The Exile
The man without a country
Was a sad case to read.
It made my soul weep.
It made my heart bleed.
He could not set foot on the land that he loved.
He felt so lonely and so lost.
He had said a few words that somehow offended someone;
He had spoken freely; but at such a cost.
Now into immense suffering his soul had been shoved.
A special kind of hell; for he loved his country well.
He needed his country more, much more--
With a painful longing, devouring and wild--
He needed his country more than those who remained,
While he was exiled.
Every time he thought he could go back, he smiled;
Only to find that he he had been beguiled.
For he was blocked by a gate
That was locked with icy hate.
The kind of hate that freezes into permanence--
So hard and cold--it is akin to absolute indifference.
A lot like Fate:
But it is indifference so unyielding strong;
So hard-heartedly inhumane, so ruthlessly wrong:
It is akin to hate.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Just so, I find myself now exiled.
Now I suffer so, and so I feel.
I face a hate of icy steel,
That does not care my need is real,
That does not care my pain is great.
I face cold-blooded indifference to my heart, my feelings--even to my life--
Indifference that is akin to hate.
It is such hateful indifference--such indifferent hate--that locks me out as well.
But my diagnosis, this dreaded disease, was already too much for me.
I needed help, not hate. I already faced a cemetary's strong locked gate.
I was already suffering too much of hell.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For a few months, I had good support--
True caring from my friends in my support group.
Then I was condemned--without a hearing, no semblance of a court--
No trace of due process, no hint of justice--just condemned.
I had said and written some words the patient counselor didn't like; and so,
She decided I had to go.
She used my often late arrivals as a pretext and excuse--
But that cannot excuse her for her inhumane patient abuse.
She could have simply told me not to come late to the meetings anymore;
She had no need, and so no excuse, to ban me--then forever bar the door.
Though I begged her to let me stay.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Talking to me about my clinic's patient counselor, my psychologist had this to say:
"When you hang out a shingle that says you are a helper,
You are supposed to help. You're not supposed to push someone away,
Just becauses he pushes your buttons, plucks your strings, or rubs you the wrong way."
I told the patient counselor this; but she just shrugged it off, and still treated me like a leper.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now I have learned that my fellow and sister cancer patients still ask, sometimes,
Why I am not there. She lies to them, and tells them that I'm too busy.
In my great need to come back, I have at several different tiimes begged and pleaded;
But all my sorrow and suffering are nothing to her. All unheeded.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now, with decorations everywhere and holiday cheer,
To make me suffer more how different I am from the happy healthy ones, with my sorrow and fear,
I called her again, and pleaded again. "Please, have some compassion!" I cried.
"I don't think I can make it without my support group," I said.
She paused, and queried: "Are you talking about suicide?"
I thought: Maybe--maybe so--how do I know, if I have a total breakdown, what I might do?
I never had a total break-down before. So I said: "Yes, I could kill myself! I could soon be dead!"
What she replied made me shudder--she said: "You're threatening me! And I don't appreciate it!"
So she interpreted my depression and my possible suicide, because of her shutting me outside,
In terms of how my suicide might affect her--as if the threat of death to me were really a threat to her.
I told her: "Am I not the one whose heart is hurting and whose life is threatened?"
Then she said she would talk with someone. "Who?" I said: "You decided this. It's really up to you."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The holidays will come and go.
But not my fate that has fallen on me.
Unless the holistic efforts I struggle with pay off, I face ever-growing grief.
My particular cancer likes to eat bones; and it will eat them, till it shrivels me up like a leaf;
And my life will then soon fly away, like an aumtumn leaf disapearing when the winds blow.
My cancer will metastasize, sending out little cancer-monsters--called osteoclasts--
Which, like a feeding frenzy of piranha, will bite and chew my bones, starting with the spine.
I will lose my proud height; my spine will condense and crunch and curve.
I may even become hunch-backed. Maybe then I'll finally be able to find another job--ringing bells!
The spinal nerves insure great pain; and also the nerves in the tissue sheathing bones, all through me.
The cancer will cripple me, and I will be wheel-chair bound, while the rest of my declining life lasts.
If I get a wheel-chair. If I don't die of homeless. This is a worse fate than even murderers deserve.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I will still need my support group many times, before I finally die, crying out why.
This same patient counselor also runs the End of Life support group. When my cancer has spread,
What will I do then? When I can barely move around, and I'm in so much pain, and even more afraid.
When my bones are snapping and breaking into painful fractures, and I'm so much more afraid.
I asked the patient counselor: If she does not let me back in now, what will I do then? She never said.
And what will happen if I lose my insurance? And what if I lose all source of income?
Then I will be dying in the streets of this cancer. Will she deny me support for such a terrible doom?
If I cannot come back to my support group now, will there be for me--ever--any room?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What was it that happened the last time I begged and cried?
Three days later, she set the police on me; expecting I had committed suicide.
But they found me alive, still--for now. But she seems to think this is all just a contest of wills--
Not a case of a deeply depressed cancer victim desperately needing his support group back--
No, it's a contest of wills to her; and she intends to win it, no matter how much it hurts me--
Even if it kills.
And so her high, hard-hearted pride
Still doesn't care; and I, in sorrow and suffering, still am locked outside.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Though she had actually thought the grief that she has heaped on my heart
Had caused me to kill myself;
She did not rejoice to find out that I had not so died;
Nor did she change, to save my life--but resolved still to keep me a pariah, suffering apart--
Alhough I promised I would do anything she asked, if she let me return, to end my lonesome lack.
She does not value my life. To her, I might as well now be ashes in an urn, placed on a dusty shelf.
No pity for my pain; no caring for my coming cancer death; no concern that I might mentally crack.
No compassion. No love. Just her cold steel heart to bar me and say: You cannot come back.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
As hard as her heart, so her decision is: she has carved it like an epitaph, and set it in stone.
So every Thursday, I must weep alone--
Blocked from enjoying a brief time, in a small but happy place,
Where I could find a little love--a little grace--
To dry my many tears, for losing life too soon; and for feeling I have lived my life in vain.
To ease my terrible fears of the cancer-spread that is going to kill me in nearly unbearable pain.
To make me feel loved and cared about--to make my spirit smile.
Instead, I am still condemned to be kept apart--sad and miserable--an outsider; an exile.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
When Socrates
Was offered to be one of these--
An exile, condemned to keep away, to stay outside--
He declined.
His noble mind
Would not let him suffer to leave
The place he loved, and go away to grieve.
To leave, and then face hatred's icy block.
He was given a terrible choice: Exile--or suicide.
Some thought that he would choose exile.
But he knew how bitter and deeply painful is that slow-poisoning bile.
He chose, instead,
To die; he thought it would be better to be dead,
Than to bear an exile's scar and scorn.
For no such end had he been born.
Yet, a cold enemy, with indifference like hate,
Sealed him to this sad, unnecessary fate;
And to a deadly fork of fate he was led.
Socrates made his decision: He broke the painful, hateful lock!
He spurned the world that allowed such a cold, hard-hearted, indifferent, shunning block.
He refused to suffer the cruelty of unjust banning; he refused to suffer as a lonely exile.
He drank the hemlock.
=======================
--Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Saturday, October 31, 2009 8:53 pm PDT
Fair. 63° F. Wind: NNW 6 mph Visibility: 10 mi
Humidity: 31% Dewpoint:32° Barometer: 30.08 in and rising
High: 73° Low: 53° Sunrise: 7:02 am PDT Sunset: 5:45 pm PDT
Copyright © 2010 by M.L.P. All rights reserved
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