The Theodore I Knew

I Knew A Chipmunk Named Theodore

I am a woman with bones that break
And thighs now that spread across the continental shelf
In a manifestation of destiny
When I am breaking arm off chair
Or lifting myself onto stadium seat, to a squeak
No one can speak of it
And heavens applaud the truth of it

When I was thinner it wasn't a figure
Cutting across the plain to curl around an enchanting
Twist and shout or a Suzy Q, let's twist.
Even then the mirror on the wall,
Of the dancing studio, revealed a fear of moving
A marionette with twisted strings falling
Through the floor in sallow face, marked
By something a fellow named
Kevin Moore penned in my yearbook
Saying, " a face like a relief map of the moon"
He teaches now psychology in Indiana.

If every thing could take form of polar opposite
Then I might fly with grace into the space
Of another who awaits the timeless beloved immortal gift of love.
But I am not in that place, not in this elastic waist.
I sit in the shade of the beautiful, with off rhyme
Imagining the capacity to be seen free of
The body that will always contain me.
Nor ever written to in verse or voice
( time to fall into the musicdance timelessly inelegant )

I Knew a Woman
by Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

Dissection

Licorice Legs

As you held me I thought
Finally
It's been over a year of waiting
But it was more of a visit to
the Dean's office to discuss a grade change.
With your mother.

Pulling around the covers, it was a dream, so I'm svelte,
Pink, soft, the works...
You exclaimed,
"What's coming out of the back of your legs."
That usual kind of work you do
To help me through the difficult moments.

Damn, bad shaving I think, who looks
At the back of your calf.
(oh...A turn off, another circuit thrown.)
This was a little different kind of problem.
Black sprouts like spaghetti or that super thin licorice

I looked straining my neck backwards
To see these thick little flexible black tubes all hairing
Out of my leg. There, in the back.
That's different. How do I get through this?
I did what any good self-surgeon would do
Yanked them out on the spot. (Still feel that sensation.
Hours after not really doing it.)

Leaving these awful leg scars.
Another attractive feature.
You were so out of there.
I'm preoccupied anyway.
To be truthful we can't do this anymore.
(I've gotta face that- together too long
Nothing hot bikiniwax will fix),

But I was investigating what was happening
To me and my backlegs
Growing this handfuls of wiring
or tubing, tubules?
Looking on the internet
"black tubes, legs, skin condition, parasite"

My concerns were kind of strange
To see if they left implants in me that would
Triple and quadruple
Into a body of new strange black tubes to multiply.
Like the head of a tick works.

I woke up
And beside me at this computer.
Are some pretty fair specimens.




What Am I Doing?

In a dream
You can fulfill a wish
You never knew you had
Or even if you didn't
If you tell the dream to someone
They will tell you it was your wish
Disabuse you of innocence
And the dream was a fulfillment
So either way if you dream it
You want it.

And you can't get to it.


That's Embarrassing

To be caught in a dream
With your wishes (that even you don't know about)
Or denials
Or some psycho self you didn't know existed in you
Is feeling this want
A well to be sure. (Opps, in you go, watch where you are going falling)

So it was this last night
When I got a little too close to a teacher
That actually kissed me right on the mouth.
It's a funny thing because I know
It won't really happen.
It wouldn't work out like that
It's embarrassing.

We were in a nice secluded big old
Victorian manor home but
Doing the Luncheon on the Grass
I had on my outfit. But it was idealistic
Talking about his family (yeah) or something to do with oral history
And he just did this thing

Because I would say this
I said,
" I have awful breath I don't know how
You can take it." Running dialog.
And he said, as he would, "I don't know either
It seemed like something we both wanted."
He said a whole bunch of stuff that if he did ever say that
I'd have to leave here to live in the Alps.

The trouble now I'm having
Is returning to here and now
Not lugging along that
In my picnic basket as I encounter
A totally uncomprehending fellow in la de dah land.
Whilst I'm finishing digesting the "way we were."

A Day in the Life of the Cafeteria

Butter

Momma sculpted all out food out of butter
Required with searing fury it be eaten
Pies, cakes, roasts, fudge, vegetables
Layered with a stick of fat.
Rich and slimy, like
The witch of Hansel and Gretel
Required me be fattened up
(maybe ready for the Kill)








Woodburn

In my school where i was invisible
In 4th through 6th when not being thrown down the stairs
The teacher said the abuse must certainly be me
I got to going in the kitchen to help the cooks and make some friends.
They let me wrap the silverware and talked about
lives in the mountains, their recipes, their gardens
Miner husbands and often
we would laugh about how harsh kids could be
To me.

