. He prioritizes his family and he tries new things to better himself and broaden his world. Why would I need to know more? 

Nia is 18 and has been told for months that she’ll be sent to a group home soon. She wants to go home. Why any of that needs to happen when she’s a legal adult, I don’t know. Group homes lie about interviewing her when they haven’t. She is angry. I would be angry too. She is in a class full of young men who miss their girlfriends. She’s a young woman who is easily charming and easily charmed but clearly she draws bold lines around herself. Nia is quick and clever and wants books and poetry with language that doesn’t bore her. She is a clear and precise writer and writes quickly. Every day she’s not in the mood to write, and almost every day she does anyway. One day she said that she was too angry to write. I said, “Write out your anger, don’t hold back, don’t worry about being appropriate, you don’t have to show it to me or anyone.” She did and said she felt better afterwards. In her evaluation she wrote, “I learned that writing down my feelings really does help me cope with my time.”  

Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions about this work, or if you'd like to volunteer with The Beat Within.

Below, you ‘ll find two pieces of writing from Kalani, one from Nia and a piece I wrote in one of these workshops last Fall. 

- Peggy Simmons

Scared 

I’m scared because I don’t know what to do
I’m scared because I only have 1 life not 2
I’m scared because they offered me more time than I lived 
I’m scared because I have no control in life
I’m scared because I can’t trust no one
I’m scared because the ones you love will hurt you
I’m scared because no one looking out for lil’ bro
I’m scared because I’m not living at home 

-Kalani 


The Room 

The room I was in was small
fit about 5 people at most 

But the room had AC so it was never hot inside. 

I remember this room because most of my teachers 
wanted me in detention
instead of being in their class. 

The room walls were all beige with desks all facing the wall.

-Kalani 


18th B-Day

So 2 days ago 
I spent my 18th b-day
in a jail cell. Ever since I turned 13
I always dreamed 
about my 18th B-Day
and how I would have 
the sexiest dress on
with the baddest heels.
The longest red
hair and makeup 
to die for. 
My 18th b-day
was supposed to be 
the happiest day
for me. Instead, 
once I woke up 
I had to
stand in a door 
and wait for somebody
to pop my door. 
I had to sweep, 
wipe, 
and mop 
down my cell. 
I was being talked
at 
rather than talked 
to. 
I never imagined I would spend 
the best day of 
my life in a jail cell. 

- NiMoney


I Want Your Expressions

I want your words to come from your bellies
I want your words to come out colorful and complex
I want your words to shatter your shells
    So we can really see you
    We need to really see you
I want your words to hit us in the gut
I want your words to show us new lights
I want your words to shatter our blinders
    So we can really see you
    We want to really see you
We are stuck, each of us, between walls
Walls built between people, between neighborhoods
We can’t see each other 
We pretend the world is the world within our walls
We live small. We live blind. We live selfish. 
Tend our gardens and ignore the smoke on the other side.
I want your words, I want our words to explode
    the walls
    So we can see each other. 

- Peggy Simmons, (Written in the last Fall 2017 workshop in the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center SEEP workshop.)

Insurrection

by Joseph Kim

​Slivers of rotting dog meat covered the helmet, all the better to blend in with the carrion that infested the city ruins. Wild dogs, rats and roaches were now the chief rulers of a megalopolis that had once spanned over a hundred square miles. From horizon to horizon only twisted rebar, crumbling concrete and mangled steel could be seen. 

But Cassandra had the helmet in her crosshairs. It had moved. Something or someone was under it, crouched behind the wreckage of the sixth floor of a former Stock Exchange building. In the building opposite, Cassandra held her rifle, trying not to blink and waiting to shoot between heartbeats.

It had to be him – whatever he’d become. He was the enemy now. Could never be trusted. He had flipped. His message had read:

Come to the city center.
In the center we will play.
Remember Chutes and Ladders?
​
It was the game they’d once played. A beaten-up board game retrieved by her on a scouting mission, to entertain him while he spent lonely hours down in the bunker surrounded by Women Folk, no other boys to play with. Boys were all raised separately. The idea was it tamed their natural aggressive tendencies by removing the “wolf pack” element. They played the game awkwardly at first, trying to understand the strange 20th century obsession, but in time they found joy in it, an escape. Such a simple world where the stakes were clean and innocent. Not life or death, like now where she was obligated to kill her own son.



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