Story Archives 2011

As many of you know, I've been writing a book about Hip-Hop artists with disabilities for some time now.  Well at this time I'm about to go onto Chapter 3, Artists' Statements. This is a call to all Hip-Hop artists with disabilities!! Leroy Moore Founder of Krip-Hop Nation & Professor/Author Terry Rowden has teamed up to write a book about disabled Hip-Hop artists & the Krip-Hop Nation.  Many sections of the book will use artist’s personal accounts of their lives, and the artists' views about the Hip-Hop industry in their countries and communities, in the music industry mainstream or underground. We are looking for original stories in your own words with a SMALL bio and your website links all of this in a 1-2 page limit.

If you do and want to send in your story then you have agreed to let Krip-Hop Nation have full control on the publishing of your story.  Krip-Hop Nation has always been a labor of trust, love and activism so this book venture is no different.  Krip-Hop Nation wants to put our stories, history, politics and experiences in one book from Africa to America. The working title of the book is Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge.

Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge will bring the words, rhythm, voices and politics of disabled Hip-Hop artists from around the world into one easily accessible space.  This book is the continuation of the Krip-Hop Mixtape Series that started in 2006.  

Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge will be centered around interviews that I have conducted with Hip-Hop artists from all over the world. It will include the history and teaching of Krip-Hop Nation, personal accounts of their lives, and the artists' views about the industry.  The book will also contain a collection of essays on the Hip-Hop industry and on the struggles and successes of Hip-Hop artists with disabilities.  At the end of the book there will be resource section featuring websites, contact information, and other resources related to disabled Hip-Hop artists.  Adding a crucial dimension to Hip-Hop journalism, Krip-Hop: Hip-Hop Artists with Disabilities Drop Knowledge will fill a much needed space in our ideas about African-American and global popular music.

There is no guarantee that we will use every submission but we will email you if we do use your write up.  So if u are interested in writing up a one - two page story (not a bio but a story) for our upcoming book please email me the story with a high resolution picture, all your web links and a short bio at kriphopproject@yahoo.com.  In your bio please tell us what you are working on and your current email address for the resource section if the book.  Also if you liked to be interviewed by Krip-Hop Nation for the book drop me an email too.

Thank you,

Leroy F Moore Jr.

Founder of Krip-Hop Nation

kriphopproject@yahoo.com

Leroy Moore & Krip-Hop Nation is on Facebook too

 Plain Cone

By Tony Robles

Grandpa had this way

Of whistling and when I heard

It I thought of caramel corn

And ice cream

Grandpa was black, from

New Orleans and his wife

Was San Francisco Irish

But to me they were Grandpa

And Grandma

To landlords they were

Not the kind of people

You rented to

They had a child, my mother,

And they would get into their

Big post-war American made

Car and travel the landscape

And grandpa would drive

To the amusement park or

Some fun place and grandma

And my mom would get out

Of the car

Grandpa would stay inside

The car looking at the panoramic

View from the car window with

A hint of blue when the sun was

At a certain angle

And he’d whistle inside

His car while the birds

Outside whistled back

And he stayed inside the car

When his wife and daughter

Went to the ice cream parlor

“Get me a scoop

Of burgundy cherry”

He’d say

And inside the parlor there’d

Be a man who’d sample all

The flavors with a little plastic

Spoon

Grandma and mom would wait

10 minutes while the man pondered

His options, dropping stained plastic

Spoons in the trash

Then he’d casually

Proclaim to the

Man behind the counter

I think I’ll have a scoop of vanilla

Vanilla, my grandmother would

Snicker, rolling her

Eyes

And the birds outside would

Whistle at my grandfather

Sitting behind the wheel

And he’d whistle

back

© 2011 Tony Robles

Ben Ali, Tunisian fascist dictator, is gone!

Egypt’s 30-year fascist dictator (and U.S. puppet) Hosni Mubarak is about to go!

We are seeing with our own eyes – at last – real people’s power in action. We are seeing the working class joining hands, the police and security forces included. It’s so exciting, exhilarating!

Nevertheless, the world’s peoples must register their support and make this a world revolution so that the imperialists won’t be able to fuck it up – i.e., reverse the revolution with their guns and butter.

This could very possibly be the beginning of a global revolution that would free the people of the world from the tyranny of the 1 percent who own 80 percent of the world’s resources – and initiate real democratic self-determination.