They taught me how to make oatmeal no bake peanut-butter cookies
(I also learned in 4 H , home ec. to cook some things)
They taught me to cook white beans, corn bread
green beans with bacon drippings, luscious bread
In time I learned what they did in our small cafeteria.
When I moved on to junior high downtown I spent time there
Doing the same at breaks. Hiding to get there unnoticed.
Learned pizza their style which was very unique,
Pepperoni rolls and the cinnamon buns that were
the specialty. Then I was thin.
That group were more Italian, and they were very
Expressive in the making of food for kids
Remarkably impolite to them.

High school it was different I never ate, sat on a bleacher and studied
Missing those warm kitchens. I've loved
To cook my entire life. I can do it pretty well
I suppose the recipes and the practicalities are all from these places I ate
The food of the schools. It was good in the hills.
It was such a surprise to find the food for kids here in my teaching life
Now it is just pulled and warmed, so unappealing and poorly made
Below what they could do if allowed to cook
And given enough people to do it better.
This seems the way it is in my teaching world.
The cafeteria is managed 'at the top 'and seen to
Compete for salaries or something. no pride.
It makes you sick to see the stuff they serve
Think of the collard greens and other stuff
We once had, golden tomatoes
Mandarin salads, cucumbers in vinegar
And even the franks and beans were good.
Then, when food wasn't my enemy, but a
Salvation from a beating day.

I

It's Not Easy Being Green

Today it was calm and music played reminding me of links to my life
Days when I felt like I was vital, and today I was unable to pull away from
This fatigue of the heart and body that is so difficult
To manage until midway through the day
I just break. And it shakes its sadness all over and I'm just without hope.

Just that sick, and, if I forget, the blood peering up at me in the
Staff bathroom reminds me things aren't ever working out
It's as real as it looks staring back like a fresh cut.
And there isn't anyone to call to talk to about it.
There really isn't anyone to talk to about it.

Random Emo-Poems

Kidney Stones

Aren't brilliant like diamonds
You don't wish or worry with them
Like pocket stones,
They don't blaze a sapphire star
Or reflect the moon's glow.
These stones are unable to
Build a wall.
Or be mined from a quarry
Michelangelo cannot choose one
To look deep inside to find the David.
They are unworthy of a verse.

No, the kidney stone that's tearing me apart
Is a flake, minuscule, cowardly.
Worthless as anything
But an agent of torture.
Dust from a heartless god
That on waking tossed this at you
Reminder of your impertinence
The insignificance of you.
Irritant in a cosmic shoe,
Felled by a speck humorously called
A "stone."


Ode To Joy

I haven't talked to my brother in a year
And it doesn't feel so painful or sad.
Well no more painful or sad than how it was,
Nor does it feel particularly depressing.
Not to hear from someone (who knows you are in a hospital),
Or felled by illness. This seems my normal kind of relationship
This a brother that I tried to silently support for 40 years.
It actually feels like I've been tossed away
Like a used tissue or a peanut shell.

When I set a limit on the funds I could send
And couldn't accept the blame anymore
For the things 40 years old I had no control over,
Couldn't find ways to hold and hear his angers
Or agree with the justifications
For self destruction as revenge in "our case".
He apparently decided that I'm not worth his time
(My father concluding the same in my teens.)

It seems that the movie has ended.
Then you just walk out in the light
Disoriented.


Chelsea Mourning

We had a fight because I didn't care anymore
felled by pain and bloody urine

Because I wanted to be talked to directly
See if I'd be cared for, laughed at, taunted, made fun of for feelings of exclusion, and lesser worth, derided on intellect or not be treated as an equal, simply channeled and managed.
Be put in a compartment. I wanted to know so I tested and it was combative.

If I was in my mind form we'd go arm and arm.
But now we are locked in a wrestling match.


Ice Bath

Ran the shower
Distracted
by my eyebrows talking
Bright lights blaring
In a late night attempt to hush crawling itchy skin.

Stepped on the pain
It reached through the
screaming
Cold I froze
Neck talking about hair's failings again.

Burning ice
Legs woke up first
struggling to fall
Telling my head
The water is cold ice not hot, belly was chastising me about it.

Arms broke off
And my head rolled
on the linoleum.
Every part of myself
A cacophony of irritated nerves conversing.



