In slo-mo, I smite my breast
As the slow-moving fire
Rises higher.
I feel--
Like one of those victims of ignorance inhumane--
By some mad mistake
Tied to a stake,
To die ignobly, and to suffer pain.
Right now, all I feel like doing is to rest.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I lay down a while ago.  I slept.  I dreamed.
And in the dream, I screamed.
I woke up with that scream. 
What was the dream?
I heard a voice say: "Time is slipping away."
I dreamed I was tied to a stake, and a strange fire
That shed darkness instead of light
Was pulling me down into deep night.
A voice inside my head then said:
"Get up, get up, get up!  Do something.
Something worth the slipping time."
The fire crept higher, and I screamed, and I awoke.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Bob Dylan said it best, and Jimi Hendrix sang it best:
"There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke."
The world is filled with beauty and bright blessings,
And magic and miracles, and mysteries
Beyond all gropings and guessings.
We are gifted and gilded with precious living breath.
But we have suffering and death.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I long to live, because I love life.
I love beauty--
The beauty of stars and flowers,
The beauty of language and ladies,
The beauty of slanting light with glittering dust motes,
The fading light of fleeing hours.
I love learning and knowledge.  I love reading. 
I love thinking.
I love loving.
I love happiness and joy, I love friendship and love.
I love my physical life.  I love my mental life. 
I love pleasure. 
But there is a weaving of woe and a lacing of poison
With this world of transitory treasure.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We have evil in this world.  We have suffering. 
We have death.
We have pain.  We have crying.  We have dying.
We have injustice. 
We have cruel crippling killing painful curses--
Like fatal cancer.
I don't want to think so, but I wonder:
Is life really just a joke?
A bad joke, a sick joke, a sadistic joke?  A meaningless joke?
Everything, in Turgenev style, in the end is--or seems--
Smoke.
The voice I heard asleep, from deep in me, inside my head,
Told me my present pain will soon become a living hell,
That I must die in great suffering,
And then, when cancer was finally finished with me,
That I was going to be dead.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I snapped awake.  Still feeling a need to rest and sleep,
I resisted.  I rose up from the bed of night so deep.
I fight for light. 
I struggle to use the slipping time.
Even if it is only to write another futile rhyme.

==============================
Written by Michael LP, aka PoetWithCancer
aka (thanks to my dear friend, Luna Marie) Mr. Poet
Written on Monday, December 5, 2011  2:08 PM PST
49 degrees F.   Humidity: 16%   Forecast: fair
Copyright (C) 2011 by Michael LP.  All rights reserved
(Copyrighted for my estate)