CHEMO (2/10/17, 360 degrees, Abramson Cancer Center, 4th floor)
“Benches, Trellis, Garden
Urns,
Garden Entry Gates,
A Tranquil Rooftop Space
Where Patients, Families, Doctors,
Staff,
Can find repose
And seek hope in
Nature.”
No matter where you look
This ceaseless unborn stream
Roams through all
Experience.
And our hopes are that we
Are not as separate as
We think...
And that when we fall
Asleep at last,
We will wake up
Everywhere.
Fascists, pigs, butterflies
Ants.
Putin’s Rasputin and Steve Bannon.
The Muslim Travel Ban...
Weight 213 up from 206
130 over something, pulse and
Temp from under the tongue.
Just getting this jumble
Down
As best I can.
Meditation non meditation
Poetry non poetry- no rhyming
Trump the bonehead and Putin
The thug.
Fellow white supremacists
Then, now, and forever.
What a beautiful day in the
Neighborhood...Let all the Evil
That lurks in the mud,
Seep out.
Let all the people of different
Colors and religions and race
Hide in their basements
Or run for their lives.
Or turn, and stand,
and fight.
Somehow
A white halo of death and Destruction
In all its hellish innocence is being
Projected onto you.
The long arc of history
Being too long for them.
The long arc arcs past
Their gated communities
And beer halls and the starving ghettoes:
Remember Heinrick Jost
September 19th, 1941
Warsaws
of their
Imaginations
Becoming all too
Real.
Radical Islamic Terrorists
Swarming upscale boutiques and
Drinking fountains reserved for
Children of the Sun.
Sharpening knives
Shaping bullets with their teeth
And tacking up Sharia law posters
All over the place.
Oh the sweet white enclaves
Of seriously white white people strolling
In the Gardens of Earthly
Delights.
Ah, what is your birthday?
Your death day?
No, for now I will live in some
Awareness of my fellow travellers.
Like me, some of them are losing
Their hair...
Vital signed, blood tested, infused.
The first two times the nurse sits with you
For 15 minutes to see if you have an allergic reaction.
This particular poison,
Docetaxel,
Kills fast reproducing cells- like cancer cells...
Like your hair cells,
And the goal here is to tolerate the treatment
Somehow
Gina said, after returning with fresh hot
coffee and a chocolate biscotti, ”This is quite a walk through the charnel grounds.”
A rather subdued crowd out there in the waiting rooms today...
And these are the fortunate.
The friendly nurse gets up...my first 15 minutes are down.
“Drink 8 glasses of water a day,”
She said. And lay off too much booze, I thought, sotto voce.
And THC can munchy you up and almost Over
The Depression of being sentenced to Death,
Along with your basic loss
of body parts:
Eyes, breasts, balls,
What have you.
But that’s it.
“Let others help you”...
“Essentialize your practice”...
And
“Remember,
Death is real,
And comes without warning”
Is what my Dharma teachers said
Although, of course,
I will forget.
And although, of course,
I will forget...
“Remember
Death is real,
And comes without warning.
John N Phillips
2/16/17