If all I see were walls every day, the little window
where the guard peeps to see if I am still sane
before he serves my meal, I will give him a good look
and make him wonder if I am going to bite his hand.
An experiment failed in England in 1951 to keep the sanity
of a few young men for some weeks inside these walls
because they wanted out before the first week ended,
disoriented from these walls.
The skill is in my mind, what is in it, and who I talk to
every day and night. I look at these walls and ceiling
when I raise up my eyes to re-charge my brain
while my knees are on the floor.
I do mental drills every day just like a soldier would
and invent characters who I engage with in long talks,
positioning them in every wall. Then, I would tap deep things
from the deep repositories of my brain.
What my enemies miscalculated is the depth of that store,
how many years I pumped the knowledge that powers
eternal life in me in the sea of connections in my head.
I lasted 7 years in these walls. O, how deep my repository is!
