Broken-Hearted People Living in the World

I am a blind man
Seeing only the light in my mind
Groping in your world
Resting in the silence of my sweet darkness.

I am a paraplegic
Removed from the race
Sharing your sweat and your breathless
Anxiety for the goal,
The goal that I hold in my heart.

I am an old woman
Senile
Floating in the ballroom
Of memories and dreams
Taking to myself
Talking to you
Floating.

I am a dead man, or nearly so,
Lying on your hospital sheets
Sick to death of sterile corridors
Waiting for the stranger of death
To enter my room
With not a machine
But a breath.
I am patient.

I am a madwoman
Enamored of my madness
Apologetically damning the world and, yes, you,
Taking on God, an outrageous dare
I always lose,
Sacrificing all of the sake of a tiny moment
Between the living and the dead
When all worlds are one
And finally you care.

- Sally Clay
March 12, 1986

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*** Sharewrite 2005 Sally Clay ***
Permission is granted for personal distribution of this document
as long as it is unchanged in any way and this notice is included.
For permission to reprint it for general publication, contact me at
zangmo@sallyclay.net.

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