@Golgotha: The Backstory
[Profile photo copies of Piankhi and XZYZST]

I remember being angry because my workout potna was sent to the adjustment center, which is the lock-up for death row. Just out of the blue. Snake was gone and we was just getting started in the basic fundamentals of boxing out on the yard.

I never let anybody know to what degree I was pissed off, but, since everybody liked Snake, we was all hot that we gone. Today is May 15, 2013, and Snake is still in the hole. Here's the thing: I was about five seconds away from ending my boxing training back in 2010 when the young homie Piankhi walked over to me while I was stepping away form the heavy bag and said, "I gotta learn how to do that." (both smiling)

It later became obvious that others wanted to learn boxing as well. But Piankhi was like, the-come-on-let's-go-type and, because of that quality alone, there was no way I could say no.

One day, towards the end of the year, after a long training session, shower, and lunch, Piankhi began to get at me about the ideas he had stuffed in his brain. After awhile, I stopped him in mid-sentence and said, "Kick that shit, fool. Do it." (both smiling)

As we stood in the middle of the yard, I directed his attention to the vast bodies roaming the many death row yards and said, "Count me in. I'm with you. However, you are standing in a place built for death. I would not want to be you now because you literally got to reach into hell and choose hell's finest to make your project pop. Because it's all kinds of muthathaz up in here, and we don't know who's who around here."

Piankhi said, "I didn't look at it like that, but thats' real. But it's a whole new generation up here now."

Later that night, I asked myself what I could bring to the creative writing project that Piankhi was about to kick off. And I kept replaying his last words to me over and over again in my brain. "But it's a whole new generation up here now."

So I asked Piankhi if I could interview the New Generation of inner city youth coming up here to death row. Piankhi was all happy. I said, "Let's call it @Golgotha." Piankhi was like, "@ go what? What does that word mean? Gothic?"

I explained to him that in my past life I was involved in ministry, and my mentor and foster father laced me up about the final moments in the life of Jesus Christ, which included his last conversation that was written on papyrus while he was hanging on the cross between two other dudes that had received the death penalty. The Bible says that the name of that place was Golgotha, which means the place of the skull. So I was like, let's continue that conversation in our time in California death row.

Piankhi began to agree with me and he understood the connections. We began to run off everything we had in common with Jesus like:

Most of us was viciously hunted.
Most of the New Generation was arrested near to or under the age of 33.
Most of us was falsely accused.
Most of us sold out by our so-called friends.
Most of us was physically abused by guards in jail.
Most of us had our personal clothing and property mistreated and stolen.
Most of us was either inadequately defended or had to be our own lawyers.
Most of us was not judged by a selection of our peers.
And all of us was sentenced to die by a Romanic system.

I mean, we just went on and on. Everybody knows that Piankhi is a well read younsta, but I could tell that he has a strong family faith based understanding of words that are written in most of the materials that we chop up about sometimes. I always refer to Piankhi as a wise young man.

Piankhi said, "Okay, @Golgotha is your section." I told him, "Look, I'm going unedited. So whatever is said, that's it." As he walked away from that conversation, Piankhi was like, "Let's do a youth oriented one first. I'll holler at you."

So about a week passed, and he blindsided me with our very first @Golgotha cipher. But it was he who was asking me all the questions. That wasn't my original plan, but it was cool and like a trial run to see how these ciphers would turn out. It turned out pretty much raw and uncut.

Most people think that @Golgotha with AL-B was our first cipher because it made the cut for our first issue of the Write or Die Zine Project. The truth is that @Golgotha with sniper XZYZST was our very first cipher.

Over the lifespan of the Papyrus Collective and the Write or Die Zine Project so far, we are seeing the death penalty being put on the ballots as some form of economics issue, a scheme to attempt to make dollars make sense.

What the @Golgotha ciphers do is present the human aspect to the overall issue. You catch us in our rawest form, non-scripted, and unedited. There is a New Generation of inner city youth on death row here in California and all over America. And guess what, we are also human beings.

Thanks to deathrowinmate.org for turning the thoughts of a wise young man into reality and beyond in a place where they expect us to crumble. DRI has kept it solid as fuck.

one day my son asked me what we do on death row. I want to share my answer with anyone who is wondering the same thing.

We're up in here. Writing to Live!

[Full body silhouette of a man standing straight in baggy clothing.]
XZYZST

[Black and white photo of a hallway of empty prison cells.]
[Black background with eight rectangles overlaying one another. It creates a ripple effect in the center of the picture.]