New Birthday

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This poem was written one day before my first cancer birthday--marking a year of survival with my cancer still in remission. I was given my biopsy results and first treatment on December 17, 2008. Snow fell that day, and made magic of trees and cars and time. Beauty broke my heart, with love of life, while I waited for the doctor to come in. As I watched the falling snowflakes paint the world white, the doctor came in and said: "Well, we found cancer. And a lot of it." // Now my second cancer birthday will be next month. But unlike last year, my cancer is no longer in remission. It is active. The treatments stopped working, and new ones are being tried--and I will get them, till they stop working, or until I lose the medical coverage that pays for them. // How do I feel now? How do I feel, after a harrowing two years of not knowing when the remission would end, and struggling to keep medical insurance and a roof over my head? How do I feel? I feel so glad to be alive.

New Birthday


All my life is gone now, that I had before.
All the years by which I counted my life,
Are as cleanly cut from me, as if by a gamma knife.
All my days of joy were swept away, like dust swept out a door,
As if the sands of my life had turned into dirt upon a filthy floor.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
My new birthday is coming in just one more day.
My old birthday is, really--in my heart--almost no more.
My old birthday was April the fifteenth.
My new birthday is December the seventeenth.
On that day, last year, I was given my diagnosis--
And I was given my first cancer treatment--then I and time began to run a race,
Based on--from different doctors--my variously given prognosis.
I set the scale of life at zero, and started to keep score.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A blessing to live another year--another year of my life which is cursed.
Cursed with cancer--and, in some ways worse, the cancer treatments --
Canceling all birthdays from before.
They feel as blank as the cold nonexistence which draws too near and threatens me.
My new birthday coming up will be the first.
My first birthday, measured not as any year A.D.,
But as my first year A.C.--
After Cancer--and before the painful cancer death that is very likely going to take me.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Soon one year will have fully passed.  Then--in my life-threatened heart--I'll be only one year old.
This one year--the first year--the cancer treatments virtually guaranteed I would live to see.
As for another year, my cancer grants no guarantee.
My remission may end at any time now, I've been told.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Or remission might continue for another year or two--or any time between--
Who knows when my life will bleed into oblivion?
Today I am here.  Today I can hear.  I can be heard.  I can be seen.
I can speak.  I can write.  I can think.  I can imagine.  I can see.
Tomorrow, the cancer may get hungry, and begin to feed, and I'll be gone.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I shall remain in poor health, and will suffer continuing declines of health, untill I die.
Eventually the cancer will tatter me;
But for now, it is my treatments that rob me of good health.  But here is why I mostly cry:
All my desire now just hurts and aches in my heart--I have strong desire to feel normal desire;
But I have no desire I can truly show, for the treatments cause me very low to almost no libido.
I have fire burning in me, hot in my heart, and bright in my eyes; but, for loving, I cannot find fire.
The rest that I suffer I can endure, while I hope that the holistic way will someday cause a cure.
So I have to live with virtually no muscles, and with decreasing bone density and muscle mass.
Okay, so that's the way I've got to live.  Anyway, all things must pass.
This too shall pass some day.
I too shall pass away.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A whole year.
Time has made the first cancer-year to disappear.
Like a conjurer's trick.
If a whole year can go by me in a flash that quick,
What hope have I?
It scares me.  I fear how fast and faster my time shall fly.
I, who will, in an almost certainly very short time,
Very probably, horribly die.
Fate has dealt me my life's last hand.
My hour-glass is sifting out my life's last sand.
I never know now when I'll be writing my life's last rhyme.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I will be lucky if I shall have as much as another year.  I may be even luckier, and have a few years.
All my precious decades, though, that before last year had seemed plump plums ahead--
All those decades of years of my future time of living, taking and giving, are already dead.
Long ago I found my first love, Science, who will not let me make a paramour of Faith.
But Science torments me to make me think my life is a transitory brief ghostly wraith.
Even less than that, because cancer has cut me short, and my decades of tomorrows have far fled.
Although I love Science, she coldly shows for my life the soon-coming painful cutting of cancer-shears.
Unless the holistic approach I try is no luring lie.  Still, for me, faith is only my heart's hopes and fears.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I'm sorry for everything, and I'm glad for everything.
I regret everything, and I'm grateful for everything.
Every day of my life is deep grief and precious joy.
My treatments are a health-stealing thief.  All my golden dreams, the new days destroy:
Slowly stealing even my life.  Worst of all, depriving me of women's love, so that I must die lonely.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But I am not all consumed with losses and pains.
My memories are still magic; and enough good in my life still remains,
To give me, every day, a fleet fearful world of wondrous wealth.
December seventeenth shall mark one cancer-captured year;
One year of life since I found out I have cancer.  And, whether by blind forutne or by good grace,
It looks now that on the day that marks my first cancer-circled year, I will still be here.
I don't know when I'm going away; but I think that tomorrow's dawning day,
At least, shall soon see me still seeing the world; and, to myself, I then can say: Happy Birthday.



--Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 10:55 pm PST
Fair. 38° F. (Feels like 38° F.) Wind: CALM Visibility: 10 mi
Humidity: 52% Dewpoint: 30° F. Barometer: 30.25 in and steady
High: 60° F. Low: 36° F.  Sunrise: 6:44 am PST Sunset: 4:26 pm PST
Copyright © 2011 by M.L.P.  All rights reserved

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abuelita1 commented on New Birthday

11-22-2010

We shall both celebrate December. We both may celebrate a different type of birthday, but we shall celebrate anyway! ;-)

abuelita1 commented on New Birthday

11-22-2010

Thank you for sharing your high points as well as your low ones with so any. Your heart I will remember. Come rest....

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

Robert Frost (1875-1963) American Poet.

PoetWithCancer’s Poems (224)

Title Comments
Title Comments
Happy Winter Solstice 1
Seasonal Ring 1
My Thanksgiving 0
God's Word 1
Under the Date Tree 1
A Few More Times 1
Divine and Diabolical World 0
Summer-Brief 2
Seasonal Ring 0
Shakespeare's Birthday and Death 0
Special Brian 0
I Remember Brian 0
Light of Life 0
Pain Has Defeated Me Today 1
The Old, Old Words 0
Home Is Where the Heart Is 0
A Sad Contemplative Christmas Today 0
Moments of Memory; In Memory of Moments 0
Sun and Rain, Joy and Pain: I Miss My Friend Brian 0
Dehumanized and Clinicized--N
OT
1
Not Full 0
Love, Loss, and Lennon 0
Dying Dream 0
Brian's Pure Love for His Lady 0
Two Loved Ladies Undergoing Surgery Now 0
The Masks Fall Off at Midnight 1
Prime of Life 1
Low Energy and Less Time: And Too Many Things to Do 1
Happy Veterans Day, Brian 0
Happy Veterans Day, Brian 0
Thanksgiving 0
Autumn of Year; Autumn of Life 0
Brian's Birthday and New Year's Eve 0
Under a Constant Star (9/11) 0
Deep Time 0
Is There Anything Out There 2
Classics in the Closet 0
Nobody 0
Feeling the Wind 0
The Wild Doe and the Hunter 0
Happy Birthday, Brian 0
The End of the World: Saturday, May 21, 2011, 6 pm PDT 1
Brian's Special Smile 0
Broken Birth 0
Missing Brian 0
Focus: Today, Happy 0
I Love You, Brian 0
The Ways and the Words of You 1
Stone Cry 0
Amore Immortale 0
Reality and Unreality 1
Lyrical Life 1
Easter 0
Shakespeare's Birthday 0
Friends During Need 1
Death--A Play--or the Final Act 0
Moods 0
I Was Worried About You 0
Song of Life 2
Me 1
Oh Mother of My Life, My Mind, My Heart--Happy Birthday (Sunday, April 3, 2011) 0
Your Money or Your Life 1
Poesis 0
A Last Look at the Moon 0
Tears for Brian: My Tears Spring Suddenly 0
Seventeen in the Past 1
Clusters 1
Suffering and Dying Where Love Is Least 1
Looking at People in a Restaurant, Talking to Brian 1
Brian Cannot Come Back to Me 3
Seven for Heaven: Human Haiku/Senryu, On Two Straight Guys Who Loved Each Other 3
Five Human Haiku (Senryu): Faithful to the Perfect Form 0
The Scream 3
Life Is 8
Following My Friend 3
Small Moments (Written by Patricia, for Brian) 1
For Precious Michael (Written by Patricia, for me) 4
Dream of Life, Dream of Friendship, Dream of Love 4
The Power to Create 4
A Single Fortune Cookie 6
The Meaning of Life 2
Dreamless 3
Prayers 3
Lost Love 2
I Thank My Mother for My Birthday and for Her Wonderful Mother Love 3
Lennon Lost His Life: And Now, So Has Teena Marie 2
All the Way with Part Way 2
