The weekend is over. It sucks when that happens and it happens a lot more often than it should. Since I’ve spent what amounts to two whole days as Nia, Friday seems like forever ago. The other thing is I didn’t do my homework so I’m in serious trouble. I catch up with Mark at school.

“Dude, did you get your homework done?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?” He inquires.

“I didn’t do mine and I need to copy yours.” I state plainly.

“You want to copy my homework?” He asks not believing what he is hearing.

“Yeah, I got to turn something in. You gotta help me.” I say desperately.

“Dude, you don’t have time to copy my homework.” He says matter-of-factly. Before he finishes speaking the first bell rings which means we have five minutes to get to class. I rush to class anticipating the humiliation I am going to have to endure from not getting my homework done. I notice how trashy our school is compared to Nia’s. Nia’s school doesn’t have any trash on the ground. All the students look nice in their uniforms. The classrooms and halls are all neat and inviting. My school looks like a garbage dump compared to Nia’s school. Like the Librarian said, if you don’t have anything to compare it to, you don’t know what you are missing.

I know there are a lot of nice schools around but most of those schools are private. I also notice everybody’s nose stuck in their phone. In Nia’s world everybody talks to each other face to face instead of doing it on a mobile device. When I get to class and everybody turns in their homework, I have nothing to turn in. I feel really self-conscious about it. I admit that I’m a slacker at times but I usually get enough done to get by. I look around the class room and I notice that Kayla is staring at me. When our eye’s meet she doesn’t turn away but instead gives me a smile. That was kind of strange. I’ve never noticed any girls staring at me before. Maybe I’m still dreaming. Class goes alright and during the break period I walk over to talk to Kayla.

“Hi” she says shyly.

“Hi” I respond. There is some awkward silence. I am a lot better at this kind of thing as Nia than I am as myself.

“Maybe you could hang out with me during lunch” She offers.

“Yeah, okay” I say back. I thought Bobby’s attempt at being smooth was lame but after I hear myself talk I decide that I just sound pathetic. When the bell rings telling us we have just a few minutes to get to our next class, we both go in different directions.

I spend my next class preoccupied with thinking about Kayla. She has dark hair and dark eyes. She is average looking. I don’t know her that well but she seems nice. I have to decide how I want to talk to her. I should probably just relax but the more I think about it the more nervous I get. I don’t know why I put all this pressure on myself, it’s not like I am going to marry her or anything. I start to think why it is so easy as Nia. What is the difference?

Well, the first difference is Nia’s a girl and I’m a boy. The second difference is that Nia is popular and I’m not. The third difference is that I don’t care if Bobby likes Nia or not but I do care if Kayla likes me because I’ve never had a girl like me before that I am aware of.

At that moment a light bulb goes off in my brain. The reason why I’m not nervous with Bobby is not because everybody loves Nia or even that she is a girl, it’s because I already know Bobby likes Nia and Nia is the one in charge. The class goes by in a daze but I manage to zone in just in time to write down the homework assignment. The bell rings and everyone is dismissed for lunch. I can feel my palms getting sweaty and suddenly I notice the rhythm of my own breathing. Mark comes up alongside of me.

“Dude, you okay?” He asks.

“Yeah, I think so. I’m going to hang out with Kayla.” I say.

“You are going to hang out with a girl?” He asks, “You mean you are going to hang out with a real girl?”

“Yes, I am going to hang out with a real girl, how it that so hard for you to believe?” I shoot back.

“Dude, I’ve never even seen you with a girl. Maybe she’s hanging out with you because she lost a bet.” Mark speculates.

“That’s harsh” I respond.

“Well, I’ll see ya, let me know how it goes later.” and with that Mark disappears into the crowd.

I get to the lunch room and I start looking around for Kayla. I spot her sitting with some of her friends. I start to get really nervous and I’m not sure if I can go through with it. I take a big gulp of air and start walking over toward where she is sitting. When I reach her I try to sound confident.

“Hi” I say in as much of a friendly non-threatening and non-creepy way as I can. She turns around.

“Oh, Hi!” she says warmly as she moves over a bit to make a place for me to sit next to her. I sit down and she just looks at me.

“What?” I say.

“Did you forget something?” She asks.

“Forget what?” I ask her back.

“Aren’t you going to eat lunch?” She finally asks plainly.

“Oh yeah, I kind of did forget since you’re the only thing I’ve been thinking about since we had our class together.” I say sheepishly. Did I really say that? That is so lame!

“That is so sweet” she responds, “What if I share my lunch with you so you don’t starve?” she offers. She only has half a sandwich left so she splits it in two and hands me half of it.

“Okay, that is really nice of you.” I answer. As I am listening to myself I realized I am sounding like a dork.

“Are you cold?” she asks me, “You’re shaking.”

