Histories…

A new friend asked. So, for her, a selection…

Day #1: cancer. stage four.

Are the tears real this time?

I don’t know, I replied. The sickening whir of the scanner tunneled its sad melody directly into the dusty memory of my deepest fear. Its hypnotic verse was instantly far too familiar. Its stereophonic crush felt far too soon.

The Frenchman’s eyes lowered. My eyes lowered. You don’t know? His thin lips curved upward, slightly. His obscene smile slowly emerged, betraying the truth. His coal-black eyes were alive, mocking. We had been here before, he and I. The question hadn’t changed. My answer was now much different, however. So very much different. It was…and is…moldered with impending defeat.

Years past, he had been a coward playing at soldier, my Frenchman. Keen on dirty absinthe and salty red wine, he was never very clean. A beggar, a liar and a cheat. Forever deranged and profane, he walked with a false confidence as would a greasy smear in time.

My spirit, though, is cracked; when as she can
She chants to fill the cool night’s emptiness,
Too often can her weakening voice be said

To sound the rattle of a wounded man
Beside a bloody pool, stacked with the dead,
Who cannot budge, and dies in fierce distress…

In our travels together, I like to think that he had tried teach me the absurd beauty in life’s little nightmares. In truth, however, I never believed his lessons were really ever meant for me. Despite his constant, unwavering stare deep into my pooled eyes, it always seemed as if he were speaking to his own black reflection in a cracked and blood-streaked mirror. I never admitted that his false confidences were the same as mine. I never admitted that we were one and the same, he and I.

I never gave him the benefit of his wisdom. I never trusted his insight. I was, and remain, too frightened to acknowledge exactly what he was saying. I had always been too frightened of the truth. I simply turned my head aside…away from his constant cruel smile…and believed that there was a way out. You see, we had shared our cancers, he and I. His was incurable. We understood that he would fall victim and come to rest…stiff and unencumbered…in his own bloody pool, stacked high with time’s rotting soldiers. I, however, believed that he would come to rest there alone. Without me.

Alone.

Are the tears real this time?

Day #2: Surgeon

i wore a mask
today

so i
wouldn’t infect
them

the patients

so i
could drink cold
barium

so i
could mainline hot
radiotracer

so i
could hide

the patient

J #1 

Rusted canvas
Empty cradle of lost time
Unused

Rumpled Egyptian cotton
Cold curse of an icy crypt
Unloved

The mustachioed surgeon
Of skeletal mischief
Corazon de arcilla
Stole the patina cured chains

I longed
I needed
I lost

Your eyelash on my warmed pillow

J #2

today
i’ll wait, tenuous
strictured, afraid
you dominate me, why
strength, questioned
your quest?
my sexy addictions, fragrant
listed
in order, incarcerated
an order, disorder
true?
do I need love songs, yes
voices unrestrained, thought
stoned
white towers, laced
wanton
emoted, muse
soul muse
silly sneakings, nuzzling
careful
to awake with your deep, crushing
me

J #3

reality is
cold
lonely

but
outside the prison
reassuringly
there are exhalations
in our travels together
up and down
back and forth
right and left
we have a pulse
we are at risk
the agony
of time
fades

there
in that place
on that spot

J #4

I got drunk
So I could try to understand slow time
So I could come to accept told fate
So I could wither in you
Clean

A clean wind, blowing infinite and defining
Salty horizon, scripting your wave
Once, crashing, in a universal
Upon that sand, your sand
Time’s soft crystal, like me
Uncountable in you

I wrote a love song for you in my stupor
Soiled, alone and self-deceived
My back against the wall, chained
Eyes gouged, self-arrested and bloody
Infected in this ice-blue windowless box

Can I come to you in that place,
On the precipice of infinity,
Where the clean wind blows,
Where the soothing sun kisses,
At lidded eyes, warming all souls,
Uncountable in you?

I got drunk
So I could try to understand slow time
So I could come to accept told fate
So I could wither in you
Clean

J #5

I imagine,
That first blue morning,
As you laced tight,
Mountains calling, you knew
The icy trail would be daunting,
Crushed black shadow-traps,
Jagged steps an affront,
Upon a pure mind’s desire.

