Orwell's Nightmare
Surrounded by painfully drab walls,
Painted and painted again,
With countless layers of colors, meant to be devoid of all emotion.
A spectrum of grey and pale institutional blues,
None bright enough to evoke any feeling but surrender.
Everything in this heartless universe: utilitarian,
Constructed in some hellish assembly line, manned by souls drones.
Every desk, just like the next.
Every sink, just like the next.
Every bed, just like the next.
Any expression of personality or individuality labeled; “contraband” or “altered state property”,
Immediately removed, to be relegated to some room, in the bowels of the institution,
Where other creations, of those inmates who have yet to admit defeat, go to die.
Repetition
Repetition
Even the “Rorshack” patterns worn through the paint on the floor,
From countless hours spent pacing by countless inmates, looks nearly identical in every cell.
The same paths worn down by the declawed and deranged tigers at any 3rd rate zoo.
A neurotic tick, developed when absolutely nothing natural remains.
The mind frantically reaching out for a foothold.
Even the most basic of acts such as walking, become essential.
A simulation of freedom.
3 steps turn.
3 steps turn.
Rinse and repeat
The dullest torture lies in the monotony
The lines between days become nothing more than notches on a wall.
The state doing it’s best to grind us down,
To mold us in to a tasteless, formless paste, just safe enough for institutional consumption.
I find it more difficult, with each passing day, to hold on to some semblance of the man I was when I arrived.
How long can a swallowed piece of steak fight off digestion?
Hope; systematically destroyed at every turn.
Every ritual,
Every interaction,
Every punishment,
Every reward,
Fiendishly designed by some bureaucratic overlord
To ensure that even the word hope tastes rotten in our mouths.
Zombies, without appetites.
Orwell’s “Big Brother” is alive and well
And he grows stronger with each passing day, in America’s prisons.