Bad Poetry Monday

 Reduction

by [REDACTED]

I want to boil it down

Get to the heart of the matter

Distill the flavors

and

Accept the essence of what is

Only all that's there is

Fear and doubt of

Growth and spread

What if this is all there is

Until all there is 

Is gone?

Wings clipped

Horizons narrowed

Marrow poisoned

One foot in front of the other

One foot from the grave?

Heads you win

Tails I lose

Too many metaphors because

Avoidance is key

How else to get things done?

Bad Poetry Monday

 Symbolless

by [REDACTED]

There are three cables

No, four

That appear intertwined

but aren't

Each one runs under or above the others

There are no knots

Signals and/or power 

are what pass through them

And they make no noise of their own

but somehow they can tell the 

collection of parts connected to one end

of themselves

to play music

or voices

to show me a pixelated image

of my dog as he looked last year

All plastic and metal

nothing more

Bad Poetry Wednesday

 MUG

by [REDACTED]

When light seeps down 

And noiselessness boils up

You find yourself staring softly at

The wonders of the world.

All seven ancient wonders 

And each one falls quicker than the last

Oops. 

March 23

I guess I'm going to use this old space that no one reads as a way to record my unedited thoughts. So here goes. 

On March 5, 2021 I was officially diagnosed with stage 3/4 indolent B-cell lymphoma, which is a type of cancer of the lymphatic system. It still sends my mind reeling to talk about myself, my own body, and cancer in the same sentence. Cancer, of course, is so quotidian and unremarkable that it barely bears mention. You hear people saying "my aunt had cancer, my grandma, my dad, my cousin, my friend" and on and on. Everyone has at least known someone with cancer. It's stultifyingly normal. But so then apply the word to yourself and everything changes. What's normal becomes a cruel betrayal. My body has betrayed me at a fundamental level, and now I know it. My lymphatic system, which is supposed to protect me, has turned on me and become the enemy. But even then, framing this cancer as my enemy, as something foreign or alien growing inside of me, isn't right. It is my body. It has my DNA, albeit mutated. Lymphoma isn't the xenomorph that will burst through my stomach and devour me whole from the inside. No, it's just simply me run amok. There's still nothing here but me, my own body. Only now, in an irrevocable way, it has turned chronically against me. A betrayal so deep that there's no bottom to it because it's just me all the way down. 

There's no way to know how long this cancer has been inside my body, growing. They, the oncologists and doctors and experts, call it a slow growing cancer. This implies a fast-growing kind, and yes that's true, it's real and thank god I don't have that. But how slow growing? Was it with me when my daughter was born? What about my son? Was it there, slowly getting bigger when I got married over 20 years ago? It's dizzying to think about how things are exactly the same as before and also completely different. Was I already betrayed before I knew my children? Or perhaps "slow-growing" is a relative term? Perhaps it's recent, or at least recent-ish. It feels like it must be. It feels like a physical extension of the past year, a metaphor for disease growth and spread that takes over our lives. It is disease growth and spread that is now taking over my life. No metaphor needed. 

And it all feels so unfair. I'm sure all who live to see such times feel the same. I'm in the prime of my life, or should be. I'm happy in my marriage. I'm happy as a father. I'm successful enough at my job to provide my family with security, a home, luxuries that neither of us, my wife or I, had as kids. My life was, for lack of a better word, good. I drank with friends. I traveled for work and pleasure. I met so many people. Things felt, if not unlimited, than at least bountiful. And now it feels as if my life is measured out in coffee spoons. Just a little bit at a time. From now until my next appointment. From then until my next treatment. And on and on until it ends. And there's the crux of what is so unfair. The end is suddenly in sight. The doctors think it's still a long ways off, and they're probably right. I could be in remission for decades. But but but. This will probably be what kills me. If not, it will still be there when I die. The only way to rid the world of my lymphoma is to rid the world of me, a thing that seems so much less abstract than it used to. I am not ready yet. Probably I will never be. I'm not even really ready to look at it yet, so I am thankful for the coffee spoons to keep me here in the imminent present. The hole that fills my life a decade hence is too much abyss for me right now. It was so solid, so secure, so much to be looked forward to until March 5, 2021. Now it feels like pit I'm walking toward, and I just want to keep my eyes on the ground one step in front of me so that I don't have to look at it. Ignorance certainly isn't bliss, but it seems better than the alternative. 