I wonder,
Were you afraid, 
Like me,
Of gray wolves and copper lions?

Yet, you flowed somehow, effortlessly
Unlike me,
Above the well-worn path,
Among the scholarly green towers,
Soaring higher
On a cloud’s breath,
To reach a mysterious summit.

Why did you ask me, 
Hot and breathful,
To try and keep up,
To understand you,
On your rarefied path
Through such subjects 
Mysterious?

I had no answers,
Falling so far behind,
At elevations pathetic and remote,
Among the worms and decay.

Yet, despite my own dusky cave, 
Of insurmountable want,
Response well-known, 
I called again, owing
I called again, penniless
I called again, hapless
To the broke-back Cali man,
Drunken philosopher-poet,
Bluebird in his heart,
For help.

His answer?

Skill’s bounty is profession,
Bounty’s need is vocation,
Need’s love is mission,
Love’s skill is passion.

She knows, he explained,
Granite versed,
How to climb icy black mountains,
Gray and copper a blur,
Chasing her soul’s guardian,
Blue wings soaring higher,
On a cloud’s breath,
To reach a mysterious summit,
Of a pure mind’s desire.

J #6

I’ve been wild thinking
About what you said

In your studio, before
Painting that dangerous edge:

“People are only good
At one, maybe two

Things in life.” Now, I ask,
Who and what then am I?

Rugged and humid
I drank too much

One brilliant and tragic,
Salt-laced night

With the rum-scarred Silverman,
Who, in a love story, implored:

Every man’s life
Ends the same.

Post-Call: time of death

breathless,
slumped beside the well-used,
stained, stainless sink,
i peer around the splattered curtain,
through ugly, informed glass,
to see you there, crumpled,
staring far away,
into past promise,
sobbing.

sticky-red gloves stripped,
bare arms crimson,
afraid,
i wash away your son’s blood
into a handful of dust.

Cancer Stories: ennui...

Burnt,
Like Plath’s blown sky ashes
Down the nobody lane,
I feel nothing,

Nothing.

Post-Call: knives

anatomically adept
self-guided
eleven inserted

after grey-slant discussion 
deep-cooled
now fleeting 
femoral pulses 
listless and blue
fading

there was a time long ago
once upon when written words
comforted concern

a cruel escape unused

i felt my last gasp
as I bled
to death-scared
futile
gloved-hand
bloody eleven driven
into the dream
of your cold-kissed 
hemorrhagic
vermillion border

Post-Call: today's shadows

How could he see anything but shadows…

“How did you sleep?”

Prone, she lay deceptively strewn across his bed.

“Good?”

She slept unclothed and silent. Lithe and wanton. Independent and strong. Simple and free. Intimidating. She was dark-skinned, the far-away Pacific sun having recently painted her in smooth shimmerings of foreign heat. He had not seen the ocean for a very long time. He couldn’t remember the last time. How many years had it been? He was lost. Hapless and broken. He resigned to his place, staring blindly into the oblivion of the cruel Greek’s cave. He didn’t know what to do other than smile. He promised himself that she was simply perfect. That would have to do.

“I hope so, baby,” he said. “I hope you slept well…”

Exhausted, the blind surgeon leaned against the doorframe. Lingering…

Over his shoulder, just out of sight, El Cirujano stared his stony stare. Frozen, still wearing her charm, he stood tall, indentured by the soothing warmth of her patina chains. He spoke to the surgeon in silence. He spoke in cruel metaphor through the unrelenting silence of his cold, clay heart…

bienvenido a su casa pobrecito
tu sabes que ella no esta aqui
entiendes
ella nunca fue aqui
solo porque siempre la ves no cambia nada
ya se desvanece…

Yet, in hidden despair, the surgeon remained. Lingering…

Cancer Stories: Blue scrubs... 