We – the children, women, men of the world who comprise the overwhelming majority of the global population – WE must demand our human rights NOW. Our right to live. Our right to land, bread, housing, health care, child care for working parents, education, justice and peace.

As Frederick Douglass noted: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” We must collectively and globally demand our human rights, human equality.

All power to the people! People of the world, unite!

Long live the Egyptian revolution!

“Mama, will I ever see you again? Whispered by a child in the hills of San Marcos, Guatemala

“Without child care we won’t be able to keep our jobs,” spoken by a mama of three struggling to support her children in Oakland

“We don’t work with Indians,” yelled at an indigenous elder in San Francisco by San Francisco Housing Authority worker

These are the voices of survival radio-keep our media access or we will die radio – keep us on the air or we won’t stay alive radio- Up from the streets, shelters, jails, borders, hip hop beats, youth and elders teach, indigenous-people-led thrival radio. These are the voices of PoorNewsNetwork/PNN radio & PNN- TV – a revolution of media access by any means necessary. Radio, video and stories written, produced and edited by migrante workers in poverty, indigenous elders struggling to keep their land and homes, young folks of color being criminalized for the sole act of being young and of color, African peoples resisting profiling and po’lice murder,  mamas and daddy’s struggling with the myths of the budget cuts and the edges of false borders. Radio, video and written journalism launched by a houseless/landless indigenous disabled single mama of color and her daughter, me.

Taking Back Our Voices

“You and your mother are trash,” Without looking at us, our West Oakland landlord of two years mumbled his opinion of me and my mama, while throwing an eviction notice in our face.. After he dropped the papers he walked down the narrow pathway from our ex-home  to the street. At least he didn’t throw me up against the wall like the two previous landlords had done.

After living through three illegal Oakland evictions in a row, I had written a story about our struggle to get and stay housed in dot-com era Oakland, I sent the story to two east bay media outlets and two “independent radio broadcasts”. All of them said different variations on, “This isn’t news, this happens everyday in the US”

“How long have you and your mother lived in your vehicle,?” A strange amplified voice  seeped into the tape covered rear view window of our car, it was followed by a threatening, glass shattering knock on the remaining glass of our window. It was a knock that always meant police. And yet the voice didn’t fit the knock. I looked up from my crouched frozen position on the frayed vinyl seats of our old Ford Fairmont, only to find a small framed white woman with a large padded microphone in front of her. She was standing next to a tall po’lice officer who glared down at me, while she maintained a seemingly harmless smile. After multiple gentrification and poverty inspired evictions my mama and I ended up living in and out of our broke-down hooptie for the duration of my childhood and teenage years in the Bay Area facing criminalization and profiling and eventual incarceration for the act of being homeless in Amerikkka.

“ Tell them to get the F** out of here,” my mother slapped the back of my head to get me to move, it was barely light on a cold Saturday morning in Oakland. I quickly brushed myself off and came out of the car, still wearing two blankets on top of my clothes.

When I got outside the car  I found out the seemingly nice lady was a reporter doing a story on families  living in their cars. To do this report she felt it necessary to travel with the Oakland Police department. The first thing I  told her was that my mother and I were not ok with being recorded or having our pictures used for a story. After I spoke to her the police officer reminded me that it was illegal to park overnite in the city Of Oakland, but that he was letting me off “this time”.

The following week we were one of five families pictured in an “expose” on  people sleeping in their cars, billed as Crimes of the Underground. 

Since the inception of media production and academic research, people with race, class or economic privilege have received thousands of dollars from places like The Ford Foundation, a philanthropic organization one of many that exist in the US, with roots in the genocide and slavery and stolen wealth of poor and indigenous peoples as well as pure race science like eugenics, to create elaborate filters through which the voices of poor people of color can be “heard”.

From research fellow-ships and ethnographic documentaries to anthropological surveys and studies, our voices are fetishized, deconstructed, studied and discussed; we are spoken to and talked about- and we only “have a voice” if our documentors deem them important to the goals and outcomes of their projects or our voices inclusion is required by the grant guidelines.

