Gangster Turned Guru Presents: Chapter Excerpt: “Esco”

I have no problem admitting that my gangster mentality stemmed from a false self-perception and lack of self-love to all the various gang members I’ve had as cellmates.  When I discuss how I’ve refused to entertain those negative thought patterns to Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords that I’ve bunked with, most couldn’t imagine changing their lives being apart from their gang.

This was especially true for a 24-year-old Crip, from Long Island named Esco.  Short, stocky, half black and half Puerto Rican with an innocent looking baby face that has fooled plenty of people when put to the test.  He claimed to love the gang life.  He swore he knew it all, talking me to death with his gang mentality from which he perceived the world.

Every day at 3:30 p.m. as soon as the cell door locked for the count, Esco would sit up from the top bunk, where he’d spend most of the day and start to talk.

“Eddie, these guys always come to you for advice. What they can’t think on their own?”

“Actually, for a lot of us, thinking on our own is what we’re learning to do.”

“You’re learning to think on your own? Who don’t know how to do that?”

“You’d be surprised, Esco. When you don’t know who you really are, you live according to the authority of others.” I laughed thinking about my own past identify crisis. “You of all people should know that.”

“Why should I know?”

“Because you’re a Crip and have to follow whatever your OG says,” I answered.

He climbed down the latter at the end of the bed, ready to debate. “Everybody falls under the authority of somebody.  You follow the authority of these CO’s when they tell you to stand for the count,” he fired back.

“They don’t have to tell me to stand for count.”

“That’s because you’re already standing.”

“Exactly, under my own authority,” I said laying back on my bed with my hands behind my head, cradled by my pillow.

“Aren’t your followers under your authority?”

“My followers?”

“Yeah, Twin, Paradise, O, Tone, Javi and all those guys in and out of here all day asking you what to do, how to do it, and they listen because you think you’re smart from reading all those books.”

“It’s not that I think I’m smart, they trust me to give them positive advice.”

“Why don’t they ask me?” he wondered pulling his chair up along the side of my bed.

“Probably because we view things from a different perspective.”

“How’s that?”

“Esco, you’re still relatively young, trying to prove yourself in an attempt to figure out who you are.”

“Prove myself! I know how I give it up!! Ask about me! My name rings bells out in the streets!”

“I never heard of you!” I said shaking my head flashing a grin.

“That’s because you been locked up for so long! Call out on the streets and you’ll see. I bang! It’s what I do!”

“But what does it get you?”

“Respect!”

Squinting my eyebrows together I asked, “Banging gets you respect?  What are you banging for?” sitting up from my laid back position, giving him my full attention.

“For my set, my block! It’s what I do! I wasn’t a pretty boy, getting money type like you Eddie.  They call it gang banging because I bang!” he emphasized all hyped up, pounding his fist in his chest like a silverback gorilla.

“And all that banging is causing you those problems out in the streets.”

“What problems?  I’m good in my hood.”

“Esco, you sit here every night and day telling me your war stories against the Latin Kings and the Bloods.”

“Cause I give it up on those mother fuckers!”

“And they give it up on you!  The Bloods ran up on your girlfriend’s car and shot you in the leg.  The Latin Kings, shot up your baby mother’s house, thinking you were there.  Your son could have got hit.”

“That’s because they’re scared of me and know I’m a threat!”  He defended, raising up out of his chair, walking over to the cell door to stare at himself in the six magnetic mirrors I have on the door.

“Who’s scared of you?”

“They’re all scared of me!” he said, looking back over his shoulder, nodding his head.

“They’re not scared of you, simply because they’re banging on you and although you’ve gotten away, they killed your cousin Russ on his 21st birthday.”

“That wasn’t my fault!”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault, Esco. It’s a consequence of the lifestyle you’re choosing to live.”

“But he wasn’t banging, he was just with me all the time.”

“And somebody banged on him, for what?? Your set? The block?  Does it mean that much?”  I asked, leaving him silent for a few seconds, which is a difficult thing to do.

#gangsterturnedgurupresents

#eddiekwright

#respect

 

The Clock is Ticking

My daughter Nia, is in her 2nd month of high school and with all the worries of drugs, drinking, and of course these no good boys….there’s another internal clock of worry ticking in my mind, one that the parents of past generations didn’t have to fathom…..the possibility of our child’s school being next in line for a mass shooting.
Last year taught us it’s not “if” there’s going to be another school shooting, but “when”.

To have to tell my 13-year-old daughter, to jump out the nearest window should she ever hear gunshots, even if she’s on the second floor, isn’t me being irrational. What’s irrational is that nothing has been done to curb the chances of it happening again. No new laws passed, no ban on automatic weapons, as a matter of fact, I haven’t heard either political party really mentioning school shootings or gun control recently and I’m an avid a.m. talk radio listener.

With the constant bombardment of breaking news, having distraction after distraction, the slaughter of our children at schools seems to be thought of like something from the past. But that alarm clocks going to rings off and the next mentally disturbed kid with easy access to an AR-15 is going to remind us that we got caught sleeping.

It’s unfortunate that the time is coming, all I can do is pray it’s not at my daughter’s school and then rest the clock since it’s bound to happen again. Tick Tock!

Let that be a reason for you to get out and VOTE!

#gangsterturnedgurupresents

#voiceforthesilentfathers

#eddiekwright

Excerpt, Evolution of a Gangster Turned Guru: Chapel

“Worry stems from a degree of fear, which is difficult to overcome because it’s how most of us are conditioned to think.”