It’s 3:33 pm. So far today:

I woke-up having lost the overnight real estate
battle to the girl and the puppy
I had a dub-dub of some stupid good dark roast
I walked back into the hospital
as a surgeon
I helped alleviate a lonely rancher’s pain
I learned that my colleagues are working
behind the scenes to save me
I gave the Silversmith a chance with my scalpel
I ate three Hershey’s Kisses
I read a glorious poem

Think of yourself as dead.
You have lived your life.
Now take what’s left
And live it properly.

- MA, Meditations

It’s 3:56 pm. And, so far today:

I have worn these scrubs
My blue scrubs
While sittin’ 14 at 5

But, so far today
I’ll take what’s left
And live it…

Day 15: Breeder...

Cancerous fire, my fire,
Create more than you consume;
Burning ratio
Greater than one.

No soft chemical,
No soothing scalpel,
To protect me
From your molten assault,

I fear. I will be reduced
Like so many cautioned
Concrete tombs
To lone and level sands.

folfirinox...

forgotten, as twenty centuries gone:
i reunite feigned comfort, isopropanol, huber tooth,
anc anxiety, dex, palonosetron, atropine.

premedication done

ninety minutes drip, one hundred twenty more,
this is not pain, pain is insignificant,
this is the desert of the spinning Gyre.

poison in

i, sick, remain insignificantly dangerous
with horrible knowledge
of outcome.

i, sick, wonder
am i the lost falcon, or
the broken-hearted falconer?

my rough beast, slouching and feigning,
as a reeled shadow of a cure,
reborn.

Day 67: Translatory...

Uniform motion in a straight line,
Hand to steel to flesh unbroken,
The gowned gray demands.

Deliberate brush strokes,
Placed on a lover’s canvas,
The silk-styled Spaniard demands.

I coexist, flesh and canvas
Reconciled.

Remembering the thorns...

As we eased down the Ocean to Bay trail, my grandmother’s pace was careful and deliberate. She was dressed in her heavy wool peacoat over a slightly threadbare quilt of flannel. Knees a patchwork of frugality, her pants were hand-sewn denim. Her worn lug boots were lucid, educated by years reading in Nature’s limitless library. She was, as she always seemed to be, comfortable in the regalia of the fully tenured natural traveller. She was quiet as she walked. She flowed through the landscape, her deep eyes sharing a communal lens with the deep soul of the forest. At the time, I failed to notice her stoic observations. I was far too young. I didn’t have to tools from which to construct an understanding. The carefree chaos of childhood was all too powerful. I was on an adventure and that was all that mattered. Dressed in a too-thin windbreaker, the cool air left me unaffected. The steady drizzle so common at these coastal latitudes was disregarded. I was free and unhindered. Clearly, I had yet to begin to comprehend what I was experiencing. I had no frame from which to internalize the depth of this world. I had begun to walk on the trail but had so very far to go. I lacked experience. I lacked urgency. I now know that this was why my grandmother always walked so carefully. Her seemingly lazy gait was a necessary part of her rubric. She was teaching. Though I was unaware, my education had begun. That day’s lesson? How to pick perfect Oregon blackberries.

The narrow trail meandered generally eastward from the edge of the salt-aired harbor town into the temperate thickness of the coastal forest. Moving deeper, we found ourselves guests in a closed community with its own perfectly contained yet boundless universe. Families of fern and moss lived peacefully on the perpetually damp softness of the forest floor with its blur of deep greens and smokey browns. The encompassing atmosphere here was similarly damp and soft, never quite free of its wispy and fleeting fog; this evanescent cloud was forever thick and still, subdued and cold, always maintaining through so little effort - so much more than the ephemeral sun that was so distant and mysterious in this place - its slow lyric hold on the passage of time. Higher still, the heavens were dominated by an impervious canopy of Douglas fir and blue spruce. There were no stars in this world…no far-off, dreamlike galaxies to ponder over. But, I saw none of this at the time. I was far too ignorant to pay attention to the heartbeat of this living world; I had no means to learn the conceptual beauty of its perspective, the limits of its romantic exterior. Indeed, the demands of empiric beauty that are at all times so real in this place were beyond my understanding. Here, there would never be any manufactured absolution from imagined deities in constructed heavens. Here, there will only ever be a necessary decay of pine needles, a troupe of deliberate slugs, the sweet stink of flowering skunk cabbage, a mischievous gang of chestnut-backed chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches, a background chorus of nascent red cedar and immature big leaf maple, deer mice and creeping voles and beaver and black bear and white-tailed deer, that ever-present fog and a towering of mighty Sitka and western hemlock.

