THE HUNGER STRIKER SINGS HIS DEATH
This is my body
my pale body
my hairy body
my stinking body
my body with its moles and leaks
my body with its scars and sores and sweats
my body with its itches and its aches
my longing body my weeping body
my body whipped
my body bruised my body crushed
my spat on body my pissed on body
my punched and kicked and electrocuted body
my shivering starving body in a cell
Surrounded by bars and floodlights
and grilles watchtowers and gates
and electronic locks
walls inside walls
inside walls inside walls
corners where light is slung
like a swift axe
shadows pregnant with nooses and saws,
barbed wire puzzles
riddles of broken glass
snares of bayonets
mazes of steel pincers and claws
guarded by needles in pipes
arrows in clocks
and eight-legged poisonous cameras
by mics attached to Beetles
by double-shifting psychopaths
and cannibals
drunken teenage marksmen on the roofs
german shepherds laced with speed
stallions with serrated hooves
besieged by self reloading magazines
rapid fire repeating headlines
morning artillery and main evening shells
battalions of experts in think thanks
heroic newscasters riding on elephants
khaki battalions of correspondents
the black watchers of Reuters and the BBC
stormed by blowtorches, fists and boots
by electric wires and twine and LSD
by white noise and burning cigarette butts
by a black hole pointed at my mother’s head
by great white sharks circling my Dad
by a mushroom cloud painted over my wife
by tidal waves aimed at my kids
here is my body
my famished and shrivelling body
where I am making my last and
unbreakable stand
where slowly
by the ebbing minute
by the shrinking hour
by the days pouring sand
in the canyon of my mouth
by the days piling silt
in the river of my mouth
by the days spilling lava
in the valley of my mouth
I am lightening
I am losing gravity
I am loosening the ballast of my flesh
I am ungluing myself
from the spools of my eyes
and untying the knots of my hearing
and touch and slipping the hooks
of my taste and my smell
I am winding out of pain’s net
I am winding out of the shrouding of sense
and I am going down
to the very core of myself
to be safer from their tortures
than at the centre of a sun
safer than a cave
in an ocean trench
safer than ice in mountain’s heart
and there beyond
the blind horizon of events
in a prophet’s cell
in a house of pure light
I am giving birth
to my invincible death.