No One Loves the Fatwoman In the Circus

Not for mind or heart am I admired
Certainly not for walk or stance.
Gaining this was a kind of disappearing.
When very thin the invitation then said bring it on.
And that was another kind of weight.
You couldn't understand that either.
As a woman to be wanted for something I had no part in making
Just those thighs or breasts please
And a rump to get palmed while I writhed
This was how it was, and my thinking was
often requested to be turned off
"Just try not to talk."
I created that person again on paper, the thin
And seductive person that hints at all the lovely thoughts
That are in my mind free to get.
But I put her inside my writing to be picked out of bones
Paper girl was able to walk and talk to people
That would never look twice my way.
She made a paper lover imagine her face.
I think the only time a face was ever required it was so good.

The fatwoman in the room is the deal breaker.
And sick with all the things despised, age, cancer,
Memories, hurts, needs, desires, appetites and willingness.
The repulsion is so very extreme
That everyone is needed elsewhere.
No one loves the fatwoman.

It's a very busy time, for my invisible lard.

A Random Act of Poems

A Random Act of Poverty

There is a little one named Ismael
Lost in poverty in America USA
Randomly assigned to the desert with dirty shoes and no laces
He smells pretty raw on the best day
And he isn't very visible on the busy national agenda
Because he's not a warhead
Or a way to secure our "national interests."
He's just a little hungry boy that likes a popsickle
And has dirty grimy sweat pants he wears everyday
In an underperforming public school where
He reads fairly poorly too.
Cause he doesn't understand Zig Bug or A Pig in A Wig.

One Ismael gave seed to the nation we presently can only find a way to fight.
This little Ismael if given voice could well germinate into solutions.
Or, perhaps, be re-armed with our hatred.



A Random Act of Dreaming
Since my last vivid and memorable dream was of a sports arena and fire in a California city, of a glass elevator and tons of children's entertainment, as hell blazed in, and now San Diego has burned and everyone is in Qualcom stadium and the TV is full of the clowns and jugglers for the kids there and I recognized the terrarium, my husband has tentatively restored my title of scary prophet dreamer woman publicly declaring it.
He rather liked to believe it was a "gone" talent, but of course the nightmares I had, which he awoke to and experienced in his mind (as we both told each other of the vicious black dog attack or the retreat in the woods) this convinced him early on I had another kind foresight. His words.
It's not like a made for tv drama, it's more just a running observance of time when
I seem to snatch a piece of it out of thin air or possibly visualize a piece of it
with another set of "eyes". But all the same it's unnerving I suppose, I haven't questioned it, I'll let someone with training do that.
(Or get on Penn and Teller and they can say f*** a lot and debunk me.)



This time I saw you.




A Random Act of Coughing

If you spend five months coughing
The jars seem rather like something to endure
You don't think about your love notes
Or your decorating lines
Your long plans for tomorrows
Because your choking in the here minute
Gasping to find some hopes to put together.



A Random Act of Sheparding
Gather me in
Herd me
Show me
Just take my wool.



A Random Act of Stargazing
Oh yeah we sat on that hill
Overlooking my starry town lights
In the warm humid air and watched the lights twinkle
Up above and down below and hugged
Just a little and talked about
Your dreams and your places
Your childhood fun and your tricks
All the memories of your growing, the kids
While I hid my truths and hoped
I wouldn't find myself in a lie about it to save the moment
And not go into my stories, hopelessness
Because I always had the stars and that night
Up on my own Tank Hill
We held my stars in your hands
And I shared the promise of the night sky.



A Random Act of Astrology

In my chart the father sits like an eternal damnation
While the mother moon symbol is in the T Square, like the finger on the draw
When the planets pull the trigger, by way of their transits
The point it explodes to hit is naturally called "My Point of Fortune"
Think of it this way, all my planets, those of love, action, desire, work, family
Sit in a spot that is at the boot of Dad's heel
Triggered to kick up into my heart by a maternal tinder
And endlessly designed to rekindle. Stars burn me.

I know people don't believe in it. A magic.
I can't afford to "believe" in my chart, I'm aligned
Like a bullet in that chamber.
Pieces rising.




A Random Act of Love
I watched someone awhile
They were repeatedly giving themselves a little chit mark
To say "good work" for a piece of writing
A Random Act of Insignificance
That they shared to a universe of vibrating particles.

So I watched them
And started giving them a little chit mark
To say "good work" for a piece of
Randomly Significant Saying
(because, of course, my watching changed it all)
And so shared a bit of this universe with the vibrating particles.