“Yeah, I am a bit cold now that you mention it.” I respond. Man, can I sound any dorkier? I’m sure the answer to that question is yes. I take a bite out of the sandwich so I don’t have to say anything dorky for a few minutes. While I’m chewing the bite of the sandwich Kayla takes my hand and puts both of her hands around mine and rubs them together.

“Is that better?” She asks as if the answer isn’t obvious. Her hands do feel nice and warm and she can keep my hand as long as she wants to. When I’m done chewing and swallow my bite I answer.

“Yes, I feel much warmer now.” I try to relax my body so it will stop shaking,

“Have you done anything exciting lately?” I ask trying to get the conversation rolling.

“Not really” She answers, “How about you?” Okay, I guess that’s strike one for me.

“My mom took me to this really creepy flea market on Saturday. They had piles of junk everywhere and I ended up buying this thing that looked like a tin can. It had tiny holes in it and when you look into the holes you see still scenes like from a movie or something. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Sounds interesting. Do you want my fruit cocktail?” She asks, “I really don’t want it.”

“Okay” I answer and start eating the fruit cocktail. She seems nice and she seems like she’s interested in me but I really think I’m bombing here. I want to sound confident and take charge and not only did I not take charge I sound like a loser. The silence that follows is deafening. I’m starting to feel really depressed about it. Maybe a piano will fall on me or something and put me out of my misery. I am so relieved when the bell rings. I thank her for lunch and tell her I will see her later. I am sure she is relieved when the bell rings like I was. I take a few deep breaths and go to my next class.

When I get home from school I go to my room. I find the ‘tin can’ thing and I check the holes. This time there are two scenes that are clear. The first scene is in the hallway with Nia and Bobby. The second scene that is clear is a scene in Nia’s bedroom where Nia has her arms around her sister Katy comforting her. Each time I dream about being Nia, a scene becomes clear in the ‘tin can’. I wondered how many scenes there are and what is going to happen when all the scenes became clear. This time when I go to sleep, I am looking forward to waking up as Nia.

Hey everyone!

Long time no post. I’ve been absolutely slammed but while I have a minute or two, I thought I’d check in and let you know what I’ve been up to and let you all know about some exciting opportunities.

Some of you will remember the Letters from Prison Portal here, where Paul and I would visit prison, teach writing workshops, and post their pieces here. This is where PoetsIN was born. Paul and I realised that writing was a form of therapy and the prisoners were reporting astounding results.

After parting ways with Prose, we tailored our groups further with an emphasis on rehabilitation, mental illness, and suicide prevention. We began to measure the outcomes of each session, and over a set period of time had evidence that what we do worked with 99% of the service users. To put this into perspective, CBT in the UK via the NHS works in 48% of the cases they work with. If CBT doesn’t work, the service user is given no other therapy. Talking therapy such as counselling is no longer provided on the NHS because that was only successful 29% of the time, which is way below the threshold of success the NHS will work with.

With our 99% success rate we went to the UK Charity Commission. Wrote our governing document, recruited 5 trustees, filled in a ridiculously long application form to register as a charity, and submitted it. Then we waited.

Whilst we sat thinking of all the things we could’ve included in our application but didn’t, and worrying about all the things we may have done wrong, we carried on with our groups. Expanding them and trialling new techniques and measures of capturing data to ensure maximum impact. We got such good feedback from the prison directors that we were offered a grant from a trust for $50k - before we were even a charity - which is unheard of. Visit www.poetsin.com/testimonials to see what people have been saying about what we do.

Four months passed and we finally received our answer. We’d done it! We were a charity.

Since then we have won three awards. We were named Mental Health Heroes 2017 alongside Talia Bennington, Mental health workshop provider of the year 2018, and Nonprofit of the Year 2018. We have also employed some faces you may recognise. The lovely Karen, who used to design Prose images, the badass Lish, and we’ve just hired a wonderful fundraiser, Pippa. MilesNowhere and Amanda Cary have also joined the family and have been vital to PoetsIN, and my own personal sanity.

We are now a week away from launching online writing therapy groups that people can access from wherever they’re located, along with in-community groups external to prisons across certain parts of the UK to begin with.

We also have a growing Facebook Group (www.facebook.com/groups/poetsin) that is full of old faces from here and new faces from beyond, along with a website that has mental health and writing blogs galore.

We’ve opened our own publishing company, PoetsIN Publishing, that offers the best royalties EVER and any royalties taken by PoetsIN Publishing are all ploughed back into the charity to reach more people who need our help. The best thing about the publishing company is that we want to publish poetry. Many traditional publishers don’t. We do. We are publishing print and eBooks, and have already accepted submissions that will be released this year.

