I, Michael J. Tate was born on July 26th of the year 1980 in Durham North Carolina, because the small town of Burlington North Carolina hospital didn't have the appropriate medical treatment for the complications that my mother was having. After being born my mother threw me in a dumpster behind Ken's Quickie Mart, where a friend of my aunt’s somehow found out and told my Aunt Mildred

(Hell of a start, right? It gets better, or should I say worse)

My childhood was not different than any other child’s. I had friends, we rode bikes together, we played football in the streets. Looking back over my childhood the only thing that I missed out on which was very valuable to my life was having a father figure in my life. Because once a boy grows up with no respect for ATHORITY, then he will have trouble in life due to the fact that he believes that he can do whatever he feels. In the REAL WORLD that is just not possible.
At the age of 10 my aunt gave me back to my mother.
Me & my mother stayed in Graham N.C with my great Uncle Bruce.
Family history says that before my grandmother died, she told my mother something that she had never told any other family member & from that day on my mother had been an alcoholic
My mother abused me mentally, physically, & emotionally, but what always confused me was & I could never understood was why she hated me so much.
To make a long story short, the child protection system of N.C. placed me in group homes & foster homes from the age of 11 to 16.
At 18 I went to prison for 133 months where I found my love for writing & wrote 7 books,
While in prison I was a very violent human being, because of lies that were told to me by the people that I loved the most, my low self-esteem began to kill me spiritually from the inside out, my chase to be anybody stalked me like a bird of prey; until the point of self-destruction THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION OF NORTH CAROLINA.
Where I had to stare down my own demands, it was not easy, but I found out that poetry was my only way out of those 4 walls & steel bars. So, poetry became my mental and spiritual therapy. At first I would keep my poetry to myself, then one day I let my cellmate read a poem. and he asked me to make a book out of my poetry. I only told him that no one would pay me for my thoughts; hence the name of the book A PENNY FOR MY THOUGHTS AND TWO MORE FOR MY MEMORY.
On January 17th of 2009, I was released from THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION OF NORTH CAROLINA with seven books & a dream!