Poem for the Men on Manus #5 (original)

In two rows the prisoners sit in sodden
Tropical grass, full lotus, waist deep
With equidistant poles before them,
Today my leaders removed the barbed wire, the mesh

And tomorrow the buildings will be dismantled.
Yet the men, who boil sea water to drink
And who have not eaten for nine days
Refuse to move, want a voice, want freedom,

Not the kind of freedom afforded by fenceless
Compounds, from free trips in white buses,
They want the freedom to choose
A job, the art they prefer, where to travel.

They want a country that hears and wants them.
Their stomach must be eating itself.
The lining broken to thin layers, their muscles
Unable to support their skeleton; bedridden, broken.

The perpetrators of evil need to know
The messages they wish to send, never arrive.
What they teach is how to perpetuate more evil,
That death is not the most difficult time.

Image by Samad Durrani
@Samad_durrani88