"melanoma" poems
The way
That the sun rays
Sunbathe
Hot day, faraway
Photons travel
Outer space
8 minutes
On your face
Covering you in
Ultraviolet
X-ray
Nuclear waste
Pretty cool,
I'd say.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 3:14 PM UTC
As the wet wind hums its way through our two tower six-cylinder apartment complex. Birds fall from their naked winter wept branches, braced by stiff bones, mapped out in Alexandria, carrying notes from El Salvador. The corner market is closed, never opened. A hair salon stands in its place, it wrings out the "R's" from a Philadelphia warshing.
And like every night, hot air cakes on an extra layer of indecipherable red dots up the arms and around the neck, minute pustules of hypochondria that steal my finger tips from the keyboard. I scratch and tip them, looking under their fiery scarlet caps for, I-don't-know-what disease. Paul says It's that magic school bus melanoma, typhoid drip, it comes at you from a computer screen and eats at your nervous system until you've got the wambles.
Tuesday's used to be the worst, until I OWNED THAT **** I make a pronoun out of aluminum foil and wear it as a hat on a first date. Tinder is not bad for conceptual art projects. I carry it within me like an anodyne complex, out into the frozenness; into my mouth the air comes around my teeth, behind my uvula until winter freezes my voice and I am breathless.
I abandon my miniature house to enter the pyramidal pinetum to the North. Wild paradise shrubs gather with songless animal noises watching as I take naked photographs of my father to preserve his body from anything less than his great immortal end. He lives on black moss and water from a nearby pond,
he authors the face of Anthony Hopkins, thrown about, another casualty of fervid and blurry dreaming.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:30 PM UTC
A worst-case-scenario mentality
Breeds emotional nightmares of what-ifs
Methodically feeling the pain in each possibility
Preparing for Hell, knowing it is impractical, improbable, and unkind
Each reaction gauged
Smiles erupt in each better choice
A familiar road traveled often
Lead only by a history of pain
It ebbs and flows, bobs and weaves at will
This reality is organized, easy to understand
Random thought of an unlikely, unfathomable future
**Vivid like a film
Unwavering, persistent
There is no control**ling its outcome
Forced to watch the images forged in a broken mind
Tears burn flesh and a naked heart bleeds
Stop rolling, just...stop
No amount of pleading slows the images
The pain is overwhelming
Far beyond self-inflicted, torturous, methodical thoughts
Uncontrollable, inconsolable
True and real
So very real
There is but one way to stop that future
The one shown in visions of just deserts
The future that smolders through present joy
Preemptive pain is just not an option
I've seen the future my heart has built
**The shards of a shattered soul
Offer no comfort**
My worst-case-scenario was but a benign freckle on the elbow of a body invaded by metastatic melanoma
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 5:00 AM UTC
Substantial quadrants of hate
Throughout these veins circulate
Spiraling in frenzied states
Adrift an ailing coma
Infinite corruption clawed my corneas
Birthing the erasure of euphoria
Imprinting trademarks of memoria
Leaving in wake vile aromas
All confidence dissolved to solvents
Due to definitive involvement
Susceptible to gaunt installments
Marring my skin with melanoma
Mother Earth serves as a mime
Humanity must be refined
© 2012 (All rights reserved)
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 4, 2012 at 1:23 AM UTC
i loved you, right
a love unreturned,
unrequited
but alas, still
stoked by little miners with
hearts of brass their
iron faces grimacing at the task,
little beads of lots of sweat
dripping down their
taut frowns.
so what i meant to say is that
i love you, right,
and it’s a love that still
burns, bright, enough
to bring the boys home but
let’s be honest
it wouldn’t best the sun, but
**** it’s a terrible light,
it throws everything into a soft relief
where pretty, soft voiced sheep say
pretty, soft voiced things like
‘it’s okay to feel this way’
‘i want you to be happy’
‘she sounds amazing’
and other things that normal people
tell me mean that either
i don’t love you
or i’m moving on.
