Crack Up Boy...
The approaching metallic clump
clump clump of tackety boots on the landing,
the elongated slamming of bolts,
the mouse like squeak of spy-holes
swinging back on their ungreased Victorian Hinges,
the click of brass light switches.
then it was your turn
“Lights Out!”
the sudden darkness,
the mesmeric clump clump of receding,
fading over ten agonising minutes
by which time the cell was illuminated
by a trapezoid of light high on the wall
in the shape of prison bars.
Not long now till it starts,
slowly at first...”crack up boy!”
“Crack Up Boy!”
“Why don’t you top yourself?”
“Crack up boy, why don’t you answer?”
“We’ll get you in the morning when you slop out!”
“Crack Up Boy!”
“Watch your back crack up boy”
Then the almost tribal banging on the pipes,
from all over the wing, beating out a rhythm
“We’re gonna cut you Crack Up Boy!”
Shivering in his metal bed with rubber matress
the emaciated farm boy
fresh from the Scottish borders
where he’d fled a childhood of abuse
both mental and extreme violence.
Not understanding the Cockney accents
or the pecking order...
the homeless teenager with no home to return to...
strangers would be living there now...
was it only three months since
he’d slept in his bed
dreading his next day at school,
which never came
“Oi! Crack up boy!”
“Oi! Crack up boy!”
“we’re gonna cut you up!”
“Oi! Crack up boy!”
Sleep, when it comes, is fitful and short...
bleary eyed as the clumping metallic ritual
of spy-hole –bolt –keys draws closer
he shuffles into clothes
and picks up his plastic pot
of dark urine and ventures out...
gotta face it...
try to stay close to the screws
who always seem to fade into the woodwork
when it comes...
Is it the pain?
Is it the blood?
Is it the collective laughter
of the witnesses that breaks the spirit?
Is it the blind spot of the watchers?
Everyone is the enemy...
trust is a fiction...
humanity a fabrication
of those on the outside of the wall
that they build to keep themselves safe
from these troubled teenagers
these dregs of society,
the nutty boys,
mini whirlwind psychos
The cowards of the world climb the ladder
by beating the inferior weakling...
even those who couldn’t win an argument
let alone a fight think it was their right
to practice on “crack up” boy...
he lays bleeding in a puddle of piss and blood,
he gets up and walks head bowed
the long gauntlet back to the cell.
The approaching metallic clump of tackety boots
on the landing, the slamming of bolts
the mouse like squeak of spyholes...
not long now...
till it starts...
slowly at first
