The Punishment Game (Penal)

Lyrics

[Intro]
Penal. From Latin poena, punishment.
Maps to colonies, codes, boxes on ice.
I chart it here, in the schoolroom chalk.

[Verse 1]
Botany Bay, January 26, 1788.
Convicts disembark, leg irons clanking,
five pounds each, rusted by salt air.
John Howard, 1726 to 1790, age 51 in reform,
said jails reform, not torment.
The air stings with brine and mangrove rot,
dawn at 5:30 AM, humid 75 degrees.

[Chorus]
Penal colony, penal code, penalty box.
Morphology branches: punishment's tree.
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, Panopticon in 1791,
watching makes us behave.
In hockey, two minutes in the glass enclosure,
sweat and cold metal, no escape.

[Verse 2]
Millbank Prison, 1816, London.
Hexagonal stone, central tower, cells at 50 degrees.
Mildew scent, guard boots echo at 7 PM.
Thomas Barrett, convicted January 18, 1787,
stole silverware, seven years transport.
Mary Bryant writes in 1791: chains bite ankles,
risk the sea for freedom.

[Bridge]
Strange: in Botany Bay, convicts bred kangaroos for food,
but they hopped away, elusive in eucalyptus.
Unnamed women, listed as wives or numbers,
Aboriginal helpers, called natives, no names.
Gaps in the record, like shadows in the panopticon.

[Verse 3]
Penalty box in lacrosse, obscure sport on Point Nemo.
Sit out, reflect, like a tiny colony.
Penal code: rules etched in law books,
punish infractions, maintain order.
From poena to penalty, the word evolves,
maps across oceans and rinks.

[Outro]
So penal: not what Mrs. Patterson thinks.
Just punishment, mapped and measured.
End of lesson.