We have a current challenge running for an anthology. Our first anthology open submission call was a huge success and will be published within the next month - we’re just putting the final touches to it. The current submission call is on the topic of addiction, and you are all more than welcome to submit! The more the merrier. Visit this link to submit https://buff.ly/2EdHxwe

Those of you in the UK should come down to our huge all day fundraising event in Camden, London 28th July. It is being held at the iconic Nambucca venue that has housed Oasis, Blur, and many more. We have a full day of amazing lineups from spoken word poets, comedians, and acoustic and indie music. All acts are donating their talents and time to us for free along with many companies who have donated prizes that we will raffle and auction off at the event. We also have a Skydive coming up in September, more details about that can be found on our social networks.

There have been people that doubted Paul and I - along with our mission - but our determination, skills, and experience have served us well, built our confidence, and given a much-needed lifeline to those that truly needed keeping safe.

Setting up a charity is far harder than setting up a business, and if we can do that, you guys can do anything. One word, one poem, one story at a time.

Paul and I both hope you’ll join us elsewhere on the interwebs but in the meantime, write on!

#PoetsIN #PoetsINPrison #Charity #NPO #Publishing #WritingContests #GetPublished #Poetry #InsideOut

Heated oil

poured over scraped bone;

from the open window comes

the chemical/shit stink of

contaminated soil, humid

and thick and filled with

the buzzing midges of mopeds

and sing-song voices.

Exhaustion with greasy fingers

pulls me back into sleep,

but I resist the tender,

smearing caresses and

rise from the sticky bed,

stepping over broken glass

to stand at the window. She does

not stir. The lace curtains

have yellowed; I stand and look out,

if I smoked this would be the time.

The day is grey, the time is ambiguous:

perhaps we have slept all day and night

and into the next day, or only an hour.

The street below is filled, still, with

vegetable carts and people and dogs and

pedicabs; a teenager stands at the edge

of the sidewalk and pisses into the street

drain; no one seems to care.

Tomorrow, I will turn myself in

to the American embassy. I dig my fingers

through my thick hair, it feels filthy and

caked. My skin is filmed with dirt

and sweat. On the bed she stirs, stretches

like a cat, queefs and sits up to look at me.

"Mấy giờ rồi?"

"Tôi không biết."

She nods and lays back down; in seconds

I hear her light snoring.

The air is making my throat raw, I move

from the window, back to the bed,

not as careful this time, stepping on a

shard of glass and slicing open my toe.

I sit at the edge of the bed, running my

fingertips down her silky black hair,

down the slope of her back to the swell

of her bottom, now the pat-pat-pat

of blood dripping onto the floor

added to the sound of the day,

the evening,

the morning coming through the window.

I watch a gecko dart across the floor,

pause at the tiny puddle of blood,

then move around it, disappearing under

the nightstand.

I cough up and spit oil onto the floor, pick

up my soggy, greyed pillow and hold it

to my chest, stand slowly so as not to wake

her, and step onto the glass with both feet.

do not fear

the venom

of men

you are

a bringer

of death,

a goddess

of fate,

of war

and when

their fragile claws

and witless tongues

fail to claim

your murder

of crows,

bring them

war, fate,

death

and pick

their bones

clean.

First of all, I'm sorry for this long post, I know everyone must be tired and exhausted from the past days, I'm really exhausted myself from what's going on prose along with many things. I really wanted to make it short comment on one of your posts but I didn't find a way to do so. So bear with me :)

Obviously! The things has been tense lately. Most of us got overwhelmed since S&S announcement and we allowed ourselves to drift with our emotions, which is fine, we are humans after all, and maybe a little bit more emotional than others, which is beautiful.

But here is the thing, don't let your emotions take over you all the time, don't let it mislead your judgments. I know there's a lot of questions mark about S&S and it is our right to ask questions and expect clear-honest answers. But, my fellow prosers and friends, my prose family, don't get drifted along with the tide, you might be wise but allow me to say, you're not being objective and went to mixing things up, and now I hear people talking about packing up and stuff. If there's any technical issue be patience, ask questions properly, and most importantly! have an insight into the issue.

I didn't want to mention this but to set an example I'll tell you. I was created a challenge 5 days ago but for some technical issues it was never posted until today, but I knew it must be temporary technical issue and with all the other technical issues along with S&S challenge I knew that they were working on something. Therefore, I waited some hours before I emailed them and they respond, even though days past and the challenge not up yet, but I waited! Because I knew they are working. Maybe they're not well experienced with literature judgment, maybe they did mistakes. I even imagine how they were overwhelmed by the challenge besides other stuff. But I still believe that they are honest ones with good intentions, and prose means to them more than just a business. But they also humans and they are learning things as well as so many of us included myself.