We don’t need to be “given a voice”

To be perfectly clear, we don’t need to be “given”, a voice, we have a voice, millions of multi-lingual, multi-generational, beautiful, complex, loud, expressive, angry, intelligent, powerful, amazing, voices, speaking in thousands of unrecognized dialects, unheard poems, un-recorded songs and street-based beats. What we don’t; have is our own radio transmitters, television and radio broadcasts, TV stations, dominant languages, libraries, publishing companies, digital access, and servers. Or like my sister in revolutionary media partnership at the Bay View, Mary Ratcliff so eloquently put it, “ People know of some censored stories through the powerful Project Censored out of Sonoma State university, but PNN is the voices of people that are Never Heard,” Her comment spurred me on to create a new ironic re-mix for the voices of us poor folks: Project Silenced

Media equity sharing

So how are the voices of poor mamas, migrante workers, youth of color in poverty, incarcerated peoples, disabled peoples truly heard, with our own stories, our own author-ship, within a dominant society that actively works to silence us. This is the revolution that is PoorNewsNetwork, The Bay View Newspaper,  the Block Report and other truly revolutionary, community located, poor people-run media and art projects.

It is accomplished at POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PNN through a complex web of poor people-led education, organizing, consciousness growing,  and decolonizing about the myths of linguistic dominance (deconstructing literacy, etc)  in  media, education and art. As well it includes the sharing of media and resource access which are quantifiable forms of equity, by people  with institutional access, such as the web designers who volunteered to help POOR Magazine lost in digital apartheid for 13 years into our new 2.0 digital home at www.poormagazine.org, with skills and tools that are inherent in the lives of people not worrying about when and where their next meal is coming from.

PNN Revolutionary Radio

Since 1999 when my mother and I walked tentatively into the KPFA radio building to begin a broadcast that was originally slated for once a week, forged from the KPFA protests of 1999, with the goal of being inserted into the very clean, very NPR-ish Morning Show at KPFA

From that first day in the station we began pushing the limits of media inclusion and resisting media exclusion with stories written, produced and reported by folks living in shelters, working in low-wage or no-wage day labor, incarcerated and profiled African peoples, peoples with disabilities, poor mothers and fathers on welfare, youth of color in poverty and resistance and on and on. We honored our removed and displaced ancestors and elders, our houseless and poverty scholars and consistenty re-ported and sup-ported on our comrades in struggle. We were constantly told we were including. “too much Spanish” from our Voces de inmigrantes en resistencia reporters. “Your reporters don’t speak right, or were too inexperienced.” Because they struggled with “literacy problems”,  learning disabilities or differently-abled speech patterns.

Me and my Mama Dee, Joseph Bolden, Ingrid Deleon, Ken M, Leroy Moore & the Krip Hop Nation, Silencio Muteado, Queenandi, Bruce Allison, Ruyata Akio McGlothlin, Vivian Hain, Jewnbug, Tony Robles and many more poverty, disability, race and indigenous scholars continued walking into that building remembering it wasn’t about how bad they made us feel, but rather that this one channel of media access must remain open, by any means necessary.

“With the widening gap of the haves and have-nots- digital apartheid is an everyday reality that PNN is struggling against- it is media at its purest- and the closest representation of what media is supposed to be, “ said Tony Robles, Revolutuionary Worker Scholar and co-editor of POOR Magazine

For Mama Radio

In 2006, my African-Boricua indigenous, ghetto fabulous mama passed on her spirit journey. Two hours before she left this plain, she was writing a short commentary about a small homeless puppy who had happily been living with a houseless guy in his shopping cart in Oakland until he was adopted (read: taken) by a “kind” yuppie who took pity on the homeless dog, but then eventually became annoyed by the puppy and gave him up to the SPCA “I know they are going to try to edit this part out,” My mama chuckled with her hilarious sense of irony that got us through all of the bad times we lived through together, was certain that the  revelation of the myths  of the well-intentioned is sometimes to hard to hear by well-intentioned academic researchers and middle-class producers of radio and media, “so let’s get ready for a fight…” she concluded.

In 2011, our voices are in more struggle than ever, for housing, hellthcare, non-existent jobs, against racism, profiling po’lice terror and criminalization in Amerikkka., for unseen art, unheard music, constant resistance and a poor people revolution created by the poor people who experience it first-hand Tune in to PoorNewsNetwork radio & PNN-TV for the truth voices, the peoples voices- published weekly , experienced daily to stay alive voices-

The Fight continues mama….

I never realized how bad it was until now.  I grew up here and have seen this place transform over the years.  My best friend used to live behind me.  We would tap on the wall to communicate with each other.  I have seen the good bad and the ugly in this neighborhood.  Freedom West Homes sits in the Western Addition, a very expensive piece of property as it sits firmly near City Hall , the Opera House, a school , fire department, transportation, Japantown.  Three hundred units holding people of different religions, ethnicities, economic, and educational backgrounds. 

