Clinical Environment, Ward 203

Stifled on a death cruise, we broke windows,
Wanting only the light, and air.
We were arrested for trespassing, and sent here,
Castaways from a ship of waste.

We were looking for the city of home
But we were herded into this perverted hospice,
A bureau of sterility
Contaminated only by our own screams and feces.
Here any filth is by definition of our own making.
And any sickness is our sin.

Here our collective body odor is bottled
And released through loudspeakers,
Suffocating us in random noise
Reverberating through these corridors of powerlessness,
Spreading the stench of despair.

Inarticulate doctors silence us.
They apply antiseptics to Life.
Not a final solution, to be sure -
Only treatment.

- Sally Clay
May 16, 1990


*** 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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