Hell’s Walls–A Poem From Mapache

 Submission from Mapache, a community activist incarcerated by ICE.

It has been over one month since ICE kidnapped community activist Sergio Salazar aka Mapache. On September 14th, he was deported–a decision chosen by Mapache in order to get out of the cage faster, and a result of the corner he had been backed into by the feds. Through his friends in the (now de-camped) Abolish ICE SATX camp, we have received and are republishing this poem he wrote while being held in the Webb Detention Center. We look forward to publishing more works from Mapache soon. We also encourage you to attend the upcoming letter writing night for Mapache & Red Fawn, being hosted by the Austin Anarchist Black Cross and the Autonomous Student Network.

Hopeless prayers scribbles on hells walls.

It’s management underpaid enough not to care.

We may not have reached the god that offers belief in,

but they reached me in my time down south.

And I hope they were answered.

But I know how hard it is to hear and be heard past these walls

built by devils just doing their shitty job.

Here fascism is just another pay check

and for an hourly wage they build the cages

where the hopeless and the damned write prayers on hell’s walls.

Prayers for freedom, commissary, and judgements.

Of this 100 mile stretch of scorched Earth from sea to shining sea. Scorched Earth baked in with dried blood of it’s original inhabitants.

And their descendents who dare cross, hell.

And when I cross it again I’ll spend my life forging the chisel and wielding the hammer

that will tear down hell’s walls

 

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