“Natura naturans,” whispered my grandmother.

“Grandma?”

“Spinoza,” she replied softly. “Someday you’ll understand.”

My blank stare brought a wry grin to her face that slowly morphed into a more familiar smile, warm and loving.

“Tony,” she continued. “Let’s go find those blackberries…”

Blackberrying -

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

- Sylvia Plath, 1960

As we descended down the trail toward the clear trickle of Jefferies Creek, the brambles thickened and thickened on either side of the trail. Eventually, we were fully invested in the deep hooks of our very own blackberry alley.

“Pick only the fattest and blackest,” she said. “They are the sweetest. The others aren’t ready.”

“Ok,” I smiled, pulling my first and plucking it in my mouth. It was fat and heavy, as big as the ball of my young boy’s thumb. Straining to hold its liquor, it burst at once; its juice a liquid crystal of thickened black wine. I tried in vain to contain the bounty of that single ripe berry. Its juice was leaden and stained my tongue and lips. As with the Irishman, an insurmountable lust for picking rose in my child’s heart. Elated, I looked over to my grandmother. She smiled at me. She too had been caught…just as mine, her lips were stained black with that late summer’s sweet black blood.

“These will make a nice pie,” she said, bending to pick another.

“How many do we need, Grandma?”

“As many as we are allowed,” she murmured. “But remember, pick only the ones that are ready.”

I turned and happily began to fill my little galvanized bucket.

“Remember, only the ones that are ready…and never mind the thorns.”

Blackberry-Picking -

for Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely capfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

- Seamus Heaney, 1966

Today’s difficult lesson in cancer-coping elicits a dated remembrance of my grandmother’s great oeuvre poétique, her timeless and unbounded lecture series exploring the importance of earthen subjects and elemental themes. As a little boy, I was unaware that these were, and remain, of the most profound philosophical discourses that I will ever experience. They were pure and they were simple. They were unbridled allocutions of love. Now, as I fight against my date with the boatman, I strive for a deeper understanding of their significance.

Of all my years as a student, I have never been so challenged as by this, my evolving and wholly personalized life-and-death curriculum: the explication of my own, now-finite, ontology. It is the most difficult challenge that I’ve ever faced; struggling, I have - perhaps foolishly - set out to gain whole understanding of my being. I want to know if I am…anything. Most of the time I feel a failure. Today is no exception. Today, I feel as though I am stagnate as would be an ignorant child without the language necessary to emerge from the lesson as anything other than an empty vessel. I am disjointed and harried. I feel I know nothing about being. Nothing.

Haggard, I suppose I should just try to remember picking those late summer Oregon coastal blackberries - borrowed from that beautifully shadowed forest of epicurean fern and commanding fir - and slow down. I suppose I should just happily struggle to remember the importance of my grandmother’s whispered kisses on my long forgotten, syrupy-sweet, fruit-stained lips. I should remember that I have simply run out of time to engage in the religion of self-delusion. I should remember that I only have time to pick the fattest and blackest of life’s finite bounty of perfect blackberries. Life’s lice-ridded choughs and rat-grey fungi will have their place in my memory to be sure. This is a cancer story after all. The scavengers must have their place. Plath and Heaney knew this…as do I. Indeed, my body’s epidemic will always have its say, bleak as it may be. Perhaps this is my grand metaphor…my grand narrative of life and death. In the end, I suppose I have learned a little bit about how one picks perfect blackberries. With sticky milkbottles and jam-pots filled with all of childhood’s desperate dreams as ripe as each plucked fruit and as painful as each thorn’s bite, you must go on picking, relish the memory of a grandmother’s loving, sticky kiss and strive on…

