Caught - OUT OF PRINT
Court is where you go when you get caught. It's a temple of justice, a tragic theatre, a circus, a long-running soap and a revolving door. Victoria Bean spent a year in Horseferry Road Magistrate's Court, recording in verse the high-drama and low-comedy of the English justice system. Caught is a wholly unique take on everyday life in a busy courtroom and its cast of thieves, drunks, kerb-crawlers and dealers who come before the bench each day in despair, bewilderment and indifference. All human life is here - the strong and the weak, the hopeless and hapless, the users and losers, the innocent and the guilty, the banged-up and the free.
Sample Poems
Hue
The palette of this court is grass stain green menthol green sixties green & glass edge green.
Hark
Is that the jangle of jailer's keys or handcuffs on the man who nicked the bottle of wine from an Iceland down the road?
Feast
Stand up please. We can't send you to jail just because you're hungry and it's cold outside, however, you will stay in custody until you've had your lunch.
In debt
The judge says you can't go on owing this sum for the rest of your life. When did you last work? '95' she says in a whisper. She's even lost her voice.
Holloway's your holiday
Tall, tangles and a cough. Pretty once, still only eighteen, is anyone looking after you? You need somewhere to stay I sentence you to seven days of food and sleep.
Promised land
I am off the drugs oh yes, I am off the drugs.
Can I say something else?
He says I wish to say a few things. The judge says it's usually unwise.
Fifteen years on crack
Beautiful boy cheekbones sculpted by sweet pink crystals still dissolving the plump padding of his youth. He uses car stereos as currency but wants a second chance for the last time, for the hundredth time.
Just the two of us
He's just been released today, yes, today, he says into his mobile phone in the public gallery, and he's in court again today, yes, today, he says before asking his friend if he's got any methadone.
So I'm free now, yeah?
Matted hair slipping tracksuit; itchy blood. Diamorphine diamond they're not going to punish you today.
Ostraka
Muie and Mosh in the public gallery with their post code surnames gouged and scrawled in vandals' Braille a universal hand writes we were here, we were here, we were here. and names get carved in sharp angled letters because cursive font is tricky where the wood grain won't give.