Every Family has a history.  I can tell you the history of almost every hardworking family that has lived on my block and outside my block.  Europeans, Africans, African Americans, Asians, Latinos all live in this co –op; some feeling victimized and hopeless with limited English skills and a lack of housing advocacy and resources.

Hundreds of shareholders of Freedom West Homes Homes (Bethel Housing Corporation) are going to have their homes taken away from them.  Freedom West Homes is a 300 unit shareholder complex, likely one of the biggest housing projects that still exists.  The piggy bank is up for grabs and this cooperation has been purposely mismanaged by Alton Management. 

About a month ago all shareholders were sent an “Amendment to Occupancy Agreement Carrying Charge  Increase”  The rate increase was not the main issue, however, the amendment itself used wording that suggested that we were residents and not shareholders.  The Amendment also suggested that we paid rent and not a rate.  As a result a meeting amongst only 20 – 30 residents out of the 300 units attended.  So we all crossed out the amendment  and made minor adjustments. We went to the office to turn them in with our checks and discovered that the offices decided to close down early.  We left our payment and “Re Amendment” inside the payment box and  a couple of days later our amendments and checks were returned to us.  The amendments were VOIDED and we were given ten days eviction notice by Alton Management of Oakland to pay the rent  without re-amending the amendment.  David Tse , who spearheaded the movement to save Freedom West Homes helped arrange a meeting with  San Francisco Board of Supervisors Ross Mirikarimi, as well as Supervisor Board President David Chiu. Ross Mirikarimi and David Chu.

David Tse (470 board director of freedom west
you are hereby required, on or before January 20, 2011, to pay said rent in full, or to deliver up possession of said premises to the undersigned or legal proceedings will be commenced against you to recover possession of said premises, to declare said agreement for possession forfeited, and to recover court costs and attorneys’ fees for the unlawful detention of said premises.  The undersigned elects to and does declare a forfeiture of the lease, rental agreement or tenancy under which you occupy the above premises if the rent is not paid in full on or before the above specified date.  You have ten (10) days within which to meet and discuss with the Administrator this Notice and the proposed termination of your tenancy.  Please be advised that you may only be evicted as a result of a judicial proceeding and if a judicial preceding for eviction is instituted you may present a defense at the trial.

As for those who were intimidated and excepted the amendment we don’t know what the legal ramifications will hold for them in terms of their shareholder status. Signed without  proper legal counsel and fear of eviction and  kept it.  Then Billy Hutton from Alton Management tried to charge everyone a  $20 late fee.  The same guy that held up all the checks. 

In addition to this, word is out that by 2012 this federal funded coop is supposed to be fully paid or the the co – op will shut down it s doors to its residence.  Alta management is going to be audited to see if they have been compliant with the federal funding of Freedom West Homes.  There has been so much mismanagement who knows what is going to happen after the audit? who are coming from Washington D.C.?  The Federal Funds we are trying to pay back  This is why the federal government is involved. 

Over the past years Freedomwest Homes has been unstructured and unmanaged and has failed HUD inspections.  Several units are falling apart--plumbing, mold, worn down cabinets, bad carpets, etc.  Everything is coming to a termination point where the federal bond is ending meaning HUD pulls the plug on us allowing a developer to come through and buy up the property.  We don’t even know if we will be compensated as shareholders.  If Freedom West is bankrupt who will pay us?  People are going to be homeless or the developer  will have to pay us for our share.  We are one of the biggest federal funded complexes in San Francisco, if not the biggest.  So by putting pressure both on federal and local levels. The biggest issue is to get Alta management out due to mis-management.
 
So far San Francisco Board of Supervisors David Chu and Ross Mirikarimi have been approached by residents of Freedom West and have agreed to look at the situation.  Nancy Pelosi’s office has also been advised.

For updated information please see David Tse's blog at freedomwestdave@blogspot.com

Another excellent Freedom West story in the Bay View
 

RIP to my uncle Eddy
he always kept it steady
and nobody s ever ready
he had a woman named Betty
she was never ever shady
he was a boss who paid the cost
even when he was homeless he'd floss
he was a man with kids across the land
from his homeland Mississippi
to out here's bay of San Fran
another man in my life who helped me know I can
he left behind my cousins Edward and Evany
they running businesses and selling things
in colleges graduating
everyone loved him at his office on Fillmore n Haight st
my fathers best friend, they both had Ford Granada's matching
he was loved and had alot to give
Nobody wants to die but he taught us how to live
RAM 

Homefullness El Sueño

     En Prensa Pobre no solo somos una organizacion de raices dirigido por gente pobre, gente de bajos recursos, gente trabajando por boronas, Matrialcales, indigena, cuales luchamos dia a dia con el capitalismo, criminilizacion, faltas de oportunidad, falta de vivienda en los Estados Desunidos de Amerikkka.