…and finally. My war-cry in the face of determined certainty. My simple refusal to die weak and cold. A fuck you to cancer and all its seething pain. I give you:

Ketamine…

yes but I am not el dentuso 

I promise promise promise that I will not steal your prize no no breakfast in bed at the City Arms for me because I am sailing today you see I will rise up higher can I see she is leaning over me now and I can smell her lavender and pear and cardamom fragrance so lightly applied as not to offend her patients sensibility and hackled health she really is beautiful and young you must have worked very hard and smart I say but she is purposed and now her petite breasts are quite close she is leaning over is she really leaning over me yes yes doctor she is leaning over you her hair is auburn and eyes hazel and she smells of lavender and pear and cardamom but I cant be leaned over no no breakfast in bed at the City Arms for me she has earned and been decorated after all and she knows that I am sailing today hello doctor she says you are okay but I don’t know to whom she is speaking I am gurneyed and surely she cannot be my interlocutor but I both know and don’t know you know I whisper yes she is speaking to you do you think that you can scoot over to your bed she is asking someone to scoot I have heard that question many times before she is deftly symbolic in her power and gathers her blue shirt fellows to assist the scootings did you say something doctor she asks sweetly what did you say I am not el dentuso I reply I am sailing today and I cannot steal your prize please help me with your provençalian aromas sweetening and decorated breasts arousing but you cannot do this you say you are the doctor and you do not eat at the Arms

hi annie how are you I remember seeing you wait when was it not long ago she says but you have been sailing yes yes annie I remember I was floating on the gentle swells of the antiseptic ocean bump just a little bump you hear from behind threatening to run your smooth vessel aground this is the sixth you say surgical specialties inpatient annie your shirley temple curls are hidden are you working did you just come from the operating room how are you she repeats just fine I say why do you ask I say you know im sailing today its the patient here you see the patient is just arriving from the recovery room sailing through the corridors warm aqua current concentrating concentrating on heading south southwest to cuba but are you warm enough she asks I can get you another blanket out of the warmer she says let me get you covered and warm she says are you in pain she asks I have an aliquot you see no no I am headed to havana I reply I am running the wind and current all the way down to havana I am running because I am not el dentuso

lets go ahead and grab a pressure and oh too sat first I say thank you the patient has no pain I observe the goings on yes the patient is well vitals are good doctor thank you I reply but no one acknowledges my cry carry on I say intact peripherals I hear a blue shirt shout but wait how is it that I feel the blue shirt on my toes wiggle wiggle little toes yes so you see you must be mistaken because I am not el dentuso but I have fought him you see I tell the blue shirt but she does not believe me he knows the serrated bite of oxaliplatin the doctor tells her so do not listen to him he says he cannot feel he says he has no feelings I know thats what you think I cry I know but I do have feelings doctor

lavender says to start the lr at one two five yes I concur but things are getting out of control and lets get the dilaudid sorted but lavender does not respond to the doctor she is dancing you see she is the prima and cannot be disturbed as the blue shirts fall in step but the spotlight is hers alone and she pulls the patient to his feeling feet to dance with her and he can feel the toes the harried doctor exclaims I was mistaken he barks there is only chaos now yes yes pull him up he says he needs to dance up up there are the lights of havana the doctor screams trim the sails tight and dance dance with the gale and gulf stream he screams screaming he has lost all control the patient says the doctor has become madly addled he says dont listen to him he is lost on his antiseptic ocean but the blue shirts have heard him anyway lavender spins with the grace of omniscience her blues are floating too and her auburn whisps and whisps and the patient sweeps through her golden hurricane spiral clean the doctor is uncontrollably intoxicated restrain him a blue shirt shouts lavender spins and spins and spins secure the gunwales a blue shirt implores lavenders hazel burns and the doctor tears at his wild eyes and she smiles sweetly havana havana screams the doctor to hell with the City Arms he screams I can feel wiggle wiggle little piggies wiggle wiggle he screams to everyone and no one

no soy dentuso the patient sighs crumbling

yo vivo