(Because he thought I and my friend were making too much noise, a next-door neighbor, Paul G—on Wednesday, February 24, 2010—

Multiple Choice: (A) Told us so, and asked us to be quieter.  (B) Told the apartment manager and asked her to talk to us.  (C) Called the police and asked them to speak to us.  (D) Slammed his steel security screen door into me, hiding behind it so I could not defend myself; and when he saw I was losing my balance, kept slamming it into me as I staggered backwards, until with one last hateful shove he pushed me off the porch, forcefully slamming me flat on my back on a bed of jagged rocks.  ANSWER:  (D)

Such a strange thing—to look at my left thumb, and tell it to bend—

And yet it does not move—it is stiff and inflexible with nerve damage.

My other fingers are also stiff—though I can bend them some—

And my palm, fingers, and thumb are somewhat numb, partially lacking feeling—

Lacking feeling—like the heart of the man who attacked me over such a petty thing.

My thumb and fingers tingle when I touch anything, with less sensation of touch.

But if you speak of feeling pain, I have no lack:

My fingers, my thumb, and especially my wrist, still hurt so much!

Sometimes I cry; and my dear friend Brian sees me suffering—

He comes over to me, and puts his hand on my shoulder.

He says, “I’m so sorry, Michael.”  What would I do without this precious friend?

I need his help now, as he for years has needed mine.  Now I need his help even more:

Sometimes, it seems, for almost everything.

Sometimes, when the pain is very bad, I can’t even tie my shoes.

And when I can, it’s slow and a struggle—not the swift easy way I used to use.

I also used to type with great speed and accuracy; and I was able to earn

All the money I needed to survive, to stay alive, to pay the rent and all the bills.

My excellent typing ability was among my diverse capacities and skills.

Now, two months later—with nothing coming in—my time is on fire—

Sizzling away like a time-bomb’s fuse.

Like my thumb.  Amazed and frustrated, I have to watch my thumb refuse

To bend when I tell it to—

Just so, I have to watch my world sliding away—and there is nothing I can do.

Paul G cruelly attacked me before my golden years, as they should have been—

And, without his vicious assault and battery on me, golden they could have been—

He shattered my wrist and my life: My whole world is in flames, doomed soon to burn.

----------------------- 

Cancer captured me over a year ago, making my life its prisoner.

But health-care insurance and medical treatments have kept me living.

Where now will the money come from to pay the premiums? 

I’ve heard of a gift that keeps on giving;

But Paul G, the devil next door,

Has inflicted on me an injury that just keeps on taking.

My crippled hand is hurting and my crippled heart is breaking.

-----------------------

Getting cancer was the most terrible thing that ever happened to me,

Until Paul G revealed himself not to be humane, but a devil in disguise.

I didn’t fully appreciate before, how good so many things still really were!—

When the only medical grief I had to deal with was my cancer!

Incurable cancer—high grade and high stage—

Tearing off years of my genetically endowed life, as if ripping out a page—

But the medical treatments, though unable to cure me, could save me some years.

Before cancer takes me. 

But now I shed despairing, bitter tears.

Paul G has cursed me with more pain and with even earlier disability.

-----------------------

His attack on me will probably end up truly a homicide; because just a few days after,

I was supposed to start radiation treatments; I had to see to my broken wrist instead.

Though I treated it as a severe sprain, because the paramedics said that all that pain

Did not mean broken bones, because I was able to wiggle my fingers.  A deadly myth

That has helped to bring me to the brink of the abyss.

I thought I had plenty of time to start my radiation treatments later.  But then,

The true horror story began to unfold: I learned that actually, my wrist was shattered!

Paul G had attacked me, callously injuring me as if my life nothing at all mattered.

How will I be able to get radiation treatments now? 

My crippled hand stops me from making money.  No money to keep my insurance. 

If I cannot find a way to keep my insurance, I cannot get the radiation treatments.

If I can't get the radiation treatments, the cancer will more rapidly continue to spread.

G is crueler than cancer; he has likely killed the years the cancer had spared to me.

I shiver in fear as my life falls away: At G’s hands, I fear so much sooner to be dead.

-----------------------

If my hand was okay, I could type, earning good money.  I also have much knowledge.

I could type book reports, term papers, and other things for students in college—

Correcting grammar and spelling, and sometimes, for extra, helping with the research.

