“Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet.” –Kurt Cobain

I have to keep taking these oppressive hormone-repression treatments,

Unless this cancer is cut out of me.

Cut out the cancer—or, sooner or later, eventually—

Just before I lose insurance coverage--an inhuman surgery will be done to me:

Forever to end my hope of being again a male—the ultimate mutilation of me.

So both my present and my future are made of multiple badness and madness.

And the only thing that can possibly save me from this slate of evil fate,

Even if it is a miniscule possibility,

Is for some surgeon, somewhere, to answer my prayer,

And humanely perform the good surgery—

My only hope to become a male again--

And to end the psychological trauma of the threat of possible castration--

Maybe even escape a future of dying in protracted pain from this evil cancer:

I want and I need a radical prostatectomy.

And if it doesn’t work—well, at least then I shall have had my chance.

But if it does work, then—then I have twenty or more years to live of golden life!

And I have pleasure again,

And the possibility of being with, being loved by, and loving a woman.

If only a few months of nearly zero pleasure and no chance of love-romance--

With the deadly spider of cancer hanging in front of me, in the web of days—

Have broken me—how can I endure there being no cure, for two or more years?

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

But I know—no matter how improbable—at this time, a cure is still possible.

But the refusals to help me result in delays;

And with the passing of days, the death-bite of the spider—a metastasis—

Threatens me with final horror.  Why does what I want, and what I need,

Mean so little?  So there is a chance that I might die on the operating table.

But half of my life has already died.

I will risk the other half, to get back my whole life, if I am able.

And if the surgery goes wrong, and my whole life dies—

Well, the risk will have still been worth it, to stop sorrows I can barely abide;

To stop this great bleed in my soul, and shut off a fountain of useless tears.

The risk is worth it, because of the size of the possible prize.

And because of the size of my suffering, and all my loss, if the risk is not taken. 

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Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009  11:31 pm
Temperature: 64 degrees   Winds: 0 MPH
Copyright © 2010 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved