Time - H Block Blues

In the twilight of my last morning
I
Will see my friends and you
And I’ll go
To my grave
Regretting nothing but an unfinished song
Nazim Hikmet, Bursa Prison, Turkey, 1933

Tired of seeing his friends getting thrown against the wall by police
Under surveillance from the laundry van he didn't know peace
Part of the Muckerboys Long Kesh prison blues the walls are stained
He was inspired from the Battle of Bogside a cherished friend
KAI was the gang Kill All Irish, he hated them
Twinbrook Tenant's Association they started a childrеn's clinic
Local boxing and football clubs clanking mugs of Guinness
Reading James Connolly thеy taught each other Gaelic
Stealing matches and cigarettes from detectives during interrogations
In cage 11 he played guitar, he sang

The fairest flowers of their kind
These roses of the dark
“They are the light to guide the poor
These flowers in the dark”

"I care not should we freemen die
To see the garden flower
And humble bluebells lift their heads
To rise in all their power
I hold a tear torn sore in heart
Twere e’r a Joan of arc
Tis each one of these saintly flowers
Who be in dungeons dark”
“I scratched my name and not for fame
Upon the whitened wall
Bobby sands was here I wrote with fear
In awful shaky scrawl”

“From cell to cell they moved round hell
With food offered the starved
And keeping rules gave plastic tools
So wrists could not be carved
On paper plate in greasy state
They placed it in your hand
But who could eat the Devils treat
Or who could give a damn”

They thought these bars could tear souls apart
The door closed like a cave
He said "I stood like one in face of gun
With one foot in the grave"

Surrounded by dirt and filth and scarred walls
His smelly tomb greeted him
He listened to his breathing and the caws of crows
Depression would be his companion again
On a mutilated filthy mattress torn to shreds by a thousand searches
He found peace in the sparrows, starlings and seagulls he watched them perching
He threw them his maggot covered bread
The screws came, the blanket men filled with dread
They raided his mom's home and smashed her Celtic harp
He said The crunch of their batons redden my hair but they can't take my heart
He said yet these flowers refuse to be broken
They made us dig out the cursed coal that's stolen
The breeze stirs the hazel tree, the water cress is red
Bloody Sunday in Derry, on a frozen floor with a swollen head
Sipping lukewarm tea and moldy bread he said our day will come
Institutionalized but never institutionalized
Institutions are lies

Pen name Marcella, his sister's name
Wrote poems on government issued toilet rolls
Kept pens inside of his body
Oh incarcerated ornithologist
I wish i could break those walls and you could fly away like a lark Death to apologists

A single ballerina flutters in the magnificence of a twilight star
The moon has come to watch the dogs howl, the vibrations bend the bars

“They have suppressed my body and attacked my dignity” I'd rather die then conform to them
But he still found poetry and music in life, the gift of a pen
He said I fought a monster today, starvation i fought a monster today
He said “I have but one weapon to overcome them: my own thoughts" today
He said “If you knew but the torture, that the prisoners know well
You'd storm these dungeons you'd tear down this hell”

He went on hunger strike for 66 days
The steel gate yawned he died in H block after 66 days