Raped and bashed

1 thought on “Raped and bashed”

1. If I had one wish tonight
   I fear it would not be granted
   Just to be at home by firelight
   A simple wish enchanted.
   –
   Naked
   Naked in a naked room
   A windowless airless capsule
   Bound by timelessness and months
   Unseen passing like autumn leaves
   Falling to the earth’s open grave
   Sprawled vulnerably like this mass
   That is the skin bag in which I exist
   Hemmed in by walls sewn around
   This naked body that sits stunned
   Naked in a naked room
   Dehumanizing Treatment

   Naked in the face of inhumane treatment
   She sat naked in a naked room
   No window no thing naked she sat
   In the limbs of Being
   No external object no material subject
   To distract or occupy the mind
   Naked she sat in a skin bag a body within
   Four naked walls on naked body on a naked floor
   Naked walls naked floor naked body and knew
   The existence of degrees of choice in nothingness
   And the nakedness of timelessness
   Appearances
   Appearances
   In the moments in which I am
   Not conscious
   I am confined by the will
   Of another to be
   Brutalized in the absence
   Of my consciousness
   Through the haze I struggle
   In my nakedness to free myself
   Torn from clothes by jailers
   Pinning me down on the floor
   For nor reason other than cruel
   Violence masked when you visit.
   –