And then they watched me, watching them
And started giving a different kind of little chit mark
To say " good work" for a piece
Of Significantly Random Insignificant saying
(because of course their watching the watcher changed it all)
And the particles in the vibrating universe were shared a bit.




A Random Act of Hosiery
You can turn the old ones into the faces of dolls
(But get the batting at the craft store to stuff inside)
Then stitch in a circle and draw the thread up tight
And you get a knotted witchy nose.
Beads can be eyes and the mouth a drawn thread line in red.
With hair sewn on in twisty curly yarn.
A much better time than the itchy
Nylon creeping away from your crotch.




A Random Act of Fun Film
We got this dippy fun film at the crafty boutique as kids
Twisting wires into flower power petals with loopy loops
And dipping them in the stuff that smelled
Through the floor boards from the garage, overwhelming you briefly.
And it emerged a plastic filled magenta or fuchsia, chartreuse flora.
I dipped enough of them to arrange into centerpieces
For our table and stuck the wire stems into that green floral moss.

It was groovy and you knew it.
Flower Power.


A Random Act of Coin Collecting
If we check our pennies
And never, ever forget to look
It will never compare to the day a student
Handed me a handful of coins
To pay for school pictures
In a fieldtown in the Salinas Valley
And they were all silver.
Sitting in a picture order envelope marked Set A
I noticed it because they tore through.

So I looked at them and paid for the pictures
With my last ten dollars.
And held onto the beauties until conferences
Which were around the corner
And returned them to a teary grandpa
Who had collected them in the 30's when
His first trips to America
Had put them in his hands
For weeks of work harvesting the sugar beets.

These are yours, I think
I said holding out a fortune in metal
(Like I've seen in a box in my Dad's house)
And, at first, this guardian of two kids
Having lost a daughter to breast cancer just looked.
And then held out a worn hand and took them up.
Getting up he kissed my cheek
And called me his little chica.

Dance Me To The End

A year ago I went to a doctor
A referral to figure out pain
My heart or stomach cancer or a cyst in my spine?
Or if the neurologist could help figure it out.

Within my two sentences he said,
"You are a dog. If you were a dog
We would give you Prozac."
This followed some trajectory for him.

I'm fatter now and in pain.
Want a few answers, some idea
Of why the syrnix causes such debilitating issues
How to distinguish it from my intestinal cancer.

It's a bit odd to have to bark and fetch
Whoof and shake my tail
In order to deal with a medical
Examination gone wrong.

One in which I am also informed he is
"Not my father" or not really, "Paid to care"
As if I would ever have the illusion I was
Paying some neurologist to "care"

I'd prefer to pay ten dollars
And buy a bag of peanut butter patties from See's
You'd get something worth sharing
With the ladies on the bus.

This the same doctor that took my drivers license
Four years earlier when I was passing out
Referred after a hysterectomy
When I noted repeat fainting and the surgeon

Was in follow up two weeks home, "Too busy to see me then."
His nurse saying , "It sounds neurological."
Sure after a hysterectomy fever and fainting
Always sounds neurological to me too.

Went on, in a week, to a month's hospitalization
I was fainting from the infections
Through my entire abdominal cavity
"Missed" by the men of science who were definitely not looking.

6 months without driving, recovering from the Demerol
Pumped in IV into my arm, head then trapped
In a hospital stay from hell that destroyed life for many days
When the cancer in my intestine was also "missed"

Returned to work, through these four years, always worked
One year of which I had to wait to get that license due to
Seizures the Demerol triggered, so walks, buses, rides
And now having that botched hysterectomy....

Several cancer surgeries, scans, tests, pills, pains
Weekly infusions, full time job teaching, kids to try to love
Years of severe anemia, often no care for it, transfusions,
A spinal problem escalated through this, untreated

A life of peritonitis and gastric bleeds
From a GIST tumor that caused immense infiltrations of an artery
Then catastrophic bleeding and chaos, confusion
With lovely, lovely issues in a heart damaged long past by attack

I wanted then to be thought of as
A fat dog that was lolling around
Waiting for a neurological egomaniac to
Throw me a bone and tell me what to expect

From my expanding syrnix, how fair he was.
But for all of that as hard as it is, as revealing to me about life
To hold in my middle aged and "needing someone to listen"
Self, having another doctor, one I thought of with love

Take "the dog" and turn it again
Into myself, into my eyes wide open
Looking at the scrolling page and reading
Something written in such cold blood

Mine.
Convinces me that
I am less a dog now than I ever was
A year ago.

