Join us every Monday evening for drinks at the Daily Kos community political poetry club. Drop by and speak your mind in rhyme or blank verse. Poetry is always welcome in the comments. Let’s use language to scream our passion to the world. Bongos, berets and turtle neck sweaters are optional. The keypad is mightier than the sword.
This week's diary is personal.
My journey this century has been characterized by a battle with cancer and the ensuing side effects of strokes, heart attacks and seizure caused by 7 years of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
I am not looking for sympathy, far from it.
I often think that my life parallels America’s struggle in the first part of the 21st century, hence the narrative below.
Offered for your consideration
Parallels
May 2011
As the 21st century began
America turned to a
Not-too-bright frat boy
To solve its problems
While I embarked
On a venture to
Make our homes more
Pleasantly efficient
When 911 called us all
W panicked, kept on reading
I and Peter lost
Our funding and our dream
Three more years
Wandering in wilderness
Failed ventures
Dead end jobs until
Stroke, sarcoma, seizure
Left arm, wife both gone
Accused, I guess,
Of hitting her
Using left arm as club
In the now frail right,
Or something,
Who knows why
Meanwhile country
Suffers cancer of its own
Cheney, Rummy, Ashcroft
Best forgot
Then as Cheney’s heart
Becomes machine
Mine too is regulated
By wire and microchip
Although I like to think
My pacemaker
Is benign while Dick’s
Has evil in mind
As the country tires
Of rule by dinosaur
Cancer comes again
This time in the throat
The same cancer
That takes Teddy
The same year
Somehow I survive
Again. To see a new
Young, vibrant, multi race
President installed
With impossible
Tasks ahead. The old white
Mid-west/southern “we”
Want the country
“We” built back!
“No, we’re not racist,
Are you sure you’re Christian?
Born in America?
Where’s your flag pin?”
Who the fuck
Do they
Think they’re
Fooling?
And then, a third cancer
Strikes. This one
Sneaky, insidious
Hard to detect
Presents as other diseases
Has been with me
For as long as
10 to 15 years
Just like those
Behind the scenes
GOP donors who
At last have been exposed
As the greedy science denying
Money grubbing resource hoarding
Small minded backwards looking
Monsters they truly are
So we come to today
All three cancers in remission
Pacemaker, though faulty
Still monitors and waits
Ready to shock the heart
Back into life
If it stops
Dead
The left arm
Ever calls
From a glass jar
In UCLA
Where researchers
Study those strange cells
Cause of an unusual
Disease
The eight year old
Is now fifteen
Taller than his old man
Stronger too
Life is good
Very good
Perhaps the country
Will be so lucky
©CJ Campbell May 2011
Peace
CJ