silent carnivorous savage,
                                          why prey upon our innocent flesh?
streamlining your black venom into fragile veins,
                                          sparse roots multiplying sickness

this lack of color that you provide
drains the blues
                    and reds
                    and yellows,
                  until 4 white hospital walls remain,
and in this bland, neutral palace of death,
                  the beeps of machines
and cries of heartbroken families serve to torture

this, the true fashion of your killing . . .
          no, not the mass piling of amounting dead cells,
but this blood,                                     it's not just blood anymore,
                            crimson liquid melancholy,
traveling into a mind that can only construct horrible images,
                                         groups of mourners surrounding a single grave,
                           wiping Sunday's tears against their pale faces

gnawing away at the slabs of sanity,
                                           concrete and brick,
the image of a young boy with a shovel
                                           far too heavy for him,
using all of his strength to catapult dirt over a casket,
                                           burying his vital innocence,
into the unforgiving soil where it will never be retrieved

how many tears must you taste for your thirst to be quenched?
how many lives must you waste as our friends are entrenched?

why, cancer?