The Conch

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Hotel Guantanamo Bay

Dearest mother and father, I write to you this letter

I know it won’t reach you I have no paper or pen

But I must tell you how much I miss you

So I’ll inscribe it on the walls on the inside of my head

I thought I could be strong and that my faith would guide me

And no matter what they did to me, I could endure

But year after year of unrelenting isolation

There’s little left deep down for me to be sure

And tell me what does civilization mean?

When you taught to believe in the justice of your nation

I think I prefer the torturers hand

At least it’s some respite from the constant desolation

Look at me in the eye you cowards and savages

Before you put the bag over my head once again

The burning hot sand is nothing compared

To the searing imprint of your depravity on my brain

I feel like a bird in a cage

Like a dead man has danced on my grave

And home seems like 10 billion light years away

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

They keep asking me questions that I cannot answer

My body’s detaching itself from my mind

Please, subconscious, don’t overwhelm me

Fantasy and reality are becoming intertwined

The constant screaming in the enclosures beside me

It haunts my dreams and wakes me up in the night

Every day I feel that hope has abandoned me

Gradually I’m succumbing and losing my will to fight

I try to keep up my spirits by imagining the ocean

But the whales and dolphins are wearing gas masks

Has someone put something in my drinking water?

They’re eating pate and drinking wine from wine casks

I look around at this metal tomb of mine

No more than eight feet long and six feet wide

The cockroaches have become my dearest and closest friends

They bring me news from on the outside

And I feel like a bird in a cage

Like a dead man has danced on my grave

And home seems like 10 billion light years away

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

Outside is always dark and inside always light

Please god, let me hold on to myself

Has this purgatory I’m in been sent to test me

The monsters creep up beside me, those masters of stealth

As I look into this abyss, and the darkness before me

My mind goes back to the landscapes and the mountains

It’s all I have left now that my eyes are failing me

I see only the pale shapes of these khaki coloured demons

I use my mind to fly high on the winds

Across the seas and valleys and into the rainbow

I need to rest my weary head a while

And let the river just take me wherever it may flow

Get it over with! End this misery!

No one tells me what I did wrong!

Kill me or release me, goddamn it!

Why must I stay here in this hell for so long!?

And I feel like a bird in a cage

Like a dead man has danced on my grave

And home seems like 10 billion light years away

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

Those eyes that taunt me through the peephole

And these bastard chains bite deep into my soul

My feelings of revenge spiral out of control

And they can’t restore the years of my life that they stole

And I feel like a bird in a cage

Like a dead man has danced on my grave

Adelaide seems 10 billion light years away

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

I feel like I’m slipping away

But I pray to my god everyday

That someday soon I’ll be let out of this place

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay

From the Hotel Guantanamo Bay