Loving, Living, and Dying 6
Dreaming and Seeming 3
Poem Prayer 2
Science, Poetry, Philosophy, and More 2
Super A, Abuelita1--Th
ank You for Your Support, Caring Love, and Understanding
2
Wonderful Connie 1
Someday-Dying 2
Between Yes and No 3
Love of Life 1
Zappa the Magnificent 1
In the Midst of Life 2
Only One Death 1
Real Illusion 1
The Unknown 1
My Apparently Known Possible Fates in This World 1
No More Me 2
Someone 2
Leaving Life 1
Precious Jade 2
Fear and Grief and Going: Unguilty of the Grave 1
Using and Losing Time 1
Loveless Life 2
Good Life, Good Grief 1
Dreamless 1
Ontology versus Oncology 1
Now Time 2
No Present, No Future: All Past 3
Hippocratic Hell 1
First Light 2
Almost At the Limit [--A Sonnet] 1
Death-Trap 0
Broken 1
Birthday Termination 1
Moments 1
First and Last Cry 1
Love 2
Final Fragility 1
End of the World 1
Tripping 1
Seasonal Ring 1
Gifts that Go and Still Stay 1
Sidney Says: Advice to Poets and All Writers 3
Enthusiasm: God Within 3
Send Me Your Good Will, or Pray For Me--Please 1
Feeling Each Other's Pain 1
Snow Man for a Low Man 0
Explanation of My Poem "As If the Last" 2
New Year, No Love 2
Poetic Form 0
Guilty Pleasures: Not Guilty 2
About Me 1
Live, Laugh, and Love 4
Nothing Special 2
Why a Writer Writes 2
To Sarah Y and Her Beloved Little Boy Who Cries Out: Again! 1
I and You: Unique and the Same 1
Where's the Compasssion in Our Health Care System? 0
Lonely Girl, I'm Feeling the Way You're Feeling: But We Can Both Make It Through 3
Health-Care Reform and Hell on Earth 3
Psyche 3
My Bucket List (For Now) 4
My Most SCARED Moments 2
Children of the Stars 2
Passing Life's Test 1
Why More Now? 1
Remembering My Grandma on Thanksgiving Eve 3
Another Thursday, Another Hammer 4
Thursday's Hammer 1
New Birthday 2
Let Love of Life Light Up the Psyche of Fawn 1
To Angel Eyes: The Wonders of Your Life 1
Regarding the Lack of Fall in Texas 2
Light for the Fight 2
All That I Have 3
Shine 2
As If the Last 2
Here Now 1
All in Time 2
The Exile 2
Incurable and Terminal 4
Tripping 2
One More Tomorrow 1
My Dash 4
One of Two Is Stronger 1
No More Romeo; No More Juliet 1
Friendship and Life 1
Snow and Life 3
Live Spelled Backwards 1
Sarah Y 2
To Fly 2
My Cry 1
Moment of Madness 2
Fall From a Great Height 1
A Memory 1
Less Life; No Loving 2
A Loser, True 2
Time Stop 1
Final Sleep 1
Entre Enfer 1
Flying Life 1
One Would Have Been Enough to Make Life Worth Living 5
Once 3
The Haiku Form 2
Bridge to a Comet--Your Visits and Comments to Me 4
Get Well Soon, Luna Marie 2
Winging It (a human haiku, or senryu) 3
Light Locomotive 2
Skite, Where Were You Today? Where Are You Tonight? 2
Angel's Wings, Angel's Voice 4
Shy, but Not Too Shy 2
High Coo 4
From Night to Night 3
Life's Journey's End--Cut Short by Cancer 4
Love, Light, Life, and Night 2
Fear and Courage 1
Death in Life 3
Unknown Final Fate 3
To Right a Poem 4
Crab-Like Concealed 4
Soon 2
All in the Mind 3
Ebony Shine 3
On My Nephew Naming His First-Born Son After Me 5
Love, Loss, and Lennon 3
Eqinox 4
Feeling My Heart 5
The Best Person I Ever Knew: My Best Friend--Brian 2
In Memoriam, George Difficult 3
Lovers 7
Art 5
Things to Do 4
Plane on Fire 3
Ameliorator 5
Thanksgiving 7
Worlds of Light 24
Failure's Fortress 13
Song of Life (Original Version) 13