Monday, September 13, 2010

Third version and two pieces

xi. c.

I burnt down a small forest
I walked in a blizzard of pain
I wish you were here to tell me stuff

I'm putting it off
I'm coming around

There's somebody I need
to tell

You - aren't there
Aren't here

There's something that
I need to tell
somebody
aren't here
aren't there

Finches

omissions

Midnight loon
just you and me


So, finally, we've reached the end of the burnt forest versions and we can move forward in the bird cycle - tomorrow. But for tonight, because it's late and because I'm in the mood, I'm just going to enter a couple of new pieces.

Too late and tired for more narrative tonight. There's little narrative these days anyway. Just a lot of chemo and side effect management. Well, and squirreling...


I.

the law unto
herself

and the same
choice would
seem to be

willy nilly

time, memory and history

the little things
that make life
worth living

amazing, amazing
world


II.

a week ago
from tomorrow

suppose there were
a way to find

nearly all
have faces

complexity
will arise


Good night to you. Sweet sleep.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

I burnt down a small forest - version 2

xi. b.

I burnt down a small forest
I walked in a blizzard of pain
I wish you were here to tell me stuff
Oh what the hell, I'll just lie down

I made waves if the sea was still
We stormed into the rooms
My hands don't work
I hate it that my hands don't work

The turtles heard me and they ran
All over the world little doves cried
You're not supposed to say that
There's too much noise and it's mostly mine

These things bother me
once in a while


This is the second of three versions of this piece. This is most unusual for me, I am not usually inclined toward versions, as far as my pieces are concerned. Tomorrow's version, the last, is decidedly different.

Well, we'll see.

I am narrative-poor tonight, but wanted to post the poem anyway. There's tension that I can't cut through - a MUGA test tomorrow to see how my poor heart is doing with all this Herceptin.

We shall see.

Lulu chased squirrels today, in spite of the heat. I remembered Hunter's reminder: "Any day I take Lu squirreling is a successful day." There's more to tell about where this declarative came from. Tomorrow.

Let's just see, shall we?

Good-night, sleep well.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

For Lo

So, here we are, three days later, four? Well, certainly more than any lapse that I had hoped for.

I can offer excuses, I suppose. I can tell you the truth: that the Gemzar #2 session yesterday was a little more difficult than the first. I had a bad reaction at the end of the session: started by realizing that I was suddenly very, very tired, then weird sensations in the roof of my mouth, running up through my head, waves of nausea, chills. Quite unpleasant. And it was the end of the day - luckily two nurses, the pharmacist and my oncologist were still around. It worked out, they worked it out. It's ok.

But I was scared. And cried. And was embarrassed. And reminded how utterly powerless I am in this situation. They say, over and over, how strong I am. I do not feel strong. I feel weak and broken and afraid that the already existing damage to my body, the cancer damage, the chemo damage, the damage that my liver must have undergone even in the last two non-chemo years from the support medications, that all this will make it impossible for me to tolerate the chemo that I need to survive.

So, I'm afraid. But what happens, what actually happens, one day at a time, is that I do not fail, I tend to flourish. This makes no sense to me, but it's true.

I've been in bed for the last thirty-some hours, recuperating, gaining strength, trying to get nourishment past my mouth which, for some reason is in a ridiculous amount of pain, even though The Doctor was not impressed with the appearance. And I have been enjoying myself for some of that time. Michael made smoothies. Lauren brought the first disc of the Nova Earth series. Lulu is utterly, utterly happy that she can just lie next to me on the bed, belly-up, sometimes between me and Lolo, for god's sake! I mean what could be better than that?

AND, she got to go squirreling with Lo today. And in my notebook, on 7/15/10 there is a note, "Hunter says that I said: 'Any day I take Lu squirreling is a successful day.'" Yes, I did say that, and going out with Lo counts.