   You almost frightened me
   From where I sat concealed
   In the dark of night listening
   To the insane gibberish howling
   From the warmly lit windows
   Looking up through your limbs
   Reaching out into the darkness
   Of the black November night
   Far beyond this place this space
   Where my insignificant being
   Is confined by razor wire fences
   Red brick lock and key mortar
   Set against the soul like hell
   Gates slammed shut by the cruel
   Hand of the liar ruling unjustly
   Your trunk moving through the path
   Towards your untimely death.
   –
   Rain falls heavily
   Outside
   Above me
   About me
   Deafening rain falls
   Raises a chorus
   Beats against the tin
   Warehouse
   Stretched out
   Beneath the dismal day
   Deafening rain falling
   Rises
   Above the squeak
   Of machinery the hum
   Of the conveyor belt
   The clinking of scales
   Caught up
   In the deafening rain
   An ultimate silence
   –
   Awaiting an unknown destiny
   Time of departure unknown
   Who sits in the waiting room
   We, destined like de Sade die
   On the page like ink spilled cry
   To be anywhere but here away
   From the cruel jailer’s hand
   Turning heads we smile and cry
   While the screw gives the nod heeded
   By the majority who have waited all week
   For the dance the highlight of this life
   Skipping round in the Pride of Erin
   Smiling clown like whizzing by
   “Get up and dance! It’s a dance!
   No pens at the dance! No writing!”
   She squeals fumbling for the cell key
   “You can go and put those pens away”
   “Why?”
   “It’s a dance – get up and dance or…”
   “Or what?”
   ”Or you can stay in your cell.”
   “I don’t dance…I’m watching”
   “Lock her up!”
   Cigarette butts strewn still burning
   Lie discarded on the rubbery floor
   Where countless people have fallen
   Dragged screaming from the table
   At breakfast lunch or dinner
   We never know who or when will strike
   Next or what the issue will be the excuse
   To bash a prisoner here unseen hidden
   Locked up and set down for ‘treatment’
   You are on mouthpieces today”
   “God I hate making mouthpieces knowing
   They are going to be forced into the mouths
   Of people struggling beneath the weight of
   Cruel hands on the ECT bench in a cell
   Where electrodes are sparked on brains
   Punishment designed to control behavior
   Of women and men who object to be raped
   Bashed drugged and locked up here
   In Queensland’s mental asylum
   “You should never have been sent here
   You’re not psychotic you’re not neurotic
   There’s nothing wrong with you…”
   I feel sick at the privilege of being locked
   Here where I am forced to witness first hand
   Unspeakable cruelty silencing the oppressed
   The lumpen proletariat
   Here where I am forced to be an accomplice
   Shove your fucking mouthpieces designed
   To gag immobilized people drugged and bashed
   Pinned down like moths on tables fighting to
   Free themselves from your cruel minds
   “Set the table for ECT! We have six today!”
   Two tables are dragged from the dining room
   Where I met you when you were a Uni student
   Into the dark passageway where I like others
   Slumped and moaned and groaned passing out
   White sheets tossed neatly over tabletops
   Side plates cups and saucers two teapots
   Sugar milk and rock cakes the asylum specialty
   Post shock treatment drifting along the passage
   From the cell around the corner to the table lead
   By the torturer to the table his job completed now
   His appetite appeased like an orgasm dying
   Red-eyed and blurry she sits at the table
   Of her immediate surroundings or even her own
   Existence nor my presence meant to meet her
   My task now is to try to feed this poor soul
   Remembering
   “Hi …I’ve made a nice cup of tea
   For you…”
   What else can I do?
   Go outside and leave them to a worse fate?
   She tries to speak but cannot
   Another floating down the hall looks at me
   With a slight recognition before lapsing again
   Into controlled silence walking unconscious
   I feel sick again and again and again
   “Hi … You won’t be bashing me again
   “I’ve made you a cup of tea and there is cake
   Try to eat something…”
   You won’t be bashing me again but…
   There is no justification for this ‘treatment’
   This 17th century horror designed to harm
   Fiduciary care does not exist here in this place
   Where the consequences of the impact is dire
   I only know that it could have been me
   In the extreme attempt to control behavior
   To have power over the Other it could be me!
   I don’t want the fucking rock cake she screams
   Angrily throwing the hot milky tea in my face
   “Thanks. I wanted a cup of tea”
   Tomorrow I will shower and dress her again
   “Let’s try again – do you want a cup of tea?”
   She sits in electric silence while I pour the tea
   Drop in the sugar stir it and give her a rock cake
   If she had a tongue she would tell me she is going
   To kill me. I smile.
   Instead her mother comes to visit and I watch them
   Bring in visitors from outside to abuse me
   Etched on my memory I go through each cruel year
   Why should I forgive such cruel abusers, would you?
   Blood stretched in clots from beginning to end.
   –
   The night air chills the air minds frozen in hell
   Music screams in insane waves tossed recklessly
   Onto shores of some barren birthplace remnants
   of life scattered in fragments like random words
   Staining the rags of Marquis dancing on the table
   Being chased by bulls of terror intent on mutilating
   Beauty breaking into a gallop freely dancing
   Beating organ rolling from eyes passionately
   Desiring the inscription life an epigraph wrenching
   At the gut of the reader who passing bows to read
   Headstones sobbing in the heart of the earth ‘s bed
   The sound of a dull beating tom-tom pounding
   Like blood through my veins pushed by the heart
   Into fierce jungles sobbing muffled runs wildly
   Screams piercing the night wrenching my gut
   Until the voices are ‘put out like dying lights
   A sign of ‘a quiet day tomorrow’
   –
   In the heat of the summer’s longing
   Drawn to a close in the moment
   As autumn approaches preparing
   To greet the cold dead of winter
   Like a guard handing over the keys
   On a new change of shift
   Drawn to a close in the moment
   When autumn approaches preparing
   To greet the cold dead of winter
   On a new change of shift
   Drawn to a close in the moment
   In the heart of the summer’s longing
   –
   I am the calm in the midst of the torrent
   Waiting for the stream to clear
   Ooo ‘Eva Trout’
   B.H. Shrink
   The moon disk
   Slips
   As the sun disk
   Rises
   The moon disk
   Rises again
   Veiling part of
   What I see
   Veiling part of
   What is not
   Spreading
   The night blanket
   As the moth spreads
   Wings in pursuit
   Of light.
   –
   Empty husks lay strewn upon
   A burnished parched land
   In another orange day people
   Crazed rush in the merry-go-round
   –
   I wander in the bowels
   In the womb of life
   Existence alone being
   Futile in the sweating
   Of this society structured
   Abnormally without
   A foundation or values
   To uphold shaky grounds
   As if someone has bivouac’d
   The brain to set up camp
   Leaving me to touch upon
   The nakedness of raw life
   –
   The woman’s scream pierces the my soul
   Burns ripping at my gut as I am swayed by
   Nausea swelling to that familiar sound of cruel
   Terror screaming through dull passages forms
   A sharp blade tearing through my hearts pieces
   Dripping fingers dripping blood onto the lino
   Floor trapped between the heavily closed door
   While she was locked out on the other side
   ‘Well don’t just stand there! Get a mop!’
   The screw bawls at me stunned by the act
   I feel faint as if I want to pass out on the floor
   And fall into the pool of blood with the sight
   Of detached fingers like a Godfather movie
   In the making I freeze I want to run away
   From here from the violence thrust upon me
   I had never before known prior to coming here
   Unable to move I stood like a mullet pinned to
   The end of a jetty pulled from the calm sea
   By the mean hook of someone’s evil will
   Staring I tried to say ‘I can’t…’ no words
   She struck the match And ran returning
   She began mopping the blood
   The woman’s fingers cut in the closed door
   ‘How can you do that?’ I asked wide-eyed
   My stomach in my mouth swooning I cried
   Quietly she replied as if numbed and not seeing
   Somebody has to do it. You won’t’
   The woman was ‘found dead’
   ‘Suffocated herself with a pillow’
   ‘Suicide…’
   I saw her being carried out on a green stretcher
   ‘I don’t know why they use green they’re dead’
   Do your murderers hear your screams and pleas?
   Ringing in their ears
   Does every knotted sheet remind them?
   Does his last leak in the toilet he died in
   Sting your nostrils beyond the B-B-Q grill
   –
   The short Asian body hobbles past
   Stops a moment and acknowledges me
   With every effort she can muster she stands
   A challenge that you and I take for granted
   Shakily she wobbles on the walking frame
   Then tried again and again to form words
   To speak and manages a sound without words
   And a smile as if she knew she had succeeded
   ‘Wo!’
   She could say no other and I laughed I grin
   She knows she has not only succeed in making
   A sound she has communicated something to me

