Lucidity returns to me.
Another brief, lucky reprieve
of the torment, the shattering
of mass into this wretched,
hairless body of a child.

Malnourished eyes catch mine
in the stained hospital light.
Familiar face of vanity
now thinned to skull,
tarry naked for the young nurse, as
suspended strings play out this;
my marionette existence.

I have become the aftermath.
The end-point of cancer's feast,
seasick infomercials praising
my false bravery,
ignoring my persistent desire for life
and all the Gods I have turned to
in the past six days
and then tomorrow, I rest.

Cancer's feast. Flaying me to bone,
to awful bone and thoughts giving way
to the heave of my poisoned lungs,
the tide rolls and floods
of blackened deserts,
of shadows and malignant force.

Toasting 'lack of spring', I am devoured by it.
Each day is spent in the fly-swat region of summer,
multitudes eating at me in the Indian air,
in air of parasite, of larvae, of virus and pollution,
of all that smothers life and light.

I am tired of hospitals.
I am tired of lifting my *******
at the maternal call of the nurse,
of hacking purpled guts
in the dead of night,
in the light of day,
bile now a resident of taste.

Oh, wasted image,
oh, redundant beast;
take me to the back,
to the cut-throat choir
behind the curtain.

Oh, winter's passing,
sing to me in my demise,
a dove-salute of olive branch,
as far land's arrival
and plains unexplored
approaches,
approaches,
approaches as pain subsides,
as Laura comes with baskets of ****
and covert return of appetite.

I am barely living. Dying star of eros
and factory philosophies of truth,
there is only time left to crawl to the bath
and to fly through the avenues of memory.

In a life half-loved
and in a life half-gone,
comes a dream unbounded
and yet, finally lived.