“Strange Garden” © Michał Bedkowski

 

Used to be Human
           Jenn Ackerman film – Trapped (Mental Illness in America’s Prisons), 2010

I can’t remember what eyes were for before.
           Before I was trapped here.
Before they made me so small
           I crept into a snail shell
so they could step on me.
           So I could die.
That’s what I want. To die.
That’s what I shout.
           That’s what I beg for.
But guards just tell me quiet.
           Why?
My beard sticks out., my hair, sticks out,
           My voice should stick out too,
           Though my voice has no teeth.

           Guards have no teeth either.
           they are stuck, too.
Mornings, they give me two yellow pills.
           I think a red one at dark.
But I can’t think when the lion attacks me.
           I pull the mattress over my head,
beg to be killed, beg to leave.
           They say I bang my head against the stone wall.
           Who wouldn’t?

I killed my brother forty years ago
           Now you ask if I hear voices.
I heard voices forty years ago.
           I try out different me’s
           to silence those voices.
I get into the face of a skull to scare
           shadows lurking behind
Other times I’m a no-eyes face.

They talk to me like I am human.
           I am not –
stuck here behind clanging steel doors,
           the keys outside.
I could be a tiger in a zoo,
           except tigers go outside.
Tigers climb, watch the sun, watch the moon.
           Tigers turn their eyes
           to see inside their skulls.

 

Lavinia Kumar: “My poem, ‘Used to be Human,’ was first written at the beginning of my poetry career – which began after my science and education career. It was written, then, under the mentorship of Chris Bursk, a rare, caring (of young, old, everyday, in prison, unbalanced, artistic…) human being and poet. He died a few short years ago. But his seminar class has grown branches, one of which workshopped this poem recently.:

Michał Bedkowski is an Illustrator based in London/UK.