Do you know how it feels to be confined alone?
No books, or conversation or even a phone.
Only your memory to keep you sane,
And to control the suffering of physical pain.

Do you know how it feels to be tied and blindfold?
Or made to sit, in water ice cold.
Do you know how it feels to have a body so scarred?
By the sick, savage punishment of a deranged guard.

Do you know how it feels to be mentally abused?
Be misused and totally confused.
Do you know how it feels to be petrified?
And have every request continually denied.

Do you know how it feels to have no sense of time?
No window to see, the day in her prime.
Do you know how it feels in a world so black?
The only light seen through one small crack.

Do you know how it feels to never be clean?
When the smell of your body becomes quite obscene.
Or to never be allowed to rinse your mouth,
And your never ending burning drouth.

Do you know how it feels, never being allowed to talk?
No hand to hold or go for a walk.
These simple things we do at ease,
While others who suffer, pray on their knees.

Written & (C) John McKay Withey 1995