🔵 By Heather LeAnn Horst. Photo by lauragrafie.
Two worlds, one premise
Concentration Camp, Buchenwald 1937
Where death becomes joy
It happened here.
Correctional facility, United States 2024, “Life without parole.”
July 1927 Buchenwald
A facility is built for Jew offenders,
Due to an increase in demand.
It happened here.
2012 Florence, Colorado.
A facility is expanded for maximum security offenders,
Due to an increase demand.
It happened here
This is Danté’s world.
One in which the Inferno is both the beginning and end of the Divine Comedy.
A Pavlovian study so effective,
people walk inside of lines that don’t exist and are held prisoner by a hedge.
An Offender.
The elderly, a child, a woman or man.
None one escapes the law.
Stripped naked
all belongings taken.
Notes and photographs are made of a naked, dehumanized monster.
Ordered to urinate with an audience
Labeled with a number.
Cold, bare, concrete
A place so dark and vengeful spirit banished to hell wouldn’t dance in the flames.
Blue, Green
Are lonely colors for grey, black are only shades.
Shepards bark orders.
“Know your place!”
“No matter what you will be wrong and I will be right!”
All communications will be monitored.
Anything deemed inappropriate will be terminated and punished.
Control is gained through fear.
No escape for fear of death.
Human basic needs are criminal.
Food is rationed and you’re punished for theft.
Smiles are painted on the faces of injustice and rape
for fear of retaliation
Punished with solitude
Religious practices are limited
Showers are privileges for the obedient.
Forced to work for fear of isolation.
Health care is barbaric and archaic.
Even torture to some.
A woman bearing a child
In one moment the miracle of birth is transformed
to a newborn ripped from warm loving arms to
the abyss called the system.
No method of pain control is given.
Two worlds, one premise
It happened here
where joy becomes hope
It happened here
where death and hope
became one.