The reason.

Ok, so freakishly women up to the scream of my son...thunder, and I've never heard him scream like that before, I check my corrlinks and I gave a message from Thomas. Please keep in mind that I am one of the people who have asked why he is in there...this hits it right on the nail!

"Often I am asked why am I in prison. The question is almost continually posed by someone who has taken the time to get to know me, and to "know me" is to know my talents, qualities, traits, and virtues. I am a poet. I am an author. i am an artist. I am an entrepreneur. Also, i am a loving father, devoted son, and kind neighbor. So... How could I then be an "Armed Career Criminal" as the government put it at my trial and subsequent sentencing? Easy. The government did not sentence "me". They sentenced my record. they sentenced a categorical history of what I did in my lifetime. The trouble with that is they do not keep records of anything positive. Only the crimes. The times I broke the laws are all the government concerned itself with. Why? Do not my good deeds have a weight against the bad ones? Imagine if we took this attitude into our personal lives, into our own homes. Your child talked back. You wrote that down. Your child missed his bedtime. You wrote that down. Your child received a bad grade because of failing to study. May be he or she tried a cigarette. Even shoplifted at a really low point. You marked it all down to gauge what kind of person the child is. But you never marked down the times he made you chicken soup when you were sick. Or the time he tried to make you a birthday card out of macaroni noodles. What about when he found money but returned it to the neighbor. And remember when he jumped in the pool that Summer to save his friend who could not swim. Then he became a father and turned out to be a great dad. He brought the whole family together for holidays and told awesome jokes. When someone was feeling down he hugged them and told them everything would be all right.... and he meant it. The courts don't calculate those things in to sentencing. They do not consider the poems, paintings, books, and companies I created. They don't care that I gave my last dollars to my grandparents when they needed money or that I helped my elderly neighbor carry furniture into her new apartment before I even knew her name. The court is a systematic money machine for this country. Now, 37 percent of inmates are mentally ill. They are locking them away because they can. because no one complains. Because society is glad to be rid of the "crazy nut" who spends all day talking to imaginary people. It is easy to turn a blind eye on prisoners... until you realize they are not all murdering rapists. Nope. There are guys like me. Misguided as a youth. Eager to impress, and struggling to be accepted. Most all the crimes I committed were to put food on the family table. I did not buy fancy carsm expensive clothes, etc... I paid rent and bought food. Not that I was justified. I NEVER was and I regret every time I broke a law but you have to understand that when you are faced with a choice to go hungry and homeless or push a law to the side.... The choice is very very hard to make and if you are not strong enough you will make the wrong one. I am guilty of not being strong enough. That is why I am in prison. I am here because I knew that the system is broken and not worth it and I was not strong enough to avoid it. Now, does that make me a "Armed Career Criminal"? No. Any one who was with me my last 2 yrs on the street can and would tell you that I had given up crime and turned my life around on my own just like I promised. Unfortunately (As my judge noted at sentencing) I did it after this last crime and not the one before. So, I sit in prison for that. The irony of it? Of all the crimes I did this is the one I actually did not commit. And you thought God did not have a sense of humor. LOL. Also, know this. I have no regrets and I am not bitter. I love life and find happiness every day."