I took the road
less followed,
and found
land mines,
trolls, bandits,
potholes, mud
patches, fallen
trees, and then
my car broke
down. Next time
my way is the
highway.
Category: cancer
Titled
Perhaps I
could call my
autobiography
“The Old Man
and the C”?
Three absent friends
Death by cancer is:
being pushed to
the lunch table in
a wheel chair when
cancer-riddled
bones won’t
support you;
measuring your
days in teaspoons
of morphine,
carefully counted;
carrying a
rubber cushion
to pad the pelvis
from which all flesh
has melted.
Cabbages and kings
Once we talked to
friends of their
children, their
houses, their
careers, their
plans and dreams;
of the books
they were writing,
films they had seen,
art they had created,
gardens they had grown.
Now we talk to
friends of their
illnesses, their
operations, their
diseases, their
pills and potions
and prognoses,
of who has died
and who will die
soon.
Mindquake
We need a
Richter scale
for major personal
events that
rattle our core,
shake our life,
leave fissures
in our psyche.
Sometimes we
can put books
back on our
mental shelves,
replace broken
windows, rebuild
fallen walls.
But sometimes
the mind is
left all out of
joint forever.
Card Sharp
I think I played
the cards I was dealt
as well as I could,
but at times
it was tempting
to go for misere
Mirror, mirror
When I am gone
no mirror will
ever reflect
my face again.
Snowed under
Old people
have one hundred
words for
not feeling well.
Fool me once
Ambition burned
white hot when
I was young, then
I lost it, discouraged,
then found it again,
then lost it,
then found it,
now, in old age,
thinking myself
safe, the old fraud
seems to have
appeared again.
Over crowded
In old age
anecdotes from
the past come
flooding into
my brain, elbowing
each other aside,
each one eager
for attention