I don't need to tell you this but if you know me well, then you probably know that I would be the first to step up and open my big mouth, which I did regarding the challenge right after I recived the email, but sometimes it is unnecessary to share your thoughts, that's why I kept it to myself. And I'm not defending prose, yes, I love prose just like you do, more or less, but I'm just being objective here, I'm being fair and honest. I believe that they did mistakes and will do some more, and this is the part where you show your insightful by sorting out the honest mistakes from the intentional ones, and also to show off what you were made of in the hard times.

I worked for my father most of my life and god knows what I been through to build up his business, but he wasn't so grateful or maybe he had something in mind when he tends to forgetting everything I did for him for just a little "mistake" and trust me friend, it is such a bad feelings. 

Have patience guys, and don't mix things up, be more specific.

Don't give up at the first glitch.

There were ten items on Coke McDonald’s to-do list on June, 17, but jumping off a cliff was NOT one of them.

But let me go back to the beginning of Coke’s reckless venture into the drug world which was first on his list. Coke had never done anything right so this would not be the first time! He had boarded a cruise ship in Miami and jumped off the lower deck near Anguilla, in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, he had misjudged the distance and struggled to reach the island floundering through white capped seas. It was harder than he thought because he had a heavy money belt around his waist and was still wearing his shoes! He lay prostrate on the beach for several hours until one of the native islanders found him and dragged him back to his small colorful cottage.

“Hey, what’s up, mon?” asked Banjo, the islander.

“I need to find a place to buy cocaine. Where can I get it?” Coke asked which was probably the dumbest thing he had every uttered.

“Oh, mon, I can help you. I have a friend who can get you coke on St. Martins which is really close and I can take you there in my rowboat for $500.”

Both Coke and Banjo piled into the rickety rowboat and headed in the general direction of St. Martins through the rough seas. Soon the patch on the bottom of the rowboat came loose and the boat began to sink. Coke abandoned ship, deciding to swim to St. Martins which was in view. What Banjo hadn’t told him was that the water was so shallow, he could wade in! Banjo sloshed through the water with him and introduced him to his friend, Stubbs, and then left him to go back home.

“Twenty thousand dollars,” said Stubbs. “Meet me in four hours at the other side of the island by the cliffs and I’ll have the coke for you in a suitcase.”

Coke spent the time while he was waiting drinking island rum. Realizing he was too drunk to walk across the island, he paid someone to take him there and drop him off. But no one was there waiting so he removed the money from his money belt and tucked it into his pants so no one could rob him. He was watching a school of sharks from the top of a cliff when Stubbs came up behind him and put a gun in his back. Rather than give up the money, Coke took a flying leap off the cliff, landing right in the midst of the sharks.

Well, Coke never did finish the nine other things on his bucket list.

You are my weekness 

You are my pain and happiness 

You are my world and the whole universe 

You are all I want, you are all I want to embrace 

You are my weakness and sadness, and you are.. definitely, my happiness. 

You are the blood in my veins and my whole universe. You are- the universe. 

The day of reckoning is near. The Lord on High has looked down and what does he see? “His Creation” on a path of self-destruction and ruin; the fiery flames of eternal damnation are licking the souls of the unrepentant as they walk a torched path to annihilation.

But they are blind to their environment. Willingly they tread toward the door as the devil motions to them with his friendly invitation. They feel, ———Cool!——— They feel,——— Enlightened! —“Come,— enjoy all the fruit, life has to offer.—— NO FEAR, — life awaits:— FREE from the shackles of morality,— FREE from the deception of the lie that is labeled sin. You are my Children, and you must — Take from Life — all — that is offered. Why should you deny yourself something that was created for your enjoyment? Why hold back?”

Brothers and sisters,—— I kid you not,— our path is a difficult one. Our trail is a narrow and rocky crag:— a conduit of obstacles,— bordered on either side by cliffs. One false step could plunge us into the Eternal Flames of Damnation.

Only if we endure our path,— going through the narrow door held out to us by our Lord,—— we are the Lazarus of the promises: the glories held out to us that suffer and endure, the peace of those to enjoy life in favor with our God; but to the rich man? To those who take the wide road? Not even a drop of water on the tongue will be given breaching the borders of the endless chasm to ease torment.

My friends,— My Brothers and Sisters,— now is the time to make your choice. It is not too late. In six days our God created the world. In one day he will end it! If you have just found the path? If you have stumbled on our narrow road? If you have tripped on this difficult journey: now is the time to take our Lord’s hand and allow him to lift you up. Repent, and come forward and have your sins washed clean. Repent and get baptized — and feel the refreshment of a life free of the burdens that ensnare so many. Join with us as we walk hand-in-hand on the narrow path together. We are not alone and a Glory awaits us as the tent of our God comes down to us. Brothers and Sisters we have the Promise and WE WILL reside in the house of our Lord—— FOREVER!

Amen!

PS: LOL, Thanks for this challenge. I believe I painted the essence correctly. Please may any Southern Baptists’ forgive me if I misrepresented.