CONFINED IN THE MIND

I’m crouched in the same dark cold corner.
The empty damp corner of my cell.
The corner I’ve sat in for so long.
The corner I know so well.

Every chip in the paintwork.
Every damp patch on the floor.
I know this corner.
It’s the same as it was when I came before.

But it now seems I’m here forever.
There’s no getting out this time.
I’m going to sit in this same lonely corner,
till my spirit goes and I die.

The cold, the damp, the hunger pains.
The feeling of being alone.
The loneliness of waking up,
and seeing the walls you’ve seen for so long.
No one around, nothing to call your own.

The feeling and warmth of the sun shining through.
I jump up and down to try to get a view.
But the hole is too high, I can’t even smell,
and nobody hears me if I yell.  

But what’s the point of sitting here each day?
Time goes by, boredom, decay.
No one now thinks of me, nobody cares.
I might as well be dead or not even born.

The day I die, leave this hole,
will be my liberation, away from it all.


Copyright: Gordon Warren (1986)