American Gulag

A concrete room

seven by twelve

measured by feet placed

one in front of the other

in the straight line

I have walked for decades.

.

Concrete furniture

permanently arranged

table, chair, bed

I have no right

to move furniture anymore.

.

Red metal door

with opaque window

just a slot to pass the food

I will always eat

alone.

I have no right to

conversation or company.

.

Cameras watch me dark and light

even on the low water toilet

lest I try to escape to the next world.

Low water lest I

drown myself.

.

I used to play with myself

while they watched

but not anymore.

It’s no fun

when you can no longer imagine.

,

My room is sound proof

No window to the outside

There is no outside.

Twenty three hours a day

with nothing to do

save penance.

.

I hear no one

I see no one

Nothing to fill the void.

but the sound of my

breathing and heartbeat.

.

I am exercised one hour a day

at the bottom of a concrete pool

under a tiny piece of sky

surrounded by concrete walls.

No birds fly over this place.

.

I don’t know where I am

I am kept in a room at this hotel.

I’ve never seen the other guests

though I am kept alive by someone.

.

If I don’t eat

the tube goes up my nose

to keep me healthy

and prolong my living.

Why do they want me to live?

.

I can no long remember

my mother’s face

or the love of a woman

or green grass

I can no longer remember

the color green

There is no existence

save the electronic zoo.

And there is no green.

.

Stalin would have been

more merciful

.

He might have simply

worked me to death

under a forest canopy in Siberia

I might have died in Spring

in the arms of others

still with the memory of

my mother’s face

the love of a woman

the color green.

.

Shoot me.

.

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