“There is no activism without despair, no despair without hope. Despair can be as powerful an engine for change as hope.”
Finding Hope in Despair — Borderless
Finding Hope in Despair — my article in Borderless
Tag: #cancer
eventually even the hypochondriac will be right
odd for the child
to fear drowning
when his life now is so long
stretching like taut ribbon in sun
he imagines like plain moths who drown themselves
in light emanating from dark
his own lifeless body buoyant on chlorinated pool
why he thinks of his death is anyone’s guess
perhaps the morbid humor of an intelligent mind
or the broken mosaic of life, beginning its downward cycle
once he asked his father, if the river levies bust
will I know I am dead before I am drowned or
will I wake in heaven first?
His father, a man who only worried about
whether his mistress was going to leave him for a younger man
did not spend time assuaging the boys fears
and he grew into a frightened soul who possessed
no mistress to sooth his night terrors
eventually even the hypochondriac will be right
maybe not this year
as she palpitates her breast for the forth time
crossing nervous fingers over heart, half prayer half search
malignancy her code red, flashing with every terrorizing headline
who invented social media? she mumbles beneath her breath
it was so much easier when we didn’t have access to all the maladies, we’ll one day die from!
Her hands cramp in late Winter cold, immediately she thinks
MS, MD, Fibromyalgia, the beginnings of CJD, maybe Parkinson’s
isn’t that a tremor? Or just too much coffee?
Her jittering nerves remind her, we are unable to compute
the exact day, hour, minute of expiry
all we know is our eventual death is an assured event
it’s the torment of those who are self-aware yet still ignorant
spinning in place, every migraine a brain tumor, every
sudden sharp pain a sign of pancreatic cancer, when a friend
discovers he has Multiple Myeloma (and he never touched asbestos his wife decries!)
she flicks through medical journals online searching for similarity
it’s not her wish to die, but a desire to live, control fate
keeping her on false tender hooks like owl without prey.
His life has been one of quiet dread, each day he inspects
the parts of him most likely to give out, checking his irregular heartbeat
the soft pounding of worry causing it to skip, feeling for swollen glands
skin cancers, lumps and bumps different from the day before
he knows his is an obsessive ritual, even as it soothes imagined
terrors, he sees the absurdity of living in fear bound to a wheel
perpetuated by hours spent researching ways of expiring
did you know you can develop throat cancer from invisible HPV
who knew love was such a sentence? He tells his eye-rolling neighbor.
If he counted the hours he took from his life
contemplating how he will die, when, what it will resemble
it’s quite mad
yet when he is lying in his childhood bed alone
impending dread crawling up his flannel spine
all he can hear are the waves calling
and then, a strange longing in him occurs
urging him to be done with bloody charades
join the onslaught and be carried out to sea
along with every child’s nightmare
and the stifled hiss of adults pressing their knuckles
closely to anguished mouths
for the pale mint waiting room seems
entirely too silent
an earie unsettled fog about it
waiting …
The ingratitude of the well
Inspired by the incredible Cordelia Feldman and her novel In Bloom, for sale now. For World Cancer Day.
It would be easy to say
I haven’t been stricken because I couldn’t cope with it
there would be no one, I have learned, if I were;
not a flower garden, or brothers with curry, or kind lipsticked nurses
socialized healthcare, or odd private room
there would not be a mom bathing or a dad talking
about vegetable garden and the latest episode of Silent Witness
who could really cope?
Even as I say this, knowing the avocado heart of it
I also know I could be stricken tomorrow, or already
as all of us could
(as all of us could)
and privately in a fat second
(like when you see a train wreck and you process a hundred thoughts all at once)
I know I have my will written (handwritten, badly, not rubber stamped)
ready to mail to fate should it come.
