Mauvais Quart D'heure

Bitter cold was the day -
You could see your breath in the air;
Shivering beneath a thin wool blanket
And the government jumpsuit that I wear.
The silence is haunting,
Interrupted only by footsteps down the hall;
I wish I had something to read
Besides the cries written on these walls.
My memories are all that I have now,
And a very tiny sliver of hope keeps me going;
I think that because of the cold
Outside this cell, it must be snowing.
I had to break the ice in the toilet,
This morning like every other;
And I wish I could tell someone of this frozen hell,
If even a phone call home to mother.
At meals, I can just see the eyes of my bro,
Through the tiny food slot in the cell across the way;
He's talking less and less,
And his eyes seem to die a little more every day.
I don't know how long we've been here;
It's been at least a month, I know,
Since the night they chained us up
And carried us down here from the hole.
I don't know how long I can hold on,
I'm feeling weaker with every single day;
But I know I must stay strong
For my dying brother across the way.
There's about thirty of us down here,
Maybe more, I just don't know;
They had us packed like sardines in the cellhouse -
Maybe a hundred or so?
We spent Christmas and New Years,
Four of us to a tiny prison cell;
Until that night they carried us down here,
One by one, to this frozen hell.
I'd only been in prison a few months
When a riot broke out one winter morning;
It was December nineteenth,
And the entire prison was taken over without warning.
National Guard and Federal Agents came,
My unit was the second one to be hit;
They fired tear gas canisters in on us,
And that was all she writ.
We couldn't breath and couldn't see -
Snot poured out our tortured nose;
And I got hit especially bad
From a canister fired in too close.
They beat us with clubs and tied up our wrists,
We surrendered without a fight;
And I was taken with some of my bros
To the old cellhouse late that night.
And now I'm in this ice cold cell,
My mind slowly slipping away;
And all I can do is try to hold on
As I try to survive just one more day.
I try to do anything to feel somehow alive,
I pace the length of this eight foot concrete floor;
I wait on the daily meals and a little warmth
When just three times a day they open that tiny slot
To feed us through that solid steel door.


by Danny Watson aka ne033x