Pleas of a G
-Willie Powell

As a youth, misery was always present in my life. Even the so called happy moments and all the years I spent in school had it. On the surface, everything would appear okay to the casual observer. Underneath the skin there was a heart being blackened and made cold.
Violence was never far away. There was plenty of physical abuse. No one was exempt. Everyone was fair game. The beatings I witnessed and experienced became a normal part of life. Though painful physically and mentally, they were too common for life to be about anything else.
I recall the time I had to witness my dad holding my mom by the throat punching her in the face, repeatedly. I was seven years old, scared, confused, and furious. Or the time my dad whipped me so long my mom had to break the lock to get in and stop him. The next day at school, I had welts all over my body. Once we were having a family picnic and my dad began beating my mom with an antique steel candle holder. That night, I awoke to find my mom nursing her bruised face in the bathroom I shared with my brother. The breaking point was when my dad hit me with a pick handle in the jaw which swelled to the size of a baseball. Child protective services were called at school and they did nothing.
The verbal abuse was very bad. I’m not sure how one is supposed to feel after being talked down to. Especially a child. I did not feel good. And, even if the criticism was justified or meant to be good, it was not received.
A child has a soul that is like a flower opening up to receive the rays of sun. It is going to receive whatever is put inside of it. And whatever is put inside of it will come out.
My soul was empty. At a young age, it began being filled with hate, anger, and violence. Though I couldn’t see it at the time, I had a mind full of demons that were tormenting me to get out. They were planting a lot of seeds in my young mind and heart. Eventually, these seeds would spark a flame that would burn everything in its path. In retrospect, it was all a dirty game to me, played by higher powers.
I know I’m not the only one with a similar story. On the contrary, there are a lot of these stories. A lot of people with these stories became my cellmates. I live around them now. Stories full of pain, suffering, and death. I grew up and live around a dying breed.
Home was hell to me. There wasn’t any peace or rest. The desire of soul and body is rest. Peace is subjective, but it’s a desire. My mind did not find rest until I came in contact with gang life.
One day in the summer between junior high and high school, I ended up leaving the basketball court with some older guys from the high school I would attend. I drank my first beer and smoked my first joint. We were hanging out. When it started to get dark, I crept away to beat curfew. The next day, the fellows told me if I had to leave to let somebody know. They told me they didn’t want anything to happen to me. They were concerned about me and had love for me. That was the first time someone said they loved me.
Though gang life is like a near sighted person that rejects glasses, it gave me my vision. Gang life gave me the avenue to channel my desires. My mind rested in the fact that I had comrades that cared enough about me to watch my back. And they understood me. They were my family. They loved me and I loved them back. They were supportive of everything I did, no matter how crazy it was. The vision was for the moment. We lived on the edge like there was no tomorrow. We hustled so hard and had to look over our shoulder so much we couldn’t enjoy the present day. Then we would come and do the same thing again, like yesterday. It was never ending.
I felt like God was not there. I wondered if He even existed. Why was there so much pain? Did He understand our plight? Did He care? To understand purpose and creation, there had to be a God. I hoped He lived. But why didn’t he answer? I reasoned that since He wasn’t interested, I had to do what I had to do.
Street mentality evolves the mind into a terror. Survival is the principle. And if you want to last, you have to strike first. This offensive mentality has a way of making a person paranoid. The aggressive nature becomes natural all the more when the alternative is considered. I have a lot of dead homies that did not shoot first. My aunt was shot outside of a dope house and left on a curb. I shed a lot of tears for her. May she rest in peace. I both hope and wonder if there is a heaven for us.
The struggle continued. No matter where I was survival was the key. One has to eat. The phrase, “By any means”, took on a deeper meaning the deeper I went into un-civilization. There is nothing civilized about prison. To some, I’m greedy, selfish, wrong. To others, I’m a statistic nobody cares about. To family and friends, I’m out of sight, out of mind. Seldom seen, soon forgotten. So, I go by what I know, because I have to. I have no one else to turn to. No one cares about my situation.
Right now, I’m lost and weary. I don’t know what to think about anything. I’m going blind. All I can see is me leaving here in a hearse. I have nightmares of my enemies killing me in my sleep. Please, Lord, forgive me for my sins because I know my life here is coming to an end.
Though I live in the moment, something seems to be pushing me. It’s as if every move is calculated to take me closer and closer to an early grave.
People tell me I need to change. I want to change. Do people think I like this? But what do I change into? There isn’t a future for me. I’m stuck in this game. I’m trapped in this maze.
Who can I contact about the injustices of society? Who would really take the time to listen to my story and try and help me? Who do you really think cares about a young man who didn’t have a fair shot in life? Who cares that I was locked up so young that a cell is my comfort zone? Who cares about a product of the environment? To me, know one cares. They live in their blessed world with no regard for people like me. So I say, fuck the world, because I’m cursed. I must be, because I’m surely not blessed.
Where I come from, there is no mercy. But I hope there is a merciful God. If so, He knows I tried. It’s not like I chose this. But I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve seen a child born into this world. The experience was beautiful. I’ve seen a man bleed to death and let out his last breath. I saw a drive by kill a kid. I can remember asking God why He let some killers live and then take my homeboy’s son. Walking upon the dead, broken-hearted, glancing at the floor, I know I need to get away.
My prayer is that God would take me away from all the pressure and pain. There is no happiness here. I have a son and a daughter who have grown up without me. So, on top of everything else, I’m a deadbeat dad. I’m ashamed of that fact. I really don’t want any friends near me because I feel at any moment I could choose suicide as the answer. When I turned seventeen, I took about one hundred sleeping pills trying to get out of this life. I woke up mad at the world. It still seems the better choice right now. All my time is spent in a cell. Should I just accept everything and spend the rest of my life here? Personally, I’d rather die than be trapped in this living hell. It’s like my own personal hell was developed just for me and my destiny is eternal fire.
Now, I’m in prison, a convicted of murder. I shot a man in the neck. It all happened so fast. There were a lot of shoot-outs with rival gangs and drug dealers, but that man was innocent. I watched him bleed to death praying with his eyes open. Knowing I left his family heartbroken is tearing me up inside. I was taught not to care, but I can’t put this behind me.
Oh, that I had the innocent times back. When I was a child and had no worries, everything was black and white. I really want to raise a baby now, just to see a part of me that wasn’t always shady.
Speaking of babies, I now have a step-daughter. The mother of my son and daughter just had a little girl that tested positive for PCP. The woman lost the baby. To make matters worse, the baby is by my partner. My children’s mother is a product of the poison I spread.
All of this is too much and I can’t take it anymore. I’m on my knees pleading for the Lord to let me into heaven!

Nine years later. God has been good. I now have hope and I know form personal experience that God is alive. One day while thinking how much I hated being away from my daughter on her birthday, a voice spoke to me. The voice asked me if I would like to be away from her for an eternity. Right then, I gave everything up. When I left the gang, God protected me. And He’s answered prayer after prayer. Healed a friend of diabetes and Hepatitis C after I prayed with them. He wiped out a $17,000 child support debt without me filing a single paper.
Forgiveness is powerful. He’s forgiven me of everything and in turn I’ve forgiven everybody. I’m close to my family. And, I can see there are some beautiful people in this world that do care for me. I got an education and with that came a better understanding of things. So, I’m no longer staring at the world from a distance with my eyes closed. I’m enjoying life. God heard the plea of a G.