   A spark of love ignites within my heart as I
   Pour confidence into her and encourage her on
   To walk some more and make some more sounds
   ‘Shut up’ Turning to me they tell me to
   ‘Shut her up for God’s sake. That noise drives
   Me mad.’
   ‘Drives you mad?’ The irony of it all I smile
   At my jailer sitting on the verandah bored
   Within the enrichening palette of life and death
   Here in the State Asylum
   ‘If she was an animal they would put her down’
   Here we go again I think Here we go again.
   So many lessons of unconditional love in here
   Here comes my would be murderer rushing at me
   ‘What now …? I ask as she rushes at me
   Intending again to murder me on the spot
   She stops on a rare occasion of satori I watch
   The fleshy dark pinkish-red of the inside of
   Her mouth as it opens in my face I was wrong
   ‘Oh My Goddddddddd!’
   She screams her hot stinking breath in my face
   Grabbing my hair ripping it out by the roots
   Clenching the mass in her huge hand she punches
   Laying the boot in my head as I roll on the around
   On the ground screaming in chains
   Of terror striking my heart and soul as screws
   Who ‘suled’ her on to me decide ‘that’s enough’
   This stony cruel yard a death chamber steaming
   In the midst of bored lives assuming the role of
   ‘Carer’ more rightly termed ‘Abuser’ ‘Murderer’
   ‘Rapist’ ‘Instigator’ ‘Antagonist’
   I recognize people by their feet scraping around
   Remember how I came to be here
   My head trying to drag my assailant from me
   With my hair in her clenched fists she is joined
   To me yelling insanely ‘I’m gonna murder you!’
   ‘I’m gonna murrrrrrrder you!’
   Again and again.
   Someone jabs her ass with a syringe she falls
   From me her grip releasing my hair that falls
   To the ground like weeds in the wind landing
   After eight years of this terror the doctors urge
   ‘Fight back!’ demanding to know ‘Why don’t you
   Fight back Fight back. You know she intends killing
   you.’
   It’s been happening for so long now it’s a wonder
   I’m not dead.
   ‘It’s been happening for so long it’s a wonder
   you’re not dead.’
   ‘Pardon?’
   We said, ‘It’s been happening for so long its’ a
   wonder
   You’re not dead.’
   ‘I know.’
   –
   Endless days moments in time
   Form greater concepts
   Time passing through
   Days and weeks and years
   Months spent walking
   The narrow winding path
   That runs up and down
   The yard where I fall
   Into a pseudo daily routine
   As if my body willing moves
   Controlling movement I walk
   Towards the private recesses
   Of prayer reflecting the nature
   Of existence love extended
   From other hearts other minds
   His purpose in my suffering
   Made clearer with every step.
   –
   Seated
   Eating lunch
   Are twenty-three numbers
   Dead
   Digits and
   Blank faces on timeless clocks
   Nausea
   Pain the irony
   Curdles in my gut
   Numbers
   Looking back at me
   Eating lunch.
   Pheasant Feather
   A pheasants’ feather
   Gently touches my lips
   A smile a tear mingled
   Like two willows spread
   Shading a running stream
   An emu eating startled
   By swallows in flight
   Black Peter stuffing
   A broken tennis raquet
   Into a brown paper bag
   These orchids a reminder
   Of loss and gain living
   In the hearts of survivors
   The grass sparse and dry
   Blades trodden down
   By anxious feet pacing
   The perimeter hoping
   For life beyond bars
   And barbed wire rolled
   Around fence tops
   –
   Copyright (Australia)”Survivor of the horror” Not to be reproduced in any form.
   –

Comments are closed.