“Conditioned to think?”  Carlos said, standing up walking over to the C.D. player and lowering the volume. “I don’t know how you were taught to think,” he said walking back over to his chair, “but I’m not conditioned or trained to think any type of way.”  Shaking his head, sitting back down.

“How did we go from praying and the spirits to how we think?” Jose asked.

“Because thinking is praying,” Paradise answered.

“Exactly!” I said, “You’re expressing your thoughts, activating the laws to attract the effect.”

“So you’re saying God has nothing to do with it?” Jose asked.

“God has everything to do with it,” I said, “because, it’s God’s law, but you’re not praying to God, you’re using the laws already established.   This is why it’s as if some people’s prayers are answered and others aren’t.  Some people know how to direct the energy using the law, depending on God’s law to bring about the result, some do it very consciously and have a strong faith and some do it unconsciously without understanding the process.”

“So what do you believe? In these laws or God and the spirits?” Jose asked, pulling his chair closer.

All eyes fell on me.

I paused again for a moment, “I understand that there is an all-wise, intelligent, all-knowing powerful Creator,” I began, “Call it God, spirits, the Universe or call it our higher power, it’s all part of us and we are part of it.”

“Now you’re part of God?” Paradise asked.

“Yes,” I said looking him dead in the face, “and so are you.  Many of the mainstream religions teach that we’re separated from God or the source of all life but that’s not true.”

“How do you know?” Carlos challenged.

“Because it doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because a God of love wouldn’t want to be separated from her greatest creation.”

#gangsterturnedgurupresents

#eddiekwright

Gangster Turned Guru Presents: “Catching An Epp”

Oct 10, 2018 at 4:23 PM

Suddenly an agonizing outcry interrupted my afternoon spades game. It’s the wailing I was used to after spending over a decade in the penitentiary where stabbings are methodical occurrences that happen every week. Yet, in the two and a half years I’ve been back in M.D.C. Brooklyn on appeal, there’s only been two stabbings on my unit, which would really be labeled as scratches, not that serious at all. 

But this currant screeching was reminiscent of the past, felt in my bones to where I assumed someone was being punctured to the point of loosing their life. 

Up on the top tier, a cell door slammed open, amplifying the screams from this 6 foot 2, muscular mountain of a man, about 35 years old, struck with a look of pure terror. Blax, my new celli, tried pulling this huge man back in the cell, only to be swatted away like a fly while his yelling continued. 

Mountain man, sprinted to the stairs with the attention of the entire unit watching. A two second hesitation, which I suspected he needed to take a deep breath for the continuing hallowing as he threw himself down the stairs. This was a enormous guy, about 250 pounds of muscles, coming down each of the 15 steps hard. 

Crashing at the bottom, he sprang up, spun around and raced back to the top, bellowing out the piercing scream of horror.
He grabbed the same steel cell door he just kicked open, slammed it against the wall and began punching it bare knuckles, like a young Rocky Bowbowwa beating up a side of beef while training in the ice box. 

By now of course, we all figured out what was going on, he was having what we call an epp, short for an episode, after smoking synthetic weed, known as K-2. These are the weekly occurrences I’ve become used to here at M.D.C., it’s just that this one took the crown. He continued beating the steel door until the C.O.’s ran in. It took five officers to restrain him while he kicked, punched, screamed and defecated on himself, until finally he was cuffed and carried out. 

You would think that guys would see this as an informitable warning that what’s labeled as synthetic weed is nothing like weed at all. Smoking crack doesn’t make people act like that! 
But in this strange world where down is up and up is down, as soon as they let us back out of our cells, all the smokers were running around trying to get some of what he had! How crazy is that.

Excerpt, The Evolution of a Gangster Turned Guru: Canaan

“When I finished studying a book, I would normally pass it along to Paradise, who never held back on giving me his point of view of what I gave him to read and today was no different.  Walking in my cell, putting the gray chair over the toilet bowl to take a seat, Paradise announced, “I can’t accept all this law of attraction, God is love bull shit!”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s no way that I attracted this life sentence.”

“And yet you’re here with the life sentence,” I said, placing the red velvet material attached to the spine like a bookmarker between the pages of the Veda, a Hindu religious teaching, then stood up to refresh my coffee. “You want a cup?” I offered.

“No, I want to understand how you could accept this delusional theory,” he challenged.

“I honestly looked at my life, the way I thought and my actions.  When I did that, it really wasn’t that hard to see,” I admitted while scooping a tablespoon of dark crystals from the yellow and brown bag of Kaffe instant coffee into my mug.

“Unconsciously or consciously, I would never choose this for myself.”

“Again Paradise, yet your here.  But I had that same struggle when learning about life’s process and the laws of attraction.  You want to know when it all started to make sense.”

“When?”

“Once I was honest with myself and took responsibility for my actions, instead of using the blame game as justification.”

Leaning back in the chair, interlocking his fingers behind his head he said, “So you don’t blame the rats on your case, the agent or the Judge that gave you 45 years?”

“No, I blame the lifestyle I choose to live and the way I used to think.  I’ve learned the power of my thoughts.”

“With the laws of attraction and all your universal principals’ bull shit?”

“Yes, and I had to change my thoughts in order to change the conditions of my life.”

“But your life isn’t changed, your still here in prison, locked up with me.”

I turned on the hot water letting it run until the steam fogged up the bottom of the wall mirror, then filled my coffee mug half way and explained, “I’m at peace from creating an inner freedom that ultimately reflexes my outer conditions.”

“Please Eddie,” he said, with an underlying laugh quickly standing up to put the chair back next to the bed. “I know a better way to change my conditions right now.”

“How’s that?”

“By getting the hell away from you,” he said and walked out the cell door.”