As you see me:
I am a prisoner – for freedom I cry.
Incarcerated in a cell of my own.
Serving a sentence with an unknown term.
Ironically, I’m free to move around.
Carrying my jail wherever I go.
I am no criminal nor an offender.
But I am in prison.

Never have I been arrested by cops.
Neither have I been prosecuted in court.
Nor under prison security control.
I am free but without freedom.
The whole of my life in captivity.
Crying in jail – I am a prisoner.

By fear of the unknown I was arrested.
My own imaginations sentenced me.
My prison occupies the centre of my mind.
Creating images of disaster in my thoughts.
Coupled by anxious feelings of anticipation.
With an excessive ongoing mood of sorrow.
I cry in prison – in my own cell.
Had it been a physical prison
In that I would hope for amnesty.
A sinner who knows no church door.
Shall I pray and how should I?
Like Peter in prison an Angel saved him.
Who shall save me from this mental jail?

I succumb to mental imbalance.
The outcome of being a womaniser.
A philanderer, careless, promiscuous.
Some of my mistresses are no more.
My HIV status the unknown I fear.
Planted a mental strain in my mind.
I’m confined in terror – for life in prison.

The perception of danger in my brain.
Intrusive thoughts of my end.
That’s the sentence I serve daily.
HIV status or not.
Better to remain in darkness, than in the light that kills my sight.