Asylum Poem by Oludare Alade

I wrote this poem while in Detention. I was in transition Detention for one year before this fenced and gated Detention with guards. The mind games the guards are using are all familiar to me; but it still irritate me. I am in extreme pain but still I am afraid that trying to get conventional treatment will create much more unsettling emotional situation than required for my state of mind.

1st Line- Narrate the kind of different past hurt and anger buried on hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

2nd Line- I have been attacked in Detention more than 5 times by Criminal elements within the system though I am not having any conviction on my record.

3rd Line-The Guards refused to protect me countless number of times. My property get ceased by the guards.

4th Line - Tells of what the Doctors are saying about my health mental and physical.

5th Line- Confess the nature of the problem

6th Line- Describes the unison; shared pain and how its unkind.

7th Line- In America; African Americans use to drink cool-aid for almost everything; unrelated to this poem but I am trying to show same band-aid mentality approach.

8Th- The need to release the pain is emphasized.

9th- The pain and the process get descriptive affecting the victim's future (morrow) .

10th Line- Being in Detention crying will create more problem than it will solve in this type of situation.

11th Line- Here; being the poet, I am trying to figuratively describe the kind of situations I am in compare with same past experience.

12th Line- This line narrate the longer ends of life irony at odds with the universe in each one of us.


13th Line- This line is trying to picture the roller-coaster in psychological state of a person in my type of situation. Mood swings and unstable thinking.

14th Line- The poet existence from all experiences is confirmed as sorrowful with this line. The lines are all self explanatory.

15th Line - This is re-stating the emotional process the body goes through when it wants to self detox. So normally such is inevitable!

16th Line - This is to say; the problem might go away but some other problem will take it place. So; the body will be tense from one point to the other.