And then, on top of this entirely successful day, complete with a dinner of chicken and baked potato and broccoli provided by, enjoyed with and cleaned up by my most kind, generous and loyal friend. I mean besides all that and stupid jokes and chocolate and coffee ice cream and clean laundry - I mean good lord! - besides all that, I read some of my poems since the diagnosis to Lo, and she picked two to put in tonight's blog and I picked one, and that's what I'm going to do. And, then, tomorrow, I'll resume that bird book. I promise. So, here goes:


Three poems from these days

I.
could you believe his
jubilation

the birds need
to learn

just one day
just one

5-fluorouracil

if art then not

these magical creature


II.
I'm searching
for someone
who's missing

a fire escape
another way out

but the words
got stuck in traffic

Navelbine
Gemcitabine

What happened?
How did we come
to this world?


III.
And he liked it
all the time
he liked it
the wet cold air

and he sangs
needless songs
always needless songs
once or twice a day

terrorizing villagers

incidentally you do

a planet plagued
by catastrophe

a time known as
the heavy bombardment

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

So, with that, with dreams of the time of the heavy bombardment, I'll leave you for tonight. Good-night and I love you.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Too tired to title

xi. a.

I burnt down a small forest

I walked in a blizzard of pain

I wish you were here to tell me stuff


oh what the hell, I just lay down


I made waves when the sea was still
I stormed into the rooms
My hands don't work
I hate it that my hands don't work

the turtles heard me and they ran
all over the world little doves cried
You're not supposed to say that

There's too much noise and it's mostly mine


Aaagh who cares


Our eyes were branded by the news

Surely goodness and mercy reign

I wish you were here to tell me stuff

There's too much noise

but it's mostly...mine



This is the first of three versions of the "I burnt down a small forest" poem, xi. a, b and c.
Please don't ask me why. Maybe burning down small forests requires more than the usual attention. I don't know, I can't remember. I did give away a bunch of matches to my family today. No, I am not an arsonist, just a very incompetent consumer.


Sunday, August 15, 2010

Thank you for waiting

x.

a silent reproach
a western tanager

listen

these are what you're not
the Nashville rambler
the yellow breasted chat

what you were
that certain slant
that flash of gold
that daring high wire of a
power pole angel

talk to me
tell me a story of salvation
quote me scripture, I don't care
scratch at leaf-mold

crease the gnat-speckled air
and we might catch the
most elusive prey of all
until I have some hope


Sorry for the delay. I have been thinking about you all this time, and I wanted to get something to you, wanted to get this to you, since it is a little less bleak, and I think I owe you that. Or simply want to give you that. Anyone can be bleak right now, it's trying to catch these other moments...

Like yesterday when I was sitting in the chemo chair and the new chemo, the Gemcitabine, was silently dripping from the bag to the tube, through the tube to my port, from my port to the vena cava, and I knew, just in that moment, that I had hope again, that I trusted this Gem of a drug in a way that I could never trust the razor-bladed Xeloda. I knew, all in a moment, that I could live with it.

The chemo nurse, my friend C., had said, "We have people that have been living two years on this Gemzar." Two years! My old friend two years! That's all I want, just two years, an eternity. And I thought, "I can live with this."

I can live with this. I don't know how yet, but I know I can. So far, Lulu and I have done it by getting in bed last night, Friday night, and basically being there ever since, letting other people take care of us. "The main side effect is that your counts will drop," they said. My RBC (red blood cell) is already below the normal range - I'm anemic - but not below the cancer range. I can do this. My liver can do this.

I can do the dead-man's float.

More later.



Thursday, August 12, 2010

This might have happened

ix.

this might have happened
and this might not
while you were out

be upstanding
as always

don't be afraid
of the jays

just let us love
you
as always

carefully concealing
the cries

waiting, waiting

laughing with jays
at the very idea

counting crows

this might
have happened
this might
not

while you were
elsewhere

the other shoe
dropped

be upstanding

as always
just
don't be afraid

be of good cheer



I'll start new chemo in two days, something called Gemcitabine. I mean really! Who names these drugs? They even sound heartless and cruel! But I am being self-indulgent and melodramatic and not respecting the superstition of the cancer-ridden - it can't be wise to call the substances that are saving your life, buying you days, "heartless and cruel." Right? I should be sweet-talking them instead. Ah, the brilliance of Gemcitabine...no, I don't think I can pull it off.

