I prefer pens

I am doing a rather dull job at PEN. And have to type up some distressing poems today. I have cut n pasted three of the less brutal ones here. They're not by me, in case anyone logs on and thinks something bad has happened to me.

Heavensgate

The other politicos,
privileged by class,
education, family,

preen in their bravado,
safe from death, protected by old,
powerful benevolence.

They pay other inmates to sing their praises:
Shouts of ‘Baba! Baba! Poor man’s saviour’
chase their farts echoing up their own arses.

Other heroes here are men and boys
with no power, no privilege, no class,
nothing to gain: not even a book published.

Their crime is to be poor and proud
in the face of tyranny: unbroken by angels
they worry liars to madness.

And one of these nameless
crawled into my cell at night via sewer pipe
to give me a jar of his own blood

and paper, stolen inch by inch, hidden up
trained rectums and glued together into
sheets with mango sap.

‘To take write our suffering’

These true heroes are lost
in the heat hazes that shimmer over unmarked
graves riddling the swamp behind the prison walls.

Passover

Before he was transferred
again
for fraternising with the prisoners,

Lt Emile Elejegba came to
see me
in my cell at night.

Wrinkling his nose against the
smell
and trying hard not to cry,

he handed me a slim worn
volume
with the picture of a smiling white girl
on its cover. The Diary of Anne Frank.

‘This might help,’ he said gently.
‘I hear
Nelson Mandela read it on Robben Island.’

In the morning he was gone as
I turned
the first page and began to read.

Articles of Faith

Skills
learnt in prison are meant to
prepare you to assimilate on the outside,

But what to do with
a disciplined anus that can hide a
sharpened nail, piece of glass or even pencil?

How do you apply
the educated guesses; an ability
to predict who will live or die today?

Can you share or even tell
of philosophies and insights gleaned in
silent places of solitary confinement?

And who will buy
the blood you sold pint by pint to guards
in exchange for cigarettes, Coca-Cola or bread?

Your blood which they sold on to hospitals
private clinics, research facilities
and obeah men in juju shrines.

Who will believe
you can compose whole symphonies in your head
waiting the romance of strings and voices, because

here we are forbidden to sing?


by Chris Abani