News and Media News stories Poems Prisoners around the world often tell us how much they like reading and seeing other prisoner’s poems, pictures and creative writing. Here is a selection of poems and artwork. Thoughts on time Time clings to my skin, as does stickiest resin.Greedy in its purpose, the unrelenting consumption of youth, the sloughing of my flesh.He is a hunter, peeling back the layers before the meat, selling spring-harvested organs to the highest bidder.Haunting, he yells “plumpest, juiciest of skins! Moisture-rich! And elastic! Feats on the newness, but be quick!It’s being taken fast, for the bargain price of half a life!”With each breath, my life slips and ebbs. It flees with every smile, each simple movement, the blinking of my eyes.And time? He sits atop my breast, claws slicing to the bone, and with every gorge, drains that which should be sacrosanct.He turns my gaze, my thoughts, my very essence to the hanging clock. He breathes, chill and slick ‘tick tock’, laughing at me, at the folly of existence.A single second passes. Hope, she who is lost and greatest of all things, weakens. She is jaded, sickly, in proportion to her hours.Time forces her outwards and away. Her voice, the song of light she calls, is hardly now an echo, like the falling of sand.Above Her is Time’s cacophony. His look is knowing, sly. ”You don’t have long. No-one ever does have too long, you see.You’re an example in futility. It stares out at you from every looking glass, each mirrored surface. From the moment you were born, you decayed.And nowhere you sit, a stagnant pool; scum-topped, putrid, a breeding ground for loss. A relic of little words, lost to sight and memory.A meaningless wish, the shadow on a harem wall. Your promised blooming fled, vanquished by your descent, the fall from grace.Such things never come again. After all, what fruits are there that ripen twice? None. They’d never have the Time.”He is cruel in his unceasing forward march, the never-ending constancy of moving onwards, his deaf ear and blind eye.Yet still I beg, as we all do and seemingly must: “Please, more time!” An entreaty that beats to the rhythm of shedded pride. “Just a little more!”Let me not grow old. Leave me as I am, as they who have loved me remember. Give me the chance to re-do, remake, restart!Time! I beg of you, Time! A little more, only a little! The meerest scrape! Let me go back. Have me still be fresh and beautiful,As yet still filled by hope, a believer in dreams. Do not leave me to wither with age as the world goes on… Do not let me fade! I beg of you, mercy!But my answer, the only answer, comes from the clock:‘Tick tock, Caladel, tick tock’ CSB, Japan Judge us not Like the season,People change.Where one judges the same old cover,The other sees the little difference in us;Like the butterfly we have emerged anew,Forever changed.Judge us not for the crimes we paid for,But for our choice to change,To better ourselves,To become who we are meant to be.We became better;Through choice we are changed.Are you? Jordan, USA The shape of you It is the night of many coloursThey swell from universe to universeSailing on a cosmic windThrough dark Plath-like gasesTo this blue veined planet All that can share Is caught in the viral noteLike music from a singing shoreMore sway than song and long-stringedLike the theory of everythingWhere dreams are piledInto the brains of whalesForever swimming against the tideOf humanity and religious wordLike a bomb waiting to go bangAnd make all things begin againIn stars that follow the shape of you. David, France Snoring rhapsody The meds are due at eightThe Seroquel’s late againThe snoring usually startsJust around half past ten. Sometimes it startsOne cell at a timeBut tonight they’re all bloody earlyIt’s only half past nine. One cell, two cellThree, then fourFor the next eight hoursIt’s a deafening roar. I suppose for me I’m like a lambThat’s just learned how to bleatMy prayer to my God tonightIs Lord, can I please have Some sodding sleep? They say there’s only one wayTo try and remove this nightly curseAnd that’s to ask her on her next roundHey! Have you got a minute there nurse? Cos all I want to do tonightIs try to get over this hillAnd if it’s the only way to get some sleepPlease nurse, give me a sleeping pill. So at last my eyes begin to flutterTo keep them open, I try my very bestBut the sleeping pill is now workingSo it looks like I’m going to join in with the rest For now I’m at peace and not know of theSnoring rhapsodyPlease forgive me all who are listeningI can assure you what you’re hearingIS NOT ME. Roy, USA Manage Cookie Preferences