I started to write about chemo, there are some things that I would like to share with you, but I think that I waited too late and am too tired. Everything I wrote was sounding brittle and defensive - not really the sound that I'm going for, in general. So, I'll just say good-night, for tonight and catch you tomorrow.



Tuesday, August 10, 2010

For Carolin's morning

viii.

Around the spit
Saturday
Sunday afternoon?

Giotto?

no, no, no

There's nothing left
but doggie sighs

Ich habe genug
Ich habe genug

I give you that

dear man

The thing of things
you gave me, us

Enough, enough

what is

Give them until
there's nothing
left

then everything

Monday, August 9, 2010

Here at the edge

vii.

Here at the edge of the

Where we sang
"Look at the birds
Look at the birds"

Lord, it's been a day
hasn't it?

There's not a dark-eyed
junco in sight

But how these fly
one two three
four or five

Keep counting

scattering upward
to the top of the

Eucalyptus

What are they

Flashes of white

Lord if we don't watch
it, it will be night



It's been a long hard weekend, and it's just too late for much more than the poem tonight. I wish it were otherwise. I would love to talk about Bobette's amazing speech on Saturday night -cogent, idiosyncratic, quirky as hell - I loved it. Or what about going back and explaining a little bit about "the tops of the trees" from yesterday's post? Or even farther than that and explaining about the whole bird cycle.

But I'm tired and I'm just going to tell you that I was talking to Charlene on the phone yesterday while she was sitting in a hotel room in L.A., watching Don iron his pants, and I was at my kitchen table, eating a turkey and cheese sandwich, and she mentioned how much she likes the bird poems - well, all right, maybe I had been saying, "Do you really like the poems?," or something like that.
And then Charlene says, "It's hard to say, to put into words, but I really love them because they sound like what I hear in my own head but can't say." And then I got so very happy because the poems are, for me, exactly that: they are pieces of what goes on in my head all the time, pieces that I have been lucky enough to overhear. Here's a quote from July 17 in my poetry notebook.

"Overheard
there was a time [the year or so after Julian died] when i was
literally reduced, or released, to just that, overhearing.
then it was almost automatic writing.

but what matters is that it's all overheard, and that what
i'm overhearing is my own thoughts, my own words - overhearing
myself."

Goodnight all. Sweet sleep.


Saturday, August 7, 2010

Bleak middle part

vi.



I want to go

to my empty room


want to?

give us a hand up


oh sweet life


when I was dying


some said this

some said that


some said look at

the tops of the trees


when I'm dying

I'm tired

cry me a river


when I'm living

it's only a street


some say this

some say that


but oh sweet life

are we coming or going


some say this:

are we coming or going?


some say that

we are

Friday, August 6, 2010

extra added attraction

Ici la belle Lulu!
Ah, comme je t'aime, Lu!

(Please see previous blog, "Resuming Our Book of Birds," for today's poems.)

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Resuming Our Book of Birds

iv.

we watch
the birds
dream
in the grander scheme
of things

Saturday afternoon

the olive-sided flycatcher
(ridiculous as that may seem)
the great pee-wee (that can't be here)
a brown towhee (that is)
a house finch (always)

waiting for a twinge
a wise complaint

living after dying
they needed me

living after dying
I thought they needed me

call and response
when crows aren't flying

I want, I want to see him again
just one more time



v.

this is the day
we're a bird made of sticks

oh, this is the night
when we're telling our stories
to strangers on planes

we brought the shield
even when we said no

whoever asked
we just like to say it

this is the day
these are the sticks



So, I repeated we watch the birds, or, technically, iv., because this is its proper place in the cycle, and I'm trying to be proper. I guess. But I included v. so that you wouldn't be disappointed when you came looking for a new poem. Carolin, this means you.

A confusing and disrupted day. The thing is, I knew it would be, the day after Herceptin always is, but I tried to carry on anyway, when I should have hidden in bed all day.

Oh well, here's some of what helped:

Sam said that if he gets the sausage hot and then puts the spinach in, all the water goes out of the spinach and the spinach kind of disappears, which he likes, because he doesn't really like spinach.

Lauren explained why I can't really say that she's sick: because this is not the sickest that she's ever been.

Carolin said that the Xeloda is probably still in my system and that maybe having the Herceptin sort of re-activated it and that's why my fingers are splitting again.

