Tag: cancer
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Ghosting
“Ghosting” emerged from the quiet aftermath of survival—after cancer, after loss, after the rituals that remain. It’s a poem about haunting not as horror, but as intimacy: the idea that love, memory, and consequence linger in objects, gestures, and the dog’s bark. I wrote it as a speculative elegy, imagining my own absence as a…
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The Nacre of Survival
**The Nacre of Survival** After all the operations, after the slow unraveling, I trace the shimmer left behind, a pearl forming in the absence of what was— the weight of my steps lighter, not in grace, but in uncertainty mixed with hope. I do not run anymore Yet, I watch Tom Cruise sprint, sprint— limbs…
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The Moon in Cancer
Exhausted, endured,my veins touch the moon’s hope—this faded celebration that keeps clinging to possibilities beyond—amongst these pallid faces,silent companions,the burdened looking down this sterile room,pale walls,who surrender to sleep so easily,unheedful of this moon childlistening to only the comforting whisphersjust ahead.
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Fat
As I undress, I watch my flesh swell.I notice the sheaves of my hips,my marshy belly rivered with surgery scars—and I fall in love with the acreage of my life.The four years, that I unraveled into cancer,I do not miss. Nor the weight of my happinessshriveling into a stick man- vacating skin and bone turning…
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Mischief
It’s odd how my lifehas balanced on some rat mischief-floating around-curing me previously, gnawing at me the next.Having nibbled my fingertips clean,they gnaw my toes.The three blind micelend me their stick,“It’s your cane,” they say.I beat them away knowing they will return either by drip or thru the walls. Notes: A group of rats is…
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Collecting Beach Glass After the Storm
I never thought brick dreams could tumble in the wind. My wife collects our scattered memories in a undersized bin like a child on the tide line collecting beach glass and seashells. She listen for the sound of blood amidst the dying wind mistaking rustling pages for her breath cycling in and out, her pulse…
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In the Cancer Museum
In the cancer museum I imagine where mine would rest in peace and ease. My eyes scan rows of organs: Disney’s lungs on top of Newman’s own racy pair; Ingrid Bergman’s left breast bump Bette Davis’ right— indiscreet voyagers; Audrey Hepburn’s colon nesting Farrah Fawcett’s like Tiffany Angels. I saw my…
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Salvage
What keeps me holding onto my old self, preventing me from casting it into past swells? Something detested, adored, hymned too, haunted, cancer ridden, inflamed, grieving and torn- yet beloved, pulled forward into an ocean of tomorrow and tomorrow’s swimming to hope or drowning in hopelessness, never knowing where my forgiveness exists…
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The Wave
The hospital gown they gave me is the same one with clouds my mother and friend once wore, a hand me down filled with the aura of grief and hope, of time and death. My name and date of birth are the only thing the nurses ask as I am led to the mold…
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The Mold
I am a Vitruvian Man marked out like an anatomy lesson in black and green dye, something to align against the mean, a mold made of sheets and plastic to aim the mechanical eye to revolve its rays around. I can’t move because the machine requires mathematical silence to perform its cure, so the…
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Seeing 2020
I want to greet the new year with 20/20 eyes, knowing that cure dances on the edge of hope’s grave and that in this biblical year of flood, cancer and death, that grief is just a short term companion. Tomorrow time will step me away leaving only memory and the long walk to the…
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Oncology Nurse
Every touch is a devotion, every soft phrase a prayer to life, to continue living. – A nightingale, a dove gowned in heavenly blue a ministering survival chant. – Thank you and double checks are abundant. – They minister consistent kindness for they live among the blasted. – There is no sniping, no rivalries, just…
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Okay
“Are you okay?”, my wife asks when I cough. – “No. I’m fine. Yes. I’m not”, I respond, – stumping her in the poetic irony of words that – encompass the yes and no and the in between. – She flips the finger at me and I return the bird to the nest. – We…
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All This Chemo Is Making My Brain So Bright
Death, I notice, often comes with a smile and a kiss, a tender tuck of blanket into legs, a pull to the shoulders making shroud complete, a tender whispered secret. “Good bye” or “Good life”, it might be saying. But so does love. 2 The light of the cancer center is…
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The Port
The port rests on my high right chest, a pink crater, a cleanly folded linen shroud kissed with tears wheeled from operating room to recovery by melting folds of scrub blues with iodoform scents. The fragrance of me is creased into a tucked blanket, monitors on my legs and arm caressing rhythmic, sounds dissolving…
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The Nacre of Cancer
I have no taste for whiskey, although it seems over the years I have developed a proclivity for cancer, for building the nacre into pearl. It’s funny how one can live with death scooted to the borders, listening to it rap the door with sub-audible gusts that only your dog hears and barks at.…