This was written by Luke Nephew, our resident poet, about prisoners having a hunger strike (refusing food) in California. Spoken Word is a type of rap poetry. It usually has to be heard to be understood and felt. He performs his poetry; it's not usually written. So for us, Luke typed it out with the different fonts showing different 'voices'.
Read it loud and strong with feeling!
PELICAN BAY PRISON HUNGER STRIKE
California, USA 2011
Last night, a hungry man spoke to me
His voice, echoing in the solitary confinement of a cell in Pelican Bay prison,
Grabbed me by the shoulders and said:
Child my torture is older than you
Since before 1982 we’ve been stuffed savage against too much cement
If our dissent is baggage, I hope it ain’t too heavy for you to carry, Little Brother,
We’ve been kept in cages of empty pages
I need a pen to get out this pen
My family can’t even get a picture of me
He can’t even hear his daughter’s voices
We don’t have any choice
Is this making any sense?
Am I making any noise?
I don’t know any more if this is the floor or the ceiling…
We were not transferred here for killing or stealing,
They say it’s for an affiliation with gangs but most of the time that ain’t even true
If this were for our physical security, wouldn’t they let us choose?
Somebody please, stop this abuse, I can still remember the taste of the sun
Stop the silence
I can’t remember the face of my own sun
I’ve been in solitary confinement for decades
What have I become?
What have they done?
Little brother I’ve been pushed so far to the brink…
That I think you hear me through these tears and bars and scars, I think I just think…
BROTHER, I HEAR YOU
Your voice is echoing within the walls of my chest
like I was made up of concrete cells and I can smell the hunger on your breadth
Tell me big brother, how close is death?
No, its not hear yet…but some of the brothers are getting sick
We’re two weeks into the hunger strike and its sounds like over 6,600 prisoners from across California State are jointing us in solidarity… No, wait… I don’t know if you can hear me, I know they paint us bloodthirsty dirty and unworthy so you fear me
I don’t know if you can face the facts that’s history still scripts like rips across our slashed backs, what would you do if I told you that
The United States has more human beings in prison than any other country in the world
That one in each hundred adults in America is locked up
That there is torture in the united states prison system
And we are hunger striking to the death until the United States listens!!!
I hear you
But will you listen?
Tell me,
They treat us like they hate us
Emasculate us and degrade us
They lock us up in cages, this is not the middle ages
This is right now in California states prisons
This is a plantation
This is Tuskegee and they ain’t frontin like it’s for science
They are just hoping for us to riot
So they can evoke Attica on all of us
But we are not
We are peacefully protesting
With clasped hands and empty bellies until they stop
Stop torturing us and if that is not enough we will die
If than is not enough than I am ashamed to be human
Brother, I will write your prayers like stares onto the air,
Speak the uprising tides in your words breaking to be heard…I will…
Last night,
A hungry man spoke to me
His voice entering my chest infused into my breadth,
So if you thought you couldn’t hear him yet, I get to promise you are wrong,
His bars are always ours and this is all his song,
That echoes all the way here from the solitary confinement of Pelican Bay Prison
Where many men are dying to know
If we will listen
Hard enough
To stop the massacre
Being committed
In our name,
On our land,
With our money
And with our permission
That we grant
Everytime
We do
Nothing.
-The Peace Poets
LRN
Luke R. Nephew
Co-Founder and Artist Educator