“Somos gente pobre, que vivimos en paizes ricos” Eduardo Galeano, Fidel Castro

   De una manera o otra gente pobre, gente en la lucha han sido forzados a estas condiciones por la bestia que es el capitalismo , robos durante la colonizacion, desplazamiento de nuestros pueblos, nuestra cultura, nuestra manera de existir   a base de Reservaciones, Facismo fronterizo, la falta de trabajos, (NAFTA) Tratado de libre comercio de Norte America, (CAFTA)  Tratado de libre comercio de Centro America , Asistencia General,  ICE immigration Customs Enforcement, sistema juvenil, goviernos corruptos, el complejo de la industria de las carceles, inmigracion forzada, ect.

“Gente sin Tierra”

   Mucha de nuestra gente sabios de la pobreza hacido desplazada de nuestras  tierras, comunidades, y separado de nuestra raza, y no tenemos un lugar que podamos llamar un hogar, un hogar es mas que una casa, un pedazo de techo, un hogar es una comunidad, es familia un lugar donde estemos orgullosos de quien somos como gente, una comunidad comunal, autonoma, sostenida por si misma, conciente del ambiente y no solo me refiero a comida organica si puedes pagar por ella , pero  hablo mas de tener una conciencia de la madre tierra, pachamama, el  mundo y sus cambios ambientales.

   Una comunidad un hogar, donde no nos miremos como empleados, base, camaradas de negocios, clientes, vecinos, un caso, una campaña  , estudiantes, profesores, facultad, trabajo, servir y protejer, empleados, vernos y tratarnos como familia como humanos eso es Homefullness.

   MOVE Africa de Filadelfia un grupo de afroamericanos en los años  1970 al presente, han estado en el proceso de crear algo similar en su propia manera,como Homefullness, donde estaban tratando de dar cuidado a su gente, que el sistema se habia olvidado.

“Cultivando semillas de Resistencia”

   En los tiempos que vivimos, no es dificil de imaginar el tener un granja sostenidad por si misma, conservando el agua de la lluvia, hacienda hoyos de agua, cultivando frutas, vegetables y granos, tener gallinas para comer guevitos, y de vez en cuando un caldito de pollo.

   Un lugar que no se trate de cuanto dinero tengas en tu bolsillos, pero si no lo que puedas ofrecer, ayudar, apoyar, ser parte de, contribuir. En Prensa Pobre nosotros practicamos de lo que hablamos, muchos de nosotros venimos de diferentes culturas y opreciones, y diferentes caminos del mundo.

   En Prensa Pobre no creemos en llamar la Policia por la mala historia de oprecion con la gente pobre y de color, tambien practicamos nuestro circulo indigena donde confrontamos algunas de las luchas que como todas la familias llegan a tener, como el abuso de sustancia, desacuerdos, decisions, planear, y producer medios de comunicacion.

   Donde L@ Histori@, la historia de la gente pobre se pone en practica, donde la conciencia del Europea del Oeste y sus instituciones y manera de ensenanza se hancen mas correcta y definidas, donde celebramos la multi-cultura, multi-origen-etnico, multi-generacional.

  Cultivabando semillas de Resistencia en lo que hacemos en Prensa Pobre con amor, sudor, y lagrimas y levantamos el arma mas fuerte que es el amor a nuestra gente.

English

Homefullness a Dream

   Poor magazine is not only a Grassroots organization led by poor people, low income, no income, working for crumbs  people, matriarchy led, indigena, Who struggle day by day with capitalism, criminalization, lack of opportunity, lack of housing in the united snakes of Amerikkka.

“ We are poor people who live in a rich country” Eduardo Galeano,Fidel Castro

   One way or the other, poor people, and people in struggle have been put there by the beast of capitalism, colonial theft, in way of displacement of their country, land of origin, culture, way of being, reservations, Border fascism, by the lack of employment,(NAFTA) North American Free Trade Agreement, (CAFTA) Central American Free Trade Agreement ”General Assistance”, ICE, Juvenile system, corrupt governments , Prison industrial complex, Force Migration ect.