But G crippled me, and my tottering life still staggers in the lurch.

Not only insurance, but home costs and all my bills mock me with demonic laughter.

If I don’t think of some way out of this tailspin, and fly out of it just right,

I will likely end up homeless—crippled, struggling in the streets—and dying of cancer.

My heart pounds, as my mind races, searching for an answer.

But what if I don’t make it?  I will then be a double victim:

A victim of cancer’s blind killing teeth; and also a victim of G’s deliberate rage.

When I have nothing, and face nothing, what—with these disabilities—will I do?

----------------------

Right now, I am very disabled, and nearly always in some pain—often, in much pain.

I went to four different clinics, to four different hand surgeons, desperately hoping—

Hoping and praying to find one who had a better prognosis for my mangled future.

I was like a blind man in a burning room—searching for a door to freedom, frantically groping.

I finally found a doctor who could do surgery for such a badly shattered wrist as mine.

Three others had told me they could do nothing for me: that I would always be in painful disability.

The fourth said—even with surgery—my dexterous hand is something I’ll never regain

-----------------------

If I lose my struggle—if I must lie down in the gutter—it will be with my eyes closed.

Perhaps that way it won’t be so bad after a while.

A dream can make me feel well-reposed.

A dream can paint happy pictures on the canvas of my closed eyes.

My mind can create me a dream world.

A world where my hand was not crippled by a cruel hateful man.

A world where I can still make money.

In sleep, sometimes there is no pain.

-----------------------

Dream about the Promised Land—

A land of milk and honey.

Close my eyes,

And imagine me a paradise.

Paradise would be, for me,

Just to be the way I used to be.  Before late-stage cancer locked on me;

And before the devil next door attacked me and broke my arm and wrist bones.

I cannot even pull a latex glove on my good hand without help from my friend.

My fingers and thumb don’t work well at all, since that hateful man shattered my wrist—

Angry at life, because he had lost his job about two weeks before--he took it out on me--and shattered my life—

Putting me on a path toward disaster—losing all I own.

There is no end to the list

Of all that this cruel man has cost me—all that I will have lost and missed—

By the time I have exhaled my life’s breath.

-----------------------

My friend I used to take care of—

Now he has to take care of me.

I can’t even open a letter without using my teeth.

So many tasks that before were simple and fast,

Now I cannot do at all—or they are long and arduous.

My dear good friend!  What now will become of us?

What are we going to do?

Now my friend has cancer, too.

If I go before him, how will he find his way in this unkind jungle of a society?

If my friend goes before me, what will I do?—

When, without his help, I sometimes can’t even pull a sock on, or tie a shoe.

But this is most terribly true:

It hurts me worse to see him hurt, than the hurt I must go through.

-----------------------

But I can barely help myself now, let alone help my friend.  There’s so little I can do—

Because the devil next door crippled me—

Insanely angry because he had lost his job; and he could hear that we were living our lives happily,

Making ordinary, typical, normal noise.

These walls are far from sound-proof; it is just coldly selfish and crazy to demand

Never to hear any of the sounds of just living life, with its many sorrows and joys—

Or else pay the penalty of having a devil break your bones and maim your hand.

Because of what G so needlessly, cold-bloodedly, did to me,

I can’t make money now to pay to keep my home.

Before, I was able to make more than enough money, by writing and typing.

Now it is often painful to type.  Now I type slow, and only one hand can go.

The inexorable reality of my crippled hand is crushing me.

I fear that the fate to be a dying homeless cancer victim has now become,

By Paul G’s inhumanity to this man, my final earthly destiny.

-----------------------

But if a homeless man lies under a tree,

And closes his eyes,

He can dream of how things used to be.

I don’t think I can be a good beggar.

In winter, I’ll be cold and hungry.

In summer, the heat will flatten me.

I’ll be unknown.  Alone.  Just another homeless man.

-----------------------

Seek coolness by sleeping in a park’s men’s room.

Lie on the cool cement floor.

Use a big metal garbage can to block the door.

Then, let a dream deny reality.

Let a dream show how things might have been and ought to be.

Hope a nightmare doesn’t come, and I don’t wake up screaming.

Hope that I lie there with a dream smile, and that I die dreaming.



=========================================

Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Sunday, April 25, 2010  11:38 pm
Copyright © 2010 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved