#paradigmpoet

[paradigmpoet]

Fire (upon viewing a fist-shaped cloud from a loved one’s hospital room window)

They said it was the hand of God but it looked more like a fist to me. They said things become twisted this way.  All lit up on pedestals we make out of what’s left after the storm.   I believe them.   Because when she breathes, she does it through impossible lungs, crowded by cancer.   She does it with her teeth.   Her tongue.   Her whole heart. What’s left of her body, pressed hard into the bed by the weight of all she is leaving behind her. This gravity means to press us into the earth. We fall beneath its weight. Are crushed by it. Are haunted by it at the call of every hour.   Meanwhile, there is rain. Melting snow.  Sunrise.  Sunset. Night and day. Wind and water.   Fire and ash.   And it is fire she has become. Fire in her eyes, fire in her heaving breast. And she is red blood in her fire. Fire in her urgency. Fire in the way she clings to her son. Fire in the way she hopes. Fire in the way she reaches, trembling, for a cure that never comes. 

[paradigmpoet]

For Debbie

Trees who buried their roots in our hearts. Trees we turned our backs on. Walked away from a long time ago. Till they grew through the walls of your lungs. Roots of tumors. O2 sats in the 80s and falling. The tubes hanging from your arms.  The port in your chest. The gown open at your back. The oncologists at the foot of your bed. Stage IV. Three liters of oxygen. The coughing. The coughing. The crying. The fear. And the hope. The awful hope. But God has a plan. First I thought I was to be His miracle. But now. Stage IV and double pneumonia. Your voice surfaces from the moat of your tears, levels me. There is so much to be said, so much to be done. I wasn’t ready. I’m not ready. I’m not ready. 

[paradigmpoet]

December 28th

I want to tell you to look at the sky how it looks ill fated how it looks to belong to horses with black hooves that came only this far and then stopped unless they didn’t unless they’re wild here behind the dark woods of my eyes their stables are burning but the sky never asks questions that’s why I tell you to look and not speak and wait and listen I know you’re tired of hearing what the doctors have to say what the illness wants to take I only care what you say no one else a whole planet of nobodies and here we are slivers of us caught up in the windswept sky look up where the bare branches stretch like a bird’s neck before the slaughter the light spilling through as if holy the closest thing to holy we’ll ever know even up this high because all the things that are wrong are wrong even with the blessing of your hands your beautiful hands my darling I couldn’t lie there in pain any longer and of all the bones we’ve mended this one is my favorite

[paradigmpoet]

Things I Learned From Surgery

1. You will be asked to arrive early for your procedure. This is a trick. You will be kept waiting for at least two hours, regardless.

2. You will be asked your name, date of birth, and operative site no less than 10 times.

3. Anesthesiologists are a particularly jaded and deadpan lot. You will learn to appreciate this.

4. If you are to receive IV Decadron and the nurse pushes it too quickly, you may experience what feels like a brushfire in your vagina. Do not panic. This is completely normal.

5. The snot-colored pudding is, in fact, vanilla, and really not so bad.

6. You may receive IV morphine up to, but not exceeding, once per hour.

7. “The good stuff” always means Zofran.

8. “Michael Jackson juice” always means propofol.

9. “A small incision” is a relative description.

10. You will be asked to urinate in what appears to be a white plastic cowboy hat with numbers etched in the side. So they can “measure it.”

11. Bedpans are not as efficient as you’ve been led to believe.

12. There is never enough IV tubing.

13. “This may sting a little” actually means “your sphincter may momentarily invert in an attempt to distract you from the pain.” Not to worry; it’ll pass.

14. It is, in fact, impossible to get any sleep on the PACU.

[paradigmpoet]

An invocation in the face of diagnostic uncertainties

Let there be footpath and sunset. All the resiliency of the walnut stubbornly rooted beneath the kitchen window. Let there be no teeth in the saw. Let there be space to breathe behind this screen, in this bright room of rain and wind. Let the stalwart loom of winter not weave me into an unending penance. Let the creek willows stretch their long-armed shadows across the luminous green field with its scant dirt diamond. Let there be pain and joy, a desire to do good. Let the red lightning in the dark mean nothing more than healing. Let the doctors not fail me. Let this shifting body not fail me. Let the white sea give thanks for its many ghosts. Let the page of my name be torn from the book. Let there be love and love and love.

[paradigmpoet]

The burning

In her cold cold hands the ailing summer frayed as failing sight what was once immaculate gone gray around the color the life the gone gone sky the dim lights shining their haloed bewilderment coming through as if this were only an innocent fog and not a wicked trick of the dying eye she pauses at the swelling in my throat the arch of my brow until the roof caves in around us and I can breathe no more and I say oh honey I know the way dark booms fit to shatter your timid hope honey I know the way moon appears a lock-jawed bony-handed witch in this low place honey I know you are so tired of fighting but remember what you are fire sister an anchored sun forever rising remember what you are sacred woman bringer of light you must learn to endure the burning

[trixclibrarian]

paradigmpoet replied to your post: “implosion”:

Thank you, for asking this.

[paradigmpoet]

Sing Blues

Blues because rest comes to every house but this one blues because it is heavy here beneath night's baleful thicket blues because nothing is near enough that reaching can hope to encompass it blues because we spent all hours braced hard with heads turned blues because the madness of inertia made us do it blues because it is better this way blues for us blues for the hatchet man blues for god in his shattered heaven blues for every fallen star blues for all the world blues for the things that must shift to lie better and keep still down deep in the guts where it hurts most