Confessions before the Orchestra

Marilyn Buck

Photographs: hooded man wired
          naked men in piles
torture nightmares in daylight

          zombied people stalk
          the earth     crushed bones
          restless and numb

where to flee
the torturer lives next door
wears guard gear
stand-ins for shades in civilian clothes

the prez spits on Geneva
          I don't need you, bitch
          don't hang on me,     don't beg
          I do what I want
          call me Capt. America

tortured and maimed
buried in hidden cells, American jails
can't call anyone
          tongues tripped
          wired into confession
          lie dried in red ink
          manufactured consent
plucked out
          like eyeballs
electrical persuasion, cattle prods
          and dogs, raped
no sleep    disorientation         humiliation

Tell me what I did ...
          Whatever you say I did            I did

          guilty
          guilty
symphonic guilt composed by scholars
orchestrated by SOA "professors"
played by   intelligence musicians on homebodies
and   world bodies

Capt. America's death dirge
          tortures justice

March 2005

Written for
the Attica to Abu Ghraib Conference
Berkeley, April 22-23, 2005

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Marilyn's home page, her Wild Poppies poetry CD, other poems, Rescue the Word, writings on prison control units, on "Legal Issues for Women in Federal Prison", "On the Burning of African-American Churches".

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Back to the Prison Activist Resource Center political prisoner page