Bronchial Pnoetry

Bronchial Pnoetry

Waiting in a doctors for hours, for days, trying to trick my way home. I started writing. Maybe later I'll write less self-referentially.

On Observation

Word becomes thing.

Picture sits there.

Staring from page.

Captured bird in gilded cage.

Far from branch.

Waywad opheApostr

‘ it’s the’r in places

drivi’ng teahr’ Martha

to write me a letter

edit sh’esh.

Or get another prfessoi’oien,

Boundary

I’m encased in perception

Formed in error, arms, tissues, kisses,

Times riots, palms, bars and books

Rushing sounds of happening

I’m watching

Putting pencil on paper

Finger to key, saying, purging,

Pontificating, touching meaning

On the edge of the ordinary,

As far from there as here.

Reflections

I’m trying to see myself,

In everyone else.

It’s misdirection.

It’s like a lover

Leaving, “It’s not you, it’s me”

It was me.

A mocking silhouette

That has blind eyes

Looking in the mirror.

Pnewmonia

Oxygen kittens are mewing in my chest

Until the barking seals demand attention.

Release one and applaud the other.

Suspended in a struggle for breath.

Hold My Hand

Practice surviving in front of my eyes

Living in a moment in a car

Someone shot someone named Jim

In the conference about your boy.

Ditto off a parenting guide

Offer a DVD on anger management

Look for hope on a shooting star

It’s the conference for your boy.

Let me hold your hand

Offer you a hug and chair

Lift your spirits with eyes that see

This is the conference for our boy.

The Future

She’s so glad for the silly Oreo

I stopped to get “us” by the Coke machine

Feeding my demon, the past.

Pinata

“Who do you love, me or the thought of me” J. Meyer

I can’t entertain just now anything but the thought of me.

You can’t think of me entertaining the thought of you holding a thought of me.

Just the thought of a “me” there needs illusion to sustain and stomach it.

I’m building an inner playhouse to go with the fortress I had built to deal with

The thought of you or me seeing outside of this tissue held mind piñata.

With the bat you are raising to spill the candy over the wall.

Who do I love? In the funhouse the thought of thinking of an us.

Smash.

Cancer

It was after all my sign.

It might have been….

Telling someone else, preferably a stranger

The look in my daughters’ faces

The sound in my son’s throat

Or when you started to ask questions I never thought to ask.

Or Mom thrusting into our space to ask her round of barraging what when where why

Maybe somewhere after I took the breath in the mask, the surgeon standing in the cold freezer sleeveless

I got it.

When you dropped the flowers in my room later with crashing glass and roses busted and fumbling fingers shooting that glass everywhere in the bed.

I got it.

I saw the fear flash over your face and you retreated away.

That’s how it is now.

Safety zones. Because you get it now.

I saw that fly all through our relating, the way of the shards of the broken universe.

If I could turn that fear into a wish

Then we’d fight and rage until it’s all over us.

Running red and engaging in here and now
Not hiding in corners, eyes averted and heart closed.

“No one wants to read poetry by a woman in mid life”

Least of all me.

I read about men and their longings

For girls in their prime meridians

Like chili fries in beer.

I’m looking a globby load of melted cheese

Choking its way around

A pretty stale meatball sub.

Penning poetry about

Godiva with Dom Perignon

Some grease staining the prose.

NebulizeHer

Bubbling gurgles

Breathe in, breath out

Doors open

Close

Gurgling humming machines

Breathe in, breathe out

Smoky voice asks

Where you been girl?

Breathe in, breath out

Gurgling whirling

Dizzy now

Catches me

Breath in, breath out

I ‘ve been around

Hiss and hum

Breathe in, breath out.

Click.

Agendize/ Flow

1. Live in the moment.
2. Appear planned.
3. React
4. Structure creatively
5. Rest assured
6. Assure you rest
7. Stay alert
8. Be passionate
9. Delegate with trust
10. Be in the now
11. It’s as real as we make it.
12. It’s the Real thing
13. It’s been real
14. Reality, shows

Crunch me (what I did for art)

“You're a carrot, Roz said (my old days art teacher)

Crunchy, bunchy orangy

Healthy, sweet and munchy

Long and smooth” (then)

Held in a hand like a brush

Her carrot, me.

(she said waving her hand in the air and biting)

This guy you like is meat.

Raw.

Tartar

And the Ponderosa rib eye went over her lips.

He was a vegetarian and I ate a lot of filet.

