Rocking, head-banging and eye-poking will be explored and explained

This is number 25 of fifty pieces of poetry and prose written by Peter Limbrick as a monument to adults and children who have lived and died or are living now in inhuman situations. They are all inspired by real experience.

 

Mirrors

One day these institutions will surely be put

under the metaphorical microscopes of eminent

psychologists and social scientists in the world’s

top universities.

They will study maternal deprivation in relation

to babies born with brain damage and advise how

to promote bonds of attachment when there are

too few staff and too many infants. Rocking, head-

banging and eye-poking will be explored and

explained and we will learn why a life without

choices in food, clothes, friends and activities

makes people more like automatons than

humans. The time taken for newly-admitted

children to stop pining for their parents will be

measured with recommendations about whether

to allow visits during the pining period. If brave

enough, they will explore sexual frustration

 ̶  inevitable when women and men are segregated

on separate wards and describe how it should

best be dealt with.       

Or it could be that the clever scientists

will have to report that their metaphorical

microscopes have become metaphorical mirrors

reflecting only society’s brutality. 

 

The other 49 pieces can be seen here:

In Mind - a written monument to all people with intellectual disability. (Items 1 to 10)

In Mind - a written monument to all people with intellectual disability. (Items 11 to 20)

In Mind - a written monument to all people with intellectual disability. (Items 21 to 30)

In Mind - a written monument to all people with intellectual disability. (Items 31 to 40)

In Mind - a written monument to all people with intellectual disability. (Items 41 to 50)