Kevin Robinson tells the true story of his life in a graphic novel by Orlando Smith
He had the benefit of groups,
but still, it took a lot of years of
soul-searching and looking back
on his life to understand just
how everything went so wrong…
…to understand how
being bullied as a
kid could lead him
to search for ways
to feel powerful…
But, of course, every king
must one day fall.
Prison was the last place he’d
ever expected to end up.
Yet here he was, on the yard,
watching the buses come and go,
bringing new fish in and taking
old fish away… Day in and day out,
always the same. But somehow,
he couldn’t get a lick of peace.
All he wanted was
to be left alone
with his memories,
dreams of money
and power gone by.
But he kept running
into dudes he knew
— or dudes who
knew of him, kids
who had wanted
to be like him.
His reputation
preceded him, and
though he tried
his best to fade
into the woodwork,
youngsters kept
seeking him out…
Every bus brought a new batch of kids fresh
from reception, and every one of them
wanted an audience, had some crazy-ass story
to tell, or just wanted to ride his coattails.
Kids barely out of high school, now doing
life in prison… Drop-outs and burn-outs and
bad-asses and dudes who had forsaken their
own futures, much as he himself had done…
One day on the yard, he was listening to
yet another in a long line of young fools
a kid who was a loose cannon, half-baked
and unstable, when a light in his head
went off. The kid mentioned his parents,
and he recognized the name, did a little
mental math, counting the years.“
I know this kid,” he thought. “I knew him
when he was still in his mother’s womb, and
his parents bought my wicked wares.”
He looked down at his hands in a sudden
burst of clarity, he saw the domino effect
of his actions. Selling drugs to a pregnant
woman, who then gave birth to this kid
who couldn’t help himself. The kid wasn’t
a fool — he was an innocent bystander.
“Is this my legacy?” he asked himself. “Is
this the destruction my hands have sewn?
Pain and misery, crime and trauma?”
Staring at those hands, once adorned with
gold and ice, he thought, “What have I done?”
The past was another country.
The future is another world.
The struggle for redemption continues…
….AWAKENING
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