September 2014

Happy roads all lead to home
To places in the soul we all belong
I'm gonna drink a lot of water and walk real slow
Look up and remember that I don't know
Where it is we're from, or where it is we go
When we're done here
On Earth
Below

Young Diamond Z 93

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Hater

I wanna c u fall, don't wanna c u fly
I wanna clip your wings, and I'm hopin' u die
What I just hate 2 c, what kills me inside
is that gleam in your eye, all that joy and pride
I'm a hater, yeah, that's right
Not now, not later, will it ever be alright
4 u 2 shine, at all, anywhere around me
Becuz it reminds me of what I couldn't be
I mean, if I had tried

Young Diamond Z 93

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Jan 2003

Id and Superego

In my matutinal melding with all my supplication is for parcels of courage and unseen hands
The mob is a known sociopath whose heart brims with riot
I thought he contained my being but I was fooled
For he is Jedi mind and I am not learned in his way
I should strike him at the pineal, nay
Would that I extricate mine own Uraeus? Nay
Exile is mine habitation amongst the true and good
And just is thy company, old friend

Z Diamond Zion
—On entering self-imposed exile—

===

July 20, 2014
Sunday

Tetragrammton (YHWH)

Are we randomly cursed or blessed?
Are we victims of our own poverty, true creators of our own success?
A string of questions, the hows and whys
A stream of consciousness over a bridge of sighs
It's always right now, despite the relativity of time
I am my ancestor, tied to every continent by the one original bloodline
I am a Roman soldier in the Pelopenisian Wars
I am the right hand of the emperor known through ancient Chinese lore
At one and the same time seven billion souls am I
The mineral kingdom, eternal transformation, the very air itself, I cannot die
No dogmas or doctrines, no stigmas or veils
The belief I embrace must stand up only to reason, life as it is actually lived
No fairy tales
We trammel the tundra and fallow sod of potential
A tree grows in Brooklyn for an old man of the sea
Man's inhumanity to man is as old as the sky is blue
Catch 22: in order to be, one must do
Yet in order to do, one must be
I got that from Jimi Hendrix, and Jimi, he got it from me

Diamond Z

Inspired by
"Do not stand at my grave and weep."
by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Young E95993
CSP-SAC B7-127

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August 19, 2014
Tuesday

Inspired By

The many things, the hopes and dreams
The promise of California to a little Alabama girl
My granddad had a stream that runs back of the house
He called it a cric
And peach trees, a chicken coop
And fifteen kids
He made fifteen dollars a week for 35 years
And the kids used to get one biscuit for lunch
And they all graduated
Everybody that know say, "Granddaddy hella complained"
My dear brother let me wear Granddaddy's overcoat
I felt so regal and deep
All that wisdom he passed down
I had to learn all over

Young
E 53

===

Young
#2 Dream
26 July 2000

Untitled

Time will tell... if everything we pray and keep
Through tortured dreams awake we weep
For nights of yesterday steeped deep in passions on fire

"Give me your anger, give me your tears"
I hear you scream loud in my ears
My heart in the skillet and as it sears
You contemplate empire

It doesn't matter where you've been, I stand and face the lonely wind
It knows my whole story, told now and then, then burned on funeral pyre

Can hatred be the very reason you should feed on lies?
The highest form of treason, blind the seeker's eyes
What more could a savior do then pass his cup of grace to you?
You deal with demons, dance with devils, no more alibis
Or would you touch the hand of angels striving for the prize
For soon the price set will be paid, unholy bargains that you made
So choose a side and get in stride—no more compromise

—M. Zawadi Shakur

To D.R. from M.Z.
A token

===

October 3, 2014

...And all this talk about democracy
In the home of the slave you got to fight to be free
Lock up the generation, prevent their education
Block access to employment, cut food stamps and raise rent
It's not by any account it's all by design, they have think tanks in every state
And they never waste their time
30 years in advance is how they usually plan
To discriminate and subjugate the children of the poor man
The top 1% get a bonus, the country's in debt and it falls on us
The proletariat will have to pay and pay
Until we stand together, unite and fight to forge a better way
Stop mass incarceration, your silence is participation to speak out!
Find the time, fall in love, and assist
Resist, resist, resist!

[signature]

My name is Michael L. Young. I'm 51 years old. In 1990, I was convicted of second degree murder. I'm not a thug or a gangsta.

