Prisoner’s Camelot

By Samuel Strathman

Body is irrelevant
when you have
the influence
to tap into shadow-lit
tunnels of human psyche –

rainbow pastels
of bedlam I use
to draw in the oubliette.

Onslaught of possessed
samurai drives the masses
from their homes.

Tiny Tinas and Troys
splatter-brained
like watermelons catapulted
from one backyard
to the next.

I shout at the walls
and they answer back
with a dead ringer,
noose of predestiny.

In the cell block,
I trip and split
my head open
in the cenote
of Gitmo,
but am resurrected
by a proclamation.

LET THE DYBBUK’S
CHOIR IN!

Samuel Strathman is a Jewish/Canadian poet and author who was diagnosed with a non-verbal learning disability at the age of seven. Some of his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quadrant, Tran: A Poetry Journal, and on Dusie. He lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.