Poems from Gitmo

Housed at Guantanamo Bay, are a group of people, enemy combatants is what this administration likes to call them. I prefer people. Some are just poor farm workers that were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some were sold. It's a known fact that the U.S. offered cash money to those who would point out a "terrorist".

Many of these people have been incarcerated for as many as five years, never being charged, never allowed council. No hope, no future, just growing anger and resentment, fear, torture.

Their future is bleak and their forgiveness of an arrogant nation almost non existent.

This is about seventeen of those "enemy combatants."

Freedom is spent, time is up –
Tears have rent my sorrow's cup;
Home is cage, and cage is steel,
Thus manifest reality's unreal.

Moazzam Begg

This is a poem written by one of seventeen poets residing at Gitmo. A thin book has emerged containing poetry written by these detainees.

Most are refused pen and paper, some of these poets took to using pebbles to scratch words on a Styrofoam cup.


For years, the Pentagon refused to declassify any of the writing.

They described poems as "a special risk", because they could contain coded messages.

The passages in Poems from Guantanamo were cleared before the Pentagon realised they would wind up in a book.

Falkoff, who is also the editor of the book, said the Pentagon has refused to clear any additional poems in the last year or so.

He said: "We believe that they've made an effort just to keep this book from coming into print."

Commander JD Gordan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the detainees "have attempted to use this medium as merely another tool in their battle of ideas against Western democracies".

(snip)

Take my blood,
Take my death shroud and
the remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Other Guantanamo inmates have used poetry to express their anger with the US government that holds them captive.

Falkoff said: "There's some strong language, though, and I did not excise that. It's included in here."

An excerpt from Humiliated in the Shackles, by al-Haj, reads:

America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.
Bush beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.

These writings give us a rare glimpse into the minds of these detainees. Some have hope, some crave death, some angry, all showing their humanity, their fears and frustration.