they don’t understand though,
i mean,
i love you, right,
though all that sheep **** makes it
sound as if
i’m waving you off,
smashing the celebratory champagne on your bow,
waving you off into the distance with a lacy hanky,
joyful tears cascading down my powdered cheekbones,
i’m greedy
maybe even,
needy,
a disgusting word and
even if i make pacts with myself
to the order of
‘he can do so much better’
‘i am damaged goods’
and other associated half truths
i’d be a liar if i said that
i would kick you out of bed
or even rebuke the slightest of
advances, no i’d take my chances
and i cannot bear it, really
i’d touch you and whatever wholeness
whatever someone else would
parse as clean or pure or holy
wouldn’t disintegrate, no
wouldn’t tarnish, no
would most probably just implode
under the combined pressure
of emotionally-mentally-fucked-in-the-head-doe
(where the **** do you think the miners got all that coal)
so, yes… wait. no?
i love you, right
but just ignore it
enjoy the lights
please remember them
tell your friends and
cherish them until
they are taken by
death, drink, dementia
but i’m sure your mum,
teacher,
or television
long ago informed you that
bright lights are detrimental to vision
so think of your future and
forget now
if you’re tempted by how i look at you
remember how
sunburn seems innocuous
until you see your skin
and sunscreen pretty useless
‘til you learn the sun will win
and the best way to avoid
dainty melanoma
is
to
go
inside
and
lock
your
door
and act like you don’t know her.
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 11:51 PM UTC
You’d never guess
By eavesdropping
To the vapid colloquialisms
Of your neighbors, your co-workers
That 5 open sores fester upon our mother’s face,
5 gyres,
(even the word is disgusting),
of floating plastic,
tangle and strangle the warm wombs of our seas,
stretch out at the horizons like blankets of melanoma.
Livid and neon infection
Drips, seeps, spreads from Fukushima,
Genociding the Pacific—3,000 nautical miles
Devoid of breath or heartbeat,
Save a lonely whale with tumors
Full of hot dog coupons and carpet cleaning flyers.
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 6:40 PM UTC
After My Little Black Dog Died of Melanoma.
After the Lumps on Her Small Brittle Body Slowly
Burned to a Pile of Ash in the Vet’s Office. After My Step-Father
Drove in His Ostentatious Truck to Pick Up Her Remains. After I Cried
in My Dorm Room and Tried Not to Wake My Roommate.
Realization that My Loss Does Not Make Me Different. There Are
Graveyards That Span For Miles and They Are Filled With More
Dead Bodies Than I Have Ever Seen. There Are Hundreds of
Thousands of Children in the Foster Care System That Have
Never Met Their Parents or Maybe They Did and it Just Didn’t Work Out.
Kids Who Might Have Lived With Their Terminally Ill Parent(s) For Years
Not Just Days. Kids Who Never Sat in the Opened Up Trunk of Their
Mother’s Black Nissan Pathfinder at the Drive-In Movies. Kids Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Old Grandparents or Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Dead Grandparents. Kids Who Were Never Told Not to Throw Snowballs Because There Might be Big Chunks of Ice in Them. Kids Who
Never Had a Childhood Dog to Cry Over. Kids Who
Don’t Like to Read Because They Were Never Read
Bedtime Stories When They Were Younger. Kids Whose
Mothers Never Called Them Tweetie or Pumpkin or Honey or ***
Kids That Were Not Told to Just Go to the Bathroom When
Their Tummies Hurt Instead of the Health Room. Kids Who Never
Listened to the Spice Girls’ Album Spice World on Cassette on the
Way to the Store. Kids Who Never Got a Peach Drink Out of a Vending Machine at the Pick’N’Save on 27th Street and Still Don’t Know
Exactly What 50¢ Peach Drink Their Mother Bought For Them.
There Are Thousands of Dogs Euthanized Each Day Because of
How Sick They Are or Because They Were at a Shelter For Far Too Long
or Because They Are a Pitbull or a Rottweiler or Some Other
Irrationally Feared and Disliked Dog Breed. We Didn’t Euthanize My
Stage-Four-Cancer-Stricken Dog or Even Get Her Treatment Beyond
Pain Medicine Because We Were Selfish. We Do a Lot of Things Because
We Are Selfish. We Waited Five Days to Pull the Plug on My Vegetable
Mother Because We Were Waiting For a Miracle That We Knew Would
Never Happen Because She Stopped Breathing the Moment the
Aneurysm Burst. My Sister is Getting Married in June and My
Grandfather is Going to Walk Her Down the Aisle in My Mother’s
Place. My Grandparents Had to Move In With My Sister After My
Grandmother Fell Down Too Many Times and Didn’t Take Her Health
Problems Serious Enough. There Are Repercussions For Thinking
You Are Safe When You Are Really Not.
