For Taylor

If you are able, please donate to Taylor’s funeral fund. You can read more about Taylor’s story here.

‘Prison serves no purpose.’ — Jean Genet

Look how they walk,
across the border of the last threshold
travelling
an Odyssey behind bars.
Beyond the system’s grip, and some pig screws’ chokehold,
when may we count the toll of those
now beyond scars?
When will their stories be told?
Like
George Jackson,
in for one year,
then in for 10 more
his sentence
looking more & more like an echo of a story-
of no homecoming after a 10 year war.
An incalculable distance
tread by
these class myrmidons,
freedom fighters on the path
of most resistance.
Like other martyrs,
some of them have left us on the shore,
embarking on, carrying through with persistence,
the only journey that will come to matter,
on the carceral backbone of a dying world:
Revolt.

Originally published at https://www.thecommoner.org.uk on July 27, 2022.