Thursday, January 28, 2010

Sunday, January 10, 2010

It killed me to see you getting always rejected

Knives can do no more than cut
But flesh can heal.
Guns can do no more than pierce
But wounds can close.

Whips can slice,
Fists can bruise.
Bones can be broken,
Ligaments can be torn.

I can be beaten
Bloodied, broken, and bruised.
But the beauty of these wounds
Is that they fade with time, and faintly remind.

But a fallen teardrop,
A callous heart, a loveless soul...
These wounds leave me not,
And they alone can kill.
Wounds by Astral Flare

Hundreds of thousands of hospital beds and all of them empty but mine

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Saturday, January 9, 2010

He has cancer


In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you.
You're asleep, I'm screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up.
And like before, you've got no interest in the life you live when you're awake.
Your dreams still follow storylines, like fictions you would make.

So I lie down against your back, until we're both back in the hospital.
But now it's not a cancer ward, we're sleeping in the morgue.
Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you,
with heavy shovels holding earth.
You're being buried to you neck.
In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now.
I'm trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together.

You're screaming,
and cursing,
and angry,
and hurting me,
and then smiling,
and crying,
apologizing.

I've woken up, I'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me.
Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep.
But I know better as my eyes adjust.
You've been gone for quite awhile now, and I don't work there in the hospital
(they had to let me go.)

When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift.
I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift.)
But you return to me at night,
just when I think I may have fallen asleep.
Your face is up against mine,
and I'm too terrified to speak.

You're screaming,
and cursing,
and angry,
and hurting me,
and then smiling,
and crying,
apologizing.
Epilogue by The Antlers

Monday, January 4, 2010

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

As if your cancer weren't enough,
the guinea pig is dying.
The kids brought him to me
wrapped in a bath towel
‘Do something, Mom.
Save his life.'

I'm a good mom.
I took time from work,
drove him to the vet,
paid $77.00 for his antibiotics.

Now, after the kids rush off to school,
you and I sit on the bed.
I hold the guinea pig, since he bites.
You fill the syringe.
We administer the foul smelling medicine,
hoping the little fellow will live.

admitting to each other:
if he doesn't,
it'll be good practice.
Guinea Pig by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

Saturday, January 2, 2010

There's a bear inside your stomach

The Colouring by Joseph Pelling and Dan Brit