Adam says that in The Last Waltz, which I've still never seen, Van Morrison has on some kind of maroon velvety bell bottoms with a laced up crotch. He was wondering if those guys had stylists. I laughed - but what do I know?

Once again, the weirdness of the day after Herceptin got the best of me, even though I thought I was prepared for it. How can I know so much and not know it? How is this possible? Do I actually have holes in my head that the information runs out of, even as it is being poured in at the top?

Lulu was, all day, the very image of perfection, the thing that I could turn to and stay sane, the tops of the trees. I tried to put her picture here, but something's gone wrong. Just another day.

Good night and have sweet sleep. Because I love you.


Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Henry's birthday

For Henry

Oh, Henry!

If I am watching people passing

and you are swimming

and just beside me

that man reads a

book of conifers

for no good reason

and you left but lately


I can see you

glitter in the water

swimming for your birthday

sparkling for your decade

in a pool in

Santa Monica

one palm soft zephyr

blowing

Happy birthday, Henry.



Yesterday, August 3, I not only failed to print a poem here, I also forgot to acknowledge Henry's birthday, so I am interrupting the bird cycle to wish Henry, my youngest grandson, a happy birthday again! Not a decade here, but Sweet Sixteen! Happy, happy, Henry.

This is the poem that I wrote in 2004 for my youngest grandson Henry's 10th birthday, the last birthday, actually, that his grandfather, Julian - who was my husband, my lover, my partner, my Julian and, whom we all called Da in those days, because that's what Henry's cousin, Nicky, the oldest grandchild, came up with in his first year, and, once again, in those days, Nicky was the boss...Oh, I was saying that that was the last of Henry's birthdays that Da was alive for.

So, I'm interrupting the bird cycle to post a recycle! Hmmm. So be it. It makes me happy to think about these people, Henry and Nick, and their siblings Sam and Nora, whose lives have so unexpectedly, so fortuitously intertwined with, been part of, mine. I'm so happy that I got to be your grandmother, you guys, or, as three-year old Henry joyfully announced to a stranger one day when he was identifying me, "She's Mennie!, She's my STEP-grandmother!," that "step" clearly an honorific, a title of great esteem. One of my proudest moments.

Today was chemo day and I'm feeling it. Just Herceptin today, since we stopped the Xeloda, still I couldn't have done it without Lauren's kind and patient help. Tomorrow I call The Doctor and talk about what's next. Tonight I'm tired and scared, if I think about it, so I'm really grateful to have this blog and you guys to not think about it.

I hope you all have sweet sleep.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Sweet terra finch



iii
sweet terra finch
I am not asking
(you for) much
just all or nothing
just your devisement

give me a flick
a promise
a gristle or profile
and take off

we like it here
when you've just left




Sunday, August 1, 2010

Sunday night


ii.

because they're light and dark

        and inconsequential


and it's the right version


          but not today


dan at the end of the world

and alison too


she's just baggy

and the way she feels


what a lot of rebar


it's nice at the

            end of the world

pink keds

white dog


            small face

look back at the pale day moon

what a lot of rebar

land of concrete chunks

land of the end of the world


              flit

one woman scurrying

            into the scree

scramble over scrabble


what black thing flew

across the path


I like it here


at the end of the world




Just enjoy this for tonight, if you can. It was written many months ago. The end of the world here is, of course, the wonderful Albany Bulb.

Tonight I am tired and discouraged and I'm thinking about people who aren't here.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Our book of birds

         

i.

Lately, lately

we have hungered for news
Nora's bones
Dan's words
or the completeness of birds

Somewhere, someone
pines for
but we
still long for
or birds
their shocking whole

The loved are still
they are so far from
what we can
the human strain
the sloppiness of cats

Just give me birds



I've decided to lead with tonight's poem. These pieces are, after all, my main reason for blogging. At least I think they are. So it might be wise to put the poem first.

So, this piece is the opening one for the poem cycle that I think of as, our book of birds. And, from tonight on, I hope to present the cycle pieces in order. The cycle is complete. That is to say I've written all of it that I'm going to, I think, but I lived with it for so long, through such a difficult and even mythic phase of my life, that it feels good to be sharing it, piece by piece, with...well, with you.

