Cancer

Stepping Stones

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Stepping Stones

Two years ago
today,
a lovely lady
read me
a death sentence:
my biopsy result.

She poured me
a poisoned chalice,
my personal
Gethsemane,
a cup from which
I had to drink.

I sat there in silence,
sipping it in.

Darkness wrapped
its shawl
around my shoulders.

‘Step by step,’ she said,
‘on stepping stones.’

I opened my eyes,
but
I could no longer see
the far side of the stream.

Comment:

I am searching for a title for the poetry book I wrote in 2015, while undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. My original idea for a title was Echoes of An Impromptu Metaphysics. I was reading the Spanish metaphysical poets during the treatment period and their voices resonated in my verse. The second attempt at a title shortened the original to Echoes. However, that didn’t really gel with what I was writing and what I was writing was not a metaphysical treatise: it was something simpler, and more personal.

We have all, as writers, gone into ourselves in that search for our own unique authenticity. My Echoes were authentic in the sense that they echoed other writers; but did they portray me and the search I was making? I wasn’t sure that they did.

I abandoned Echoes for a whole year (2016) and returned to it in January 2017. The space between writing and revision was most beneficial. I had begun blogging in April 2016, and the blogging experience had sharpened my vision. Reading other authors allowed me to see what I was doing that they weren’t. Preparing my own writing for perusal by a wider audience developed my critical skills. Is this really me? Is this how I want to portray my world?

I still don’t know. I am still looking for a title.

Cribbage

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Cribbage

Red and white markers
chased each other
along the S bends,
past the skunk lines
to the final straight
where a single space
awaited the winner.

I don’t remember
who won, nor do I care.
But I know we shuffled
the cards and dealt again
as we waited for sleep
to descend and bless us.

We fasted that night:
no food, no water.

When midnight struck,
we put away the deck
and pegging board,
and bade each other
goodnight.

“Sleep well if you can,
my friend,” you said.

“Tomorrow  will bring
a much more serious game
that neither of us
can afford to lose.”

 

Waiting

 

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Waiting

I remember pushing
my father around the ward.

“Cancer,” they said.
“But it’s kinder
not to let him know.”

In those days,
it was better to die
without knowing why.

Did I betray him
by not telling him
what I knew?

Two weeks we had,
together.
He sat in his wheel chair
and I wheeled him
up and down.

I lifted him
onto the toilet,
he strained and strained
but couldn’t go.

“Son,”
he said, sitting there.
“Will you rub my back?’

How could I say no?

That strong man,
the man who had carried me
on his back,
and me standing there,
watching him,
his trousers around his knees,
straining,
hopelessly
…
and me
rubbing his back,
waiting
…
for him to go.

Terminus

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Terminus

A terminus,
this waiting room in which we sit,
a left-luggage office
where, wrapped in blue gowns,
human packages
sit restless,
waiting to be claimed.

Tagged with a label on the wrist,
we wait here,
abandoned for a moment to our fate.

Our choices disappeared
the moment we walked in here
and surrendered ourselves to the system.

Now we lack free will
and freedom of choice,
yet still we wish to choose
our destinations,
not knowing that terminal
and terminus both mean
nec plus ultra:

the Pillars of Hercules,
the end of the world as we knew it,
and our own world’s end.

This Death

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This death

This death,
born within me,
nurtured by my own body
since before I was born,
squats beside me
in this small room.

Inevitable this end
to which I descend,
the doctor tells me,
but she doesn’t know
when.

Winged shadows
gather in dark corners
and mob my mind.

I bear this dismantling
of my inner cosmos
with baffled bravery.

Alone,
now,
in this hospital room,
I hug myself,
pretending I have
nothing to fear,

though my guts
tense up
and
salt tears
fall.

Sushi

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Sushi

Blank walls,
white sheets
on plastic couches,
anonymous faces
naming me
by my first name,
as if they knew me,
as if they were friends.

Moments of silence.

Eyebrows raised,
as if a question
of life and death
could be framed
that way.

“Here are your choices …”

laid out like a menu
in a take out
restaurant.

I don’t speak Japanese.
The occasional photo.
The scrabbled script.
The impossible translation.

The unknown items
you choose
from the specialist’s menu
will label you for life …

… if you survive.

Puppet

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Puppet

Animated earth,
puppet of mud and blood,
my soul within you
feels soiled
by this pitiless sky.

On my back,
in the gutter,
I gaze upwards
at glittering stars.

Do they know
I’m down here?
And if they know,
do they look down
their astral noses
when they write
my horoscope,

my horror-scope
of late.

When daylight loses itself
in night’s dark weave,
what remains,
but souvenirs and dusty
photos of moments
I alone recall?

Memories cling like mud
to my match-stick frame,
and me in the gutter,
a man, right now,
in nothing else
but name.

Blue Angels

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Blue Angels

Wrapped in johnny coats we sit,
not on clouds, but harp-less, harmless,
on uncomfortable chairs, waiting.

Soon enough someone will come and call
our names, or waggle an inviting finger,
or raise a beckoning eyebrow, or just smile.

The women are naked from the waist up
beneath their coats.
They are red-breasted like robins,
with scars and lines that draw route maps
and contours across their breasts,
highroads for the rays to travel.

The men are naked from the waist down,
legs crossed, teeth gritted, grim-faced
holding on to their gathering waters …
and all of us, sitting here, waiting …

Will it be like this on Judgment Day,
sheep and goats herded together
waiting for the signal that sends us
left or right, to heaven or hell?

Her Hands

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Her Hands

 Her hands were cold,
her fingers were long:
I hoped she’ll tell me
what was wrong.

She warmed her hands
beneath hot water.
She was young enough
to be my daughter.

“If you were my dad,
here’s what I’d say …”
I liked it when
she talked that way.

But what she said
was not good news.
Tumors and lumps
left little to choose.

“And yet,” she said,
you have some choice.”
I’d have answered, but
I’d lost my voice.

My hands were cold.
My legs were shaking.
I could not speak.
My heart was breaking.