2 Prison Poems

The Cat o Nine Tails Stretched on a frame in the bathhouse Ankles and wrists lashed hard Rab the cat was sentenced His back to be flayed and scarred By 20 ripping lashes The cat o nine tails swung Its tongues bit deep in his shoulders And blood from his back was wrung For back in the 1940s The birch, noose, cat as well Were weighed in the scales of justice As punishment's arsenal Scotland's Gulag: Peterhead Prison 1987 A riot, a rampage, an explosion of human rage Fifty hardened criminals seized D block Anarchy loosed from its cage Determined to leave their mark Murderers, rapists, knifers Bedding and bed pans wrecked Knuckles and skulls bruised black Jackie Stuart, officer, snatched Fifty six years old, hauled up on the open roof And then, four days of terror tactics The cons, in balaclavas made of rags Barricades, booby-traps, flung slates, aerobatics The hostage, leashed like a dog Paraded before the press. A hood on his head A blade at his throat. Cruel torture antics Fifteen minutes overturned the odds Twenty SAS men in fatigues, gas masked Flash-bang canisters, with cudgels Ladders, ropes and high explosives Rescued the warder, the horror passed The day given back to order, The foghorn wail The crash of the heaving waves Tons of water, pummelling sand and rock