Tonight, I'm very tired and I don't think that I can say much else. It's been a wonderful day. My friend Adam drove Lulu and me to Ocean Beach and we walked along the water. It was a long drive today - Saturday on the Bay Bridge, and I kept remarking on how long it was, which of course made it longer. But we made it and it was worth it. The Pacific Ocean is still there! Honest! Even though I haven't been over to keep an eye on it for, I don't know, months. It's still there and it still comes right up to the beach! Imagine my delight!

Adam claims that he swam in this ocean when he was a child. On a regular basis. Without a wet suit! So he says. Repeatedly! I would like to say that he's a known liar, since that would explain his behavior. But he's not. Not at all. So how to understand such a thing? I just don't know. Oh, sweet mysteries of life.

I must sleep. I am already sleeping and the dreams are getting mixed up with...whatever this purports to be. The Xeloda is slowly seeping out of my system and I must sleep.

You sleep well too.

Good-night.






Number One

Nicky says that I should start a blog and post one of my poems every day. Or did I say that, to Nicky, casually, over Korean BBQ at a weekday lunch, or out on campus while we watched Lulu chasing squirrels at Faculty Glade? Well, whichever. Whatever. Whoever. Nicky's the one who knows what a blog is and how to start one, I'm the one who seems to have something to say...constantly

The point is that Nicky, whether he started the idea or not, Nicky is the one who wouldn't let the idea go. He's the one who sat on my couch on Tuesday and Googled Blogger, worked his way to the set-up page, and then handed me the laptop and said, "Ok, now, you just need a name." And there was no real escape. I was fried from the chemo, the new chemo, the chemo that I call cruel and that my beloved oncologist, Dr. Jim, has, since then, just yesterday in fact, declared me free from. (Well, go ahead, you think it's an ill-constructed sentence, you take it on, work it out. I'd be grateful.) He took one look at the soles of my poor feet and said...

So, anyway, on Tuesday, I was fried and Efren was in the back, painting trim before I lose all the window frames to dry rot in the laundry area, and Nicky had brought me Thai noodles from the Thai place that Pat taught me about, and I had been able to eat just enough to feel almost human again, even though every bite was a small torture for my chemo-shredded mouth—Xeloda does have a thing for mucus membranes, it seems. So, what could I do? I set up a Blogspot and here I am.

Just a note here, by the way, in all fairness to Xeloda, Dr. Jim, when I called it cruel, said that, "Many women find it completely benign, Melanie, believe it or not. It seems to run the gamut from A to Z. Unfortunately, you seem to be a Z." Ah, yes, a Z. And not for the first time. But my advice, if you are struggling with metastasized breast cancer, and your doctor says, "Well, I think we should try Xeloda." My advice? Try it! We have to keep trying, right?

More on this later, and it's a pretty amazing story so far, if I do say so myself—her2 neu positive, hormone-receptor negative metastasis in the liver; four and a half years of living with mets, so far, and two years of that chemo-free, so far. Honest, no kidding. No, I know, none of us can believe it, either, but I just keep limping along—

So, I do want to explain who Nicky is, and Lauren, who hasn't even appeared yet, but who wanted me to blog about who I am and that I have cancer, and some of the things that I think about AS WELL as printing one of my poems each day. And there's so much to say about living with cancer and living with dying and all that, BUT...

I just spilled a large glass of iced club soda in my bed. Again. And I'm actually pretty tired. So, until tomorrow, I will just post one of my bird poems. They were written as a cycle, these bird poems, and this is not officially the first of the cycle, but it is the one that has provided the name of this blog, and the url. And I sort of love it. A lot. So, here it is and sweet good night to you.

Today's Poem

we watch
the birds
dream
in the grander scheme
of things

Saturday afternoon

the olive-sided flycatcher
(ridiculous as that may seem)
the great pee-wee (that can't be here)
a brown towhee (that is)
a house finch (always)

waiting for a twinge
a wise complaint

living after dying
they needed me

living after dying
I thought they needed me

call and response
when crows aren't flying

I want, I want to see him again
just one more time