When I got sick, though not C.A.N.C.E.R.S.I.C.K., nevertheless I really planned
taking another way out
in my head, thoughts of how bad it had become, lead to imaginings
of suicide and how savage that is to hear
for someone who is dying and does not want to die
the ingratitude of the well
these thoughts fly around me
like bees unwilling yet to sting
my heart is heavy for her
wondering selfishly what I would do
had I the same burden
praying to an empty sky, for that not to happen
superstitious that even the mere wish not to be sick
evokes it
as if fate were laughing and throwing darts
at fleeing people
so helpless, we sink our teeth into projects
wind up time like a ball of yarn
knit it into shapes we can understand
all while keeping horror at bay
the imagined car crash, the loved one never returning home
a cancer growing inside like a whistle
on a hurtling train
it is easy to not find time for empathy
or to feel, it is too close, too raw, too impossible
to process
most of all I think of her grace
how she can appreciate something like a child might
I think of her humor
how she’s had me folded on the floor laughing at the
sheer fucking brilliance of her
I am proud in ways that hurt
she’s everything I am not and she’s also
deeply human
if one person says ‘I’m sorry for your loss‘ I will
scream; “She’s not gone yet! She’s never
going to be gone, that’s just not how
she rolls. Don’t underestimate her
don’t think you own her anymore
than you own your own life.“
Those platitudes are all we sometimes have
we mean them more
than scrolling past someone’s bad news
crossing ourselves, as we step over graves
one day slated to be ours
we side step death like the dancers we are
thinking we’re somehow avoiding
something born before we were
and I focus and think of her
how if I could show her my feelings
they would be in movement, in laughter
in light, spinning like an electric waterfall
like her spinning class, where just for a moment
she is that girl beneath the hot trance lights of
the 90’s and I am dancing along side her
as the earth holds us both, alive
despite any ‘support’ she has
which I am more glad of than anything
though what support does against terror?
I cannot lend a description to
my own failings in the courage department
planning my demise when the first meteorite hit
although I read we use meteorite and meteor and astroid
interchangably
and they are actually very different
with only the burning of the sun
in common to collease
their strength as potential planet killers
my math teacher used to say
a morbid mind will only bring sorrow
of course she was right
in her Laura Ashley dungerees
that would now be worth $300 on Ebay
a funny ole world my grandma prosthelytized
nipping at the ever full box of wine in the kitchen
clipping her rose garden when ABBA wasn’t
sufficient to propel demons
I get it
I really do
there’s only avoidance really
we can’t look into the sun too long
we’ll lose our sight before
we’ve made our way back from the garden
or maybe
we’ll stay, our heads upturned
soaking in the rays
To dearest Cordelia, I adore you.
Please consider purchasing Cordelia’s first novel In Bloom, it is magnificent.
Anita
Why do they have to die?
Early and cruel
She was always carrying kindness in her every step
Why? Why the girl with stars in her eyes?
Who has always struggled
Why her?
I beseach nothing and no-one
It is why I feel we are alone
For what God accepts this pronouncement?
Why is life for some so easy and smooth
While others only know struggle and pain?
Those we cannot save
Die before their time, often in agony
And nothing makes that okay
I say, raging at Gods who don’t listen
Wondering what the point is
Where’s the sense or justice?
Evil perpetuates and survives
And you take her? Like she’s only existed to sacrifice?
The platitudes don’t cut it
This isn’t her time, this isn’t a lesson
The orphaned son will carry
Her soul as I shall remember her humility
Better than most, so much better than most
Who do not die and use their time
Unwisely and with selfishness and squander
And she is good she’s always been good
Her husband cheated on her and left her with HPV
The outcome is terminal and what is left of my heart
Shatters into pieces of one great big cry
For good does not thrive in this world, no it does not
We are all upside-down standing on roof tops
And I want to save her so much but nothing, nothing I do has any power
It is the diminishing light and the curtain drawn and closed
I cannot bear
The cruelty and uncaring
Death and its wretched finality
Are a voice in my head
They say
Words have no meaning girl
Being online is a waste of time
Online friends are not friends they forget quicker than a mosquito
Go out into the fucking air and breathe deep
Remind your limbs you are alive
Grieve the inequity of the world
And how women are marked to suffer
Do something real with the time you have
Remember those who have fallen
For no one else
Ever does
Such is the hideous fickelty of the world
Few keep their word
Least of all cancer
Survival
The man wasn’t yet forty
Had cancer four times
Told her; This time I can’t survive it
She asked; Why are you still at work?
Don’t you want to leave it behind?
Take a trip? See the redwoods?
But before he answered, she knew
The photos on his phlebotomists table
Of three little faces, told her why
And it made her angry that they both lived in a country where
Dying people had to work for their children
To receive healthcare
And she was more angry
With her own lack of appreciation
For a healthy life that she possessed
Without children
Or any reason to try so hard
And he was brave because he had no choice
And she was weak
Because she did
TheFeatheredSleep 