Bad Poetry Tuesday

 The Ingénue

by [REDACTED]

Pleased to meet you

This is a fine day, don't you think?

I've been here for years

Waiting for my time in the sun

Waiting for you to see me

Am I old enough now?

Hope you guessed my name. 

Have I gripped you fully?

Here, I hold your liver in the palm of my hand

I won't give it back.

My other hand is wrapped around your neck.

I won't let go.

Not until you are ready to let go.

What's troubling you is the nature of my game?

Bad Poetry Friday

 Interstices

by [REDACTED]

Life is in the gaps, they say

And what do I know that can contradict?

Each little pause a world unto itself, they say

And I must nod along

Listen now for the words he doesn't say, they say

And I can only hear the ones he does

The earth is always full of holes like these, they say

And I suppose my job must be to fill one in.

It's nothing personal, they say

And I heard the dirt rain down and saw their faces

Paper-white masks of evil.

Bad Poetry Monday

 Insulation

by Redacted

My home is warm and dry

The elements are all controlled by us

Air in the ducts

Water in the pipes

Fire in the flicker of the candle

And Earth stacked on earth to protect me from the dark

I want to tell you what I think about 

When I eat my food alone

I want to tell them why I'm here

And why I always save my bones for dogs

That died a long long time ago.

It's habit

And it protects me from that other element

That I fear most.

Time. 

Bad Poetry Tuesday

 Before it was Cool

by [REDACTED]

I used to know a place

We called it The Moon

And only we few

We band of others

Outsiders and dogs

Only we

Knew where to find it

But we have all grown old

Kids wear the bottoms of their trousers rolled

And only we few

We confederacy of ancients

Remember the Moon and what it meant

What it showed us all

Waning crescent

Bad Poetry Thursday

 Enigma

by [REDACTED]

I am a pile of ivy

pulled from the ground

and waiting to be bagged, taken, shredded

My tendrils used to firmly grasp the earth

I've come untethered from my roots

Home is where the heart is

Bad Poetry Wednesday

 Fingertips

by [REDACTED]

I walk along darkened corridors

And hands reach out for me

To grasp and pry

I want to let them

To feel the fingers probe

and grab 

To give in to their pull

And float away

Bad Poetry Monday

 Malign

by [REDACTED]

Hello there again

I thought it was over

but here we all are

together

Because you cannot get rid of me

You cannot escape what you've become

And you and I 

Our fates are tied

together

It's nyquil driving time.

Bad Poetry Wednesday

Highlander

by [REDACTED]

The rocky crown of Arnestine

Sits atop the hill

It looks down on all who gather here

All sick

All ill

With despair or

gout or

ennui or

doubt or

cancer or 

worst of all

hopelessness

I am here

among the others

waiting for a sign from on high

A message that says
"you are not welcome here,

but you can stay"

A respite

A relief

Until another day

Until the crown decides that we should go

Until the powers and the principalities tell us

"get thee to a nunnery."

Bad Poetry Tuesday

Meddling Monkey, Busy Ape

by [REDACTED]

He hangs

Simply

Hands around a branch

As though it were the most natural thing in the world

Because of course

It is

Bad Poetry Monday

Vapor

by [REDACTED]

I saw us wandering

Deeper into the smoke and mist 

I watched as we stumbled

On the roots exposed by the storm

You looked back at me smiled before

Disappearing in the vapor 

And I went with you. 

Bad Poetry Sunday(?)

An Answer for Us All

by [REDACTED]

You and I

We want to know

All the whys and hows

The wherefores and whos

It will change us

Knowledge is power

More data is always better

Non-linear regression

Multivariable 

Can we backtrack far enough

to see the moment

The moment where this all began

The moment when you and I first crossed paths in the dark

Eons ago when the first human 

Took our first step

When the first day dawned 

And life began its horrible toil 

And our destiny was locked in stone

Already fossilized and immovable?

What then?

Do you take me for a sponge?