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 10:18 PM UTC
i'm not scared of the dark
or being alone
or crowds
or monsters
or strangers
i'm not in fear of things
but i worry
i worry over everything
it stresses me to my core
devours my mind
makes me sleepy
if only i could sleep
i worry about the stupid things i said
i worry about the work expected of myself
i worry about my future
i worry about the judgements others make of me
i worry about the way i stepped left today
as i rip myself to pieces
just because i should have stepped right
i cry over my own thoughts
the worries i create drown me
literally
i worry about a mole on my skin,
what if it's melanoma?
i worry about how much i worry,
what if it's anxiety?
well i think it is
but i don't want to say it
what if people think i'm crazy?
i would rather be stressed
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 5:50 PM UTC
...
Set Fire to the beach!
T h e c r u e l s u n c r i e d.
While the edge of the earth
licked it's rays with the tide
his skin like a paper; it peels and curls and cracks
the heat like a vapor; it seals and swirls and traps
i t s e l f i n s i d e h i s c e l l s
a virus encircles above
just a seaside paloma
i m p r e g n a t i n g skin
with malignant melanoma
his doctor like a butcher; with hands he chops and stains
his pain like a structure; it stands and burns and caves
i n o n i t s e l f
Set fire to his cells!
The cruel chemo cried
while the wicked bag of morphine
dripped drops at his side
...
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017 at 6:56 PM UTC
Ah,
the days when we would
run and frolic and
not hide from the sun.
When our silent, unknown
motto was "melanoma be ******
I enjoyed those carefree,
ignorant summer days.
They will never be back.
Mar 15, 2011
Mar 15, 2011 at 1:37 AM UTC
oh, the things you hear at the doctors'
the elderly man with melanoma on his face
trudging out behind his wife
mumbling **** under his breath
the sweet weathered receptionist
says "nice to see you again!"
to her seventieth geriatric patient
there comes a day
when her patients quit calling
quit showing up
and she has fewer and fewer people
to recognize
ugh
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 3:15 PM UTC
RED
Your bright red visor
turned backwards so the wind won’t devour it
Your bright red skis
zipping down the race course
Your bright red visor
facing forward to block the sun as you swing the club and strike the golf ball
My bright red lipstick
kisses my mouth,
as I prepare to perform
My bright red costume
sparkles in the stage lights
My bright red lipstick
ruined from the tears streaming down my face.
The thoughts running through my head
are like traffic
Bright, loud and slow moving
I can’t think
Can’t breathe
Can’t speak
What is happening?
When a person dies
Where do they go?
Heaven?
Hell?
The after life?
Space?
All these questions that will never be answered
Science can explain how someone dies
but not what happens after
Science told me that he had melanoma
Science told me that our time was limited
Science can’t tell me how he felt
Science can’t tell me what he was thinking when that last puff of air reached his lungs
Science can’t tell me how much he loved me
But the answer to that last question, is so clear
My bright red lipstick
kisses my mouth,
My midnight black dress
draped on my curves
My bright red lipstick
ruined from the tears streaming down my face
Your bright red visor
now worn by the man I call my daddy
Your bright red skis
still zipping down the course,
but with a different skier, your son,
Your bright red visor,
a reminder to those, that you are still with us.
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 9:12 PM UTC
I want to be beached
With you
Days on end
Nothing to do
Not caring about melanoma or wrinkles
Lost is the idea that this is all there is
Frozen without further body deterioration
Dressed for dinner
Undressed by desert
It’s all over to soon
Your dead forever
What is there besides *** and shopping?
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 11:14 AM UTC
As the wet wind hums its way through our two tower six-cylinder apartment complex. Birds fall from their naked winter wept branches, braced by stiff bones, mapped out in Alexandria, carrying notes from El Salvador. The corner market is closed, never opened. A hair salon stands in its place, it wrings out the "R's" from a Philadelphia warshing.
And like every night, hot air cakes on an extra layer of indecipherable red dots up the arms and around the neck, minute pustules of hypochondria that steal my finger tips from the keyboard. I scratch and tip them, looking under their fiery scarlet caps for, I-don't-know-what disease. Paul says It's that magic school bus melanoma, typhoid drip, it comes at you from a computer screen and eats at your nervous system until you've got the wambles.