“LandLess People”

  Many us poverty skolarz  have been displaced from our land,people,communites and no longer have a place we can call home, a home is more than a house and piece of roof, a home is community, family, and to feel proud of who we are as people. A communal community, autonomous, self-sustainable, Eco friendly and don’t mean buying organic food, unless you can afford it or is accessible, but for us to have conscience of the Earth, Tierra Madre,Pacha Mama, a family where we see each other as family, not as co-workers, Base, business partners, Clients, comrades, neighbor, a case, a file, campaign, Students, professors, faculty, work to be done, to protect and sever, employee, instead to treat each other as family as humans, to care for each other that’s the meaning of Homefullness.

   MOVE Africa was in the process of creating homefullness in their own way in Philadelphia, where they were creating a place to take care of their people who the system had forgotten.

“Cultivating seeds of ressistance”

   In the times we live upon, is not hard to imagine having your own sustainable garden, use rain water, or water dwells to cultivate fruits, grains and  vegetables, Have chickens for eggs, and now a than a nice chicken soup.

    A place that is not about how much money you have in your pocket, but instead of what you can offer to help out with, support, be of part of, contribute.     In Poor magazine we practice what we preach, a lot us come from different oppressions, walks of life and backgrounds.

   In Poor Magazine we don’t believe in Po-lice calls for what history has taught us of the Po-lice, we also practice our indigena circle where we deal and confront some the struggles that some of our family struggle with, from substance abuse, disagreement amongst us, decision making, planning, media production.

   Where Herstory is put into practice, where Western European way of thinking gets challenge and their institutionilized of way learning, where we celebrate multi-cultures, multi-ecthnicity, multi-generational in real time.

   Cultivating seeds of resistance is what we do at Poor Magazine with love, sweat and tears and we pick the biggest weapon which the love of our gente, our people.

The Metaphor Exercise is one of many creative writing exercises we use in the multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-generational Revolutionary Journalism Class at PeopleSkool.

These are the beautiful pieces of prose and poetry that came from the 2^nd class of the 2011 winter session.

La Alfombra

By Julio Chavez

 La Alfombra Azul como el agua del oceano.

Y las paredes a; rededor.

Decoradas con imagines de heroes que seguramente

Los libros de historia no van a mejorar.

Pero que nostros no debemos y no tenemos olvidar.

En un futuro sercano. NUestras fotographias pueden

Colgar y contra la verdada y hacer la historia  con poder.

Shoes swathing-  By Michael

Shoes swathing across an aged petroleum carpet, insulating the office with painted incensed oil-spill. Landfill bound attaching it’s decay to yet another thirsty forest, from painted panels encasing writers to the county debris pile, choking the dirt itself from it’s seeds.

La Metafora De alfombra

By Ingrid DeLeon

Soy un techo como este cuarto

Pues asie siento pero si no tubiera

Pero si  yo no tubiera bacea me cairia

Y dejaria de ser un techo

Seria un piso donde todos caminaran sin berme

Pero tengo 4 bases que me sostienen y no me dejan caer

Como esas 4 paredes que sostienen este techo

Asi son mis simientos o mis bases que no me dejan caer

Estas bases son mis  4 hijos

Que son tan fuertes como un hierro

 Juntos somos fuertes como un roble y nadie no bensera

The Rug Became Water

By Libah Sheppard

    THE RUG BECAME WATER AND WALLS BECAME MOUNTAINS

    THE WATER FLOWED THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS, THE  AIR OF CITRUS FRUIT SURROUNDED MY NOSTRILS, AS THE CLOUDS RAINED OF COINS THAT FLOWED DOWN THE RIVER SURROUNDED BY MOUNTAINS, AND THEIR I STOOD AT THE OTHER END OF THE RIVER RECEIVING ALL THE BLESSINGS FLOWING INTO MY SOUL.

World with No Borders

        By Muteado

        World with no borders where I sit with my brothers and sisters,

        Blue sky surrounds us,

        Holding us

        In her hands

        Surrounded by Glyrophics

        Of who we are

        On top of green grass

The Room is like a Field

By Toby Kramer

`The room is like a field with papers and chairs growing out of it like shrubs and tufts of grass. The walls are huge trees and the ceiling is  the canopy of the forest. Books and boxes perch on the branches of the trees like forest animals in their burrows.