Snack and pack me (I thought)

Dip and candy cook

Butter and honey

Sticky compliment to

His juicy steak.

(I considered dropping the class)

Watching in Urgent Care, Sitting Alone

I think he’s high

I don’t know why

He wants her to stay

Then pushes away

I know he’s high

Mind in the sky

Talking circles and just spun

Wanting, losing, thought, fun

Just tripped on my leg

He’s high

Bringing me down.

He’s bouncing despair.

I’m getting a shot

From someone in thin air.

Orbital.

On Shapes (Made on Cute NotePad)

About a Teaching Training "Personality" Activity

A circle with a dot in the middle is beauty

Cause now it's a sweet belly.

Round and smooth, rubbed for luck.

A square with a dot

Is not. It's uncomfortable

Abnormal. Ill met.

A triangle with it's dot inside

Is nowhere to run

Nowhere to hide.

A rectangle with dot

Is what I've got

Wide load. To hold.

Z

But the z is me.

It's free.

Genesis Of An Idea

You --------------------> Thought of You

Me ----------------------> Thought of Me

This ---------------------> Thought of This

That ---------------------> Thought of That

Real---------------------->Thought of Real

Want---------------------> Thought of Now

Shoes on The Feet In My Life

Wear my shoes

Know me

Put the shoe on the other foot

Show me

Tie my laces, momma

Hold me

Shine my shoes

Serve me

Get my shoes please

Help me

In the shoes of a fisherman

Teach me to walk

Slow Dance

Babe we never danced the slow dance

Not the last dance.

Babe we never danced in the rain

Not even in the mist

Babe we never changed

Not even when we fell to pieces.

When They Gave Me the IV

I Thought I’d Throw Up

Ali fought with style

Rhyming

Spinning

Biting, a bee

Floating

My fights

Losing rounds

Head pounding

Heavy

Gasping

My style is Riff less

Inelegant

Lumbering baboon

Drag

Breath

Arm wrapped by tape

Tubes

Cold needles

Alcohol pad

Ready

Swoon and rebound

Punch

Supporting my neck

Hard won

Test.

Cancer

Cancer

One of the things I am includes something I haven't overly verbalized. I'm a "survivor of cancer". At least so far...
on Fighting Cancer


Leave yourself here on the table for the procedure of the day

You battle through it as an exhausted warrior.
Now counting backward strides for granted forward moments of life,
Daunting to wake and maintain this struggle with disillusioned grief, pain, fear,love,
Knowing less each day. And then it's another test. Another round. Another test. Less. Less.
Remembering sometimes quietly those that didn't win anything on this front line, losses,
Signing, accepting the fixes, opinions, plans, head down waiting for something you can't want.

Medical cures, trials, this "industry" having to construct a wall that feels a thoughtlessness
Only taking offense when we remind them of the personal "me" prices paid,
For their experiments, by our human psyche just needing time to vent it's fatigue.
You want to be cuddled in your corner of a bed away from the lights of treatments
Compassionate responses get harder to recognize, undergirding you for the next loss,
Marked by dispassion, treating you without the capacity to connect their actions to your relief.

For then they might connect to your suffering too, debilitating knowledge this shared horror
You did nothing wrong. They did nothing wrong. In a wrong place, wrong time.In an office.
But you are marred with internal adhesions by the injustice of all of it. All wrong.Wrongs.
Nothing about this brings confusion to clarity. Dimming you. Wrong words. It is.
You just battled to be here. Brave but vanquished. Trying to find inner strengths.

Distinguishing an enemy or a nurse, cure or poison, shot, love, injection, tube, swallow
Difficult maintaining the polite distances and civility, reasonableness.
The silent scream will allow you no voice. Yes, no. No underwear today? No I'll hold my things.
Pull off things, you want to burn them as you disrobe for another wait for the cold of the processes.
Gurney taking away another piece of self. Remove your ring please. A rule.
Remove you, please, it is time to send yourself away. Just the body, my body.
Leave yourself here on the table for the procedure of the day.

Cancer, Again

Things i know


my sandal just broke
it is the only shoe I love

an ugly scar gets uglier
the 4th time you are cut down the middle

cancer grows
and feels like a bad rejecting lover

you hold two ends of the rope
and play wanting a kiss

things seem bad, dad says
I could care less if you die of cancer

says mom well when you get back from
the pet scan go get me cigarettes

which you breathed every day of your life
with the truths self evident


created equal is an ideal
6 cm tumor is the reality