MUSE
If genes shut off
and on
like lights in an urban landscape
recorded from the lake’s other shore
in a time-lapsed loop
then I am a vague object
in the foreground
and a tumor
is a cluster of buildingsand words
multiplychangedevour
tonight
cancerisa muse
writing this poem
and I am
sentient wordsgenes
a blinking
city
UNEXPECTED EQUATIONS
You look young. I go to an 80s retro dance on Sunday afternoons. Cardio is a great antidote to middle age. Survival odds are still 50/50. Under the knife, a life can go left, suddenly. I count drips from a saline bag above, hooked to a pole I named Ginger Rogers. I’m Fred Astaire.Â
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I’m being asked to trust the anesthetist more than my own father. I wonder if this would be easier if I believed in Gods. I think of doctors, God-lets on earth, scraps of self-help I whip from a pocket of my brain when I’m trying to give advice to my friends. Everything happens for a reason.Â
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Hypnos was the God of tranquilizers and denial, tricking minds with fentanyl and alprazolam, growing poppies in a night cave. And Asclepius became the God of medicine after Hades killed him for performing resurrections. Irony.Â
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Witness signatures next to consent. I yield to a bee sting to belly, to thin any possible blood disasters, then a stab to the hand. I swear the nurse whispers before you go, tell me your story. My face begins to blur. I become a cartoon Apollo reciting a poem about my weakening heel.Â
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In the first smudge of induced sleep, I confess that I mistake surgery for violence. Tell me. I try to journey to a sofa of clouds,
while buzzing surgery ceiling lights fool me with a white light heaven. It is strange to be saved.
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If I tug a truth from my chest, this tender cure feels like a new slur I don’t deserve, not a second chance. My heart repeats history, palpitation, rapid fire machine gun that began forty years ago, when I froze in boyhood under a man’s hands.Â
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Losing consciousness is always a risk. We give away our bodies. I want an ecstasy of presence. Morning meetings cancelled. To do’s struck through. Wakefulness. Wholeness.
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But parts of me are about to be removed. I miss my original jitterbugging beauty, before this diagnosis zigzagged through the center of my posture, stiffening my spine into a tango.
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Which side of the metaphor is better? A scalpel slices through connective tissue, creating a new context. Two ideas joined. Before and after. Fear and Hope. I am always 70/30 seawater though. Â
I amÂ
swinging,Â
sighingÂ
waves.
EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE
Here the prince falls asleep waiting for another prince
in blue scrubs to bring him a pill. The bed is draped
with a canopy of thorny lace and shark pups dart
in a surrounding moat of coconut water. The wall
is an unfolding scroll of medical history and lottery
quick pick numbers. It’s like a first date. There is a court
jester too, jingling in the background, swinging a velvet
bag of Oxycodone and Ceftriaxone. A flash mob
of loyal knights in white tutus plie, hands against a canon.
It’s challenging to dance while wearing armor. My prince
arrives and we transcend the room, float to an endless
dune of turmeric. Our beach towels are made of melting
cobalt, bare legs and arms, braided threads, stained dark
amber and crimson. We lie, body contours of spice in wind.
The ocean is slow glycerin, tide rushing below swarms
of dragonflies with blurred wings, hovering like
helicopters — or a question answered with a question.
Does illness bring a life into focus? How long does acceptance
take? A fever breaks and clears. It’s difficult to write
the end of a dream. The end is always to wake or die.
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Click here to read Gordon Taylor on the origin of the poems.
Image: photo by Do Kwon on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Body Scans - October 14, 2022