Cancer Sucks!

Wrote this after visiting a family at the hospital. A mother was protecting her sick daughter like a hawk. Her insurance wouldn't pay for vital medicines that would help her Bone Marrow Transplant 'stick.' The insurance payed for her transplant but not the meds that might keep the transplant from failing. Ughh. Dirty crooks! When the Case Manager approached the mother, the mother firmly stated the line that begins this poem. It hurt the Case Manager deeply. She shared two things with the mom. They were both African-American and both were women. The Case Manager later said, "It gets up next to me." She was speaking of the pain that gets so close it is almost yours. Willy helped make each line 10 syllables long. Thanks Willy.

Up Next to Me

“You come back when you can help my daughter.”
That criterion stifles me for good.
Sweaty hands to shake could persuade fairness,
Yet half truths and inequities creep up.
You can see ‘em coming a mile away,
Never too few and too often too late.

It rubs me raw like a horsehair sweater.
Her open anger--truly justified.
And it gets up next to me, I tell ya.
I breathe it in; it nests within my pores.
Not mine and too near to be separate,
But it gets up so damn close to me still.

Rib over rib under rib, breast to breast,
Up next to me yet within and ‘round her
Like steely flesh made for a wild creature--
One more accustom to a harsher life.
This soul desires justice innate yet knows
The lack of it separates her from me.

A few mysterious thoughts light on me
Like a sparse but unexpected flurry:
Fairest Jesus, get up in between us
And that which stealthily hangs upon us
Oh, but with bane eternal hooks for her.
We can see you coming a mile away.

And never too late.

Willy's first poem

Willy wrote this after seeing my childhood home post Hurricane Katrina. Willy says the power of water was a new concept to him. Gentle, necessary, yet fierce. Kind of like God, herself. Willy is shy about sharing his words but I tell him it's about the process, not the product. He has listened to too many high school english teachers. Most of us can relate, Willy.

WATER MYTH



W
A
T
E
R
is
not
blue.
Scoop up
Caribbean Sea
In your palm; clear to
The exposed eye. Illusion.
Wars fought over water; bottled
And given French names—a commodity.

Tender holy drops of baby’s baptism churn through my
Home that sheltered my past, exiling memories beyond once
Well-known margins. Water is . . . is not life. Flesh is yielding
And supple less we crack and split like an aged and desiccated cross.

Stagnant pool transformed takes a thousand lives. Water is ostensibly tame
Until low pressures give it rise. Veins of God’s hands full of stream fierce
And mild or perhaps exists in whole. Neither mild nor obedient yet surely
Sought. Most fierce of nature’s trinity not only in force but in the soak.

Profound source and organic desire, uncontained, not to our liking.
Surprised. Water is not blue. Nor is it mine—or only mine.
Briefly contained by myth then propagated by fools,
Truly wild like . . . nothing. Will always be.
Wild, but never blue.