===

http://atelim.com/ayelet-waldman-novelist-lawyer-alice-walker-author-peter-coyot.html

Initial Signatories include:

Ayelet Waldman, novelist, lawyer ; Alice Walker, author; Peter Coyote, actor, author, director; Stop Mass Incarceration Network; Cornel West, author, educator, voice of conscience; Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party; Noam Chomsky, Professor (ret.), MIT*; Marjorie Cohn, Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law; Robin D.G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor of History, UCLA*;Carl Hart, Professor, Author of "High Price"; Michelle Alexander, Author, The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of color Blindnes; Colin Dayan, Professor, Vanderbilt University; Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest;Efia Nwangaza, Malcolm X Center/Radio Station WMXP*;Ulis C. Williams, Olympic Gold Medalist, 4 x 400m Relay, 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo; Aleta Alston-Toure, New Jim Crow Movement/Free Marissa Now*; Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal;Cephus "Uncle Bobby" Johnson - uncle of Oscar Grant, killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police New Years Day, 2009;Stephen Rohde, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP)*; Debra Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait; Medea Benjamin, Co-founder, CODEPINK*; John L. Burris, lawyer; Marilyn S. McMahon, California Prison Focus*; Juanita Young, mother of Malcolm Ferguson - killed in 2000 by NYPD;Iris Baez, mother of Anthony Baez - killed in 1994 by NYPD; Dionne Smith Downs and Carey Downs, parents of James Earl Rivera Jr. - killed in 2010 by Stockton Police; Collette Flanagan, Founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality, mother of Clinton Allen - killed by Dallas Police in 2013; Gloria Leiva, mother of Dante Pomar - killed in 2004 by NYPD; Gilda Baker, Mother of Diallo Neal, Killed by California Highway Patrol in 2005; Kenneth Chamberlain, Jr., son of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. - killed by White Plains (NY) Police, 2013; Miles Solay, OuterNational; Denis O'Hearn, Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University and author of Nothing but an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation; Blase Bonpane, Ph.D. Director, Office of the Americas*; Marie Martin, retired nurse and teacher, relative in solitary confinement in CA prison; Margarita McAuliffe, Founder, Texas Moms United For Domestic Peace*; F. Luis Barrios, professor, John Jay College, IFCO - Pastors for Peace; Cynthia McKinney; Jim Vrettos, professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice*; Marvin X, poet, playwright, essayist; Black Bird Press News*; Rev. Jerome McCorry, The Adam Project*; Rev. Stephen A. Phelps, former Interim Senior Minister, The Riverside Church*, New York; Rev. Frank Wulf, United University Church*; Ray Hill, 30 years Producer and Host of "The Prison Show", KPFT, Houston, TX; Obidike Kamau, 15 years Host and Producer, "Self-Determination", KPFT 90.1 FM, Houston, TX; Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor *Tikkun: a quarterly Jewish and Interfaith Critique of Politics, Culture and Society*; Dahlia Wasfi M.D.; Rev. Richard Meri Ka Ra Byrd, KRST Unity Center*; Rev. Darrel Meyers; Minister (ret.) Presbyterian Church (USA)*; Dorsey O. Blake, Presiding Minister of the Church of All Peoples*; Mary Ratcliff, Editor, San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper*; Grace Dyrness, ICUJP*; Jim Lafferty,Executive Director, Los Angeles Chapter, National Lawyers Guild; Rafael C. Angulo, USC School of Social Work* Rael Nidess M.D.;Dread Scott, Artist; Manuel Olivera, Actor; Alaudin Ullah, Actor; Elizabeth Forsythe Haily, novelist and playwright, ICUJP*; Lynne Stewart & Ralph Poynter; Mike Holman, Executive Director, Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund*;Andres Thomas Conteris, Nonviolence International*; Dr. James Cockroft, Ph.D; Rev. Jerald Stinson, Interfaith Communities United For Justice and Peace*; King Downing, Human Rights-Racial Justice Center*; Iskander Kourkjian-Mowad, #Justice4Cecily*; Afua Ampoma, Recovering and Rebuilding, Inc.; "Cye" Harold Sheppard Jr., Advancing the Ancester Coalition (ATAC)*; Vernellia R. Randall, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Dayton; Paul Von Blum, Senior Lecturer, African-American and Communication Studies, UCLA*; David B. Rankin, Esq., Rankin and Taylor*; Tarak Kauff, Veterans For Peace* National Board Member; Bonnie Kerness, American Friends Service Committee*, Newark NJ; Mary Phillips, Lehman College*, Bronx NY; Erin Adair, Oberlin Abolition Network*, Oberlin; Amanda Morales, Welfare Warriors*, Milwaukee; People's Organization for Progress, New York Chapter; Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice; Justice For Families, Portland, OR; Global Kindness Revolution and Sagewriters; Racial Justice Now!