Disabled

He speaks words in tongues,
but his tongue is tied.
He glances at the wall;
seeing the specks of paint
as moving animals.
So he counts them all,
and re-counts them all again.
His vision is glassy,
and he staggers against the weight
of a thousand different feelings
pent up inside of him
that he can never express.
Yet he knows what he likes,
so he draws pictures in his mind.
There, perhaps,
goes the next unknown Picasso.

She mumbles nothings
against the fragile current
of warm air, as she sits
inside the Special Educations
classroom.
Teachers with expressionless faces
slap a label onto her,
and she becomes a decimal
in the on-going race
to find the entire percentage
of people just like her.
Yet she knows what sounds beautiful,
so she sings music in her head.
There, perhaps,
goes the next unknown Mozart.

His polished, shiny hell
is sitting next to him
as he sleeps in the bed.
Two wheels are what moves him
throughout his dim life.
He’s unaware of what it feels like
to run, to walk, to stand up at all.
But he did just run
the Boston Marathon ,
about an hour ago.

They tell her she is stupid;
has an IQ less than that
of a common animal.
The ridicule, and shame
have prompted many nights
of crying into a pillow.
She feels so alone,
and only wishes to know
what it feels like
to be smart - smart like
everyone else.
She never will read, they say;
but she knows what a book is.
So she writes novels in her head.
There, perhaps,
goes the next unknown Hemingway.

The words he wishes to speak
are blocked by invisible doors
that threaten to be opened
despite a swarm of ridicule.
Every obstacle in life
has been harder to climb,
when even the more simple of phrases
becomes so hard to say.
Nobody knows his name.
Due to his lack of words,
he becomes a figure
that people just look through,
like a ghost
of some long ago, forgotten time.
Yet still he presses on,
guided only by sheer will
that is strengthened by his longing
to show the world –
with a pen and paper, mind you –
all the Picassos, the Mozarts, the Hemingways
that can never show themselves.
There, perhaps,
goes the next, silent fish
in a sea of troubling water;
But he is content, and happy,
with just being himself.


~J.V.Harker~
~12 January 2009~