The Mailbox

My body of iron
My self cast by man
My home on the corner
Aside a waste can.

They say "You are heartless.
No! You cannot feel.
You're cold and you're lifeless
A mold of black steel."

Yet to me, day by day,
They are deserting
The cries of their people
Afflicted and hurting.

These voices inside me 
Are pleading and crying, 
Someone must help them, 
For all hope is dying. 

A mother on welfare 
Begs, and says "Hell's where?"
Her boy has no shoes on his feet
A man in the gutter
Has breath left to utter
"Who left me out on the street?"

A fellow whose bankrupt,
Takes time to interrupt,
"Can't someone get me out of this jam?"
A delinquent implores,
"Please tell me there's more;
I hate me the way that I am."

I wish I could reach them,
Run off to teach them,
But bolts are the shoes that I wear.
They keep on existing
While no one is listening
Since it's not for we heartless to care.


© Kathy Baillie, 1982