Cancer (A poem for TP)

T.P was in hospital for a week and is now back. He's looking much better, getting his pain medication adjusted really helps!

He's in a wheelchair now. It's easier for him to get around, less taxing, less tiring. He still has use of his limbs, its just the cancer is spreading into the muscles controlling his legs.

And he's cheerful. Optimistic. An inspiration.

I am a little angry at Cancer this morning. And I know, there is no point in being angry about something that I cannot control. But sometimes, it doesn't matter. The rational doesn't have a place in my irrational anger at this disease that steals so much and leaves nothing behind other than memories and a reminder of how short and sweet life truly is.

There are many forms of cancer. From the medical to the spiritual, cancer always eats away at the host, consuming the body in its quest to consume hope and faith and possibility.

And because I am angry, I turn inward to find that place within where I am at peace with all that is going on around me. Poetry.

This poem started to form itself after I chatted with TP yesterday. I know 'cancer' doesn't care. I do. And so, I wanted to express my anger at 'it' so that I could be at peace with where I'm at, and in that peace know that my anger is not spilling out into the world, causing more harm than good.



Cancer

Corrosive bodies
of ill-will
you consume all hope
in your relentless
pursuit of the host
denying spiritual
redemption
you chew up the future
breaking-down lives
into morsels of time
that can only be spent
now

too soon
you steal away
tomorrow
leaving
no future
in your disease
no present
in your unfaltering
conquest
of one body
one man
one spirit

you don't care
about families
reuniting

you don't care
about lives
lost
and found

you don't care
for anything
or anyone
other than your unremitting
progress
within a body
too weak
to fend off your disease
consuming
life.

Take what you will
of one man's body
but you will never take
his will
to live
to experience
life
you will never take
his memory
living amidst us.