Tuesday's used to be the worst, until I OWNED THAT **** I make a pronoun out of aluminum foil and where it as a hat on a first date. OKCupid's not bad for conceptual art projects. I carry it within me like an anodyne complex, out into the guzzling wind, the air that comes into my mouth and looks for any breath within me that it can go out of me with, and I'm breathless.
I abandon my miniature house to enter the pyramidal pinetum to the North. Wild paradise shrubs gather with songless animal noises watching as I take naked photographs of my father to preserve his body from anything less than his great immortal end. He lives on black moss and water from a nearby bourn,
he's the mien of an Anthony Hopkins, living in a hologram I saw in my dream last night.
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 6:25 AM UTC
You make me self-destructive.
I want to live dangerously.
I might skin my knees but at least
I get to play with the big boys.
You, you’re like drinking balsamic vinegar.
A taste is good enough it
makes me forget that too much is a bad idea.
I’ll trade cancer for the smoke in your kisses
because we all die sometime.
I pick melanoma over a world without sun
any day.
I’ll take the crutches happily
when you run out of things to break and turn to my legs.
Broken bones hurt well when they
shatter in adventure.
Your smile’s pretty enough I didn’t
notice your teeth were sharpened.
**** I’d read Twilight for you.
(I’m not saying I’d be a fan,
I’ll only go so far.)
You make me want to play
hide and seek in a burning building.
I don’t like heights but you make me
want to climb things.
I want to tempt fate.
I want to study your catastrophes.
I’ll chase your tornado temper
across whichever state you feel like
destroying today.
The drought on my lips is only cured
by the wildfire of your kiss.
I’ll bask in your heat waves
and build my house on the slopes
of your volcanic personality.
I feel like mist next to your
hurricane winds.
You say this is either
the beginning of something great
or the apocalypse has come.
But who says they can’t be the same thing?
If nothing else, it’d certainly be something to see.
May 11, 2011
May 11, 2011 at 12:57 AM UTC
Infallible were the nights we spent alone on rocky shorelines
I never gave all those pent-up emotions I had to the king of the stop signs
Like you did
I never counted on your instances
You do kid
About counting lost images oh, oh
Dishonorable were the things we stashed when we were in Oklahoma
Counting our chickens before they've hatched and saying your freckles were melanoma
Like we did
I could always count on you being morbid
You may kid
But your eyes don't lie when you are sordid
Containable were our dark white lies we told each other in confidence
Playing the double agent just like a cave filled with resonant
Echo-o-o-o-o-o-os
Dec 25, 2010
Dec 25, 2010 at 7:37 PM UTC
Pale
people shudder without a fail
Since when did tan
become wanted by every man?
when everyone is knowing
the risks, girls keep going
the risks, aren’t risky
because it’ll never be me
until I get melanoma at 40
I have been shamed all my life
because my skin is too “white”
pasty ain’t tasty
they all keep telling me
making me insecure every summer
I should be ashamed of my legs
since they aren’t the right shade
always being told I’m not as pretty
because I’m not as tan or skinny
girls always telling me
they don’t know how they could be me
fueling hundreds of dollars in this sick industry
I should sit under a bed of bulbs
take pictures, post it online so everyone knows
that I’m going to be tan as sand
no longer pale
because to be pale is to fail.
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 3:10 PM UTC
I don't want magnetic eyelashes
I want magnetic poetry
No Botox for me
Let me wrinkle let me age
It's alright to become who I'm suppose to be
Don't want fake extensions my hair is its own
It will grow out one day at a time
No need for microblading, highlights or ****** scrubs
Won't curl my lashes or disguise my wrinkles
My skin can tell my story through native lines
The burden of beauty is a fools game
I shall use my smiles lines as a accessory
Wrinkle creams will not fix your personality
I refuse to fake fuller lips
Acid peels are not for me
Cheek fillers full of botulism
Skin lasers to erase me
Hair removal will be with a five dollar schick
Keep your tanning beds and keep your Melanoma
Don't need Chanel or Louis Vuitton not paying 2,000 dollars for a handbag
I will be just me
Nov 4, 2019
Nov 4, 2019 at 11:52 PM UTC
Back stage everyone was in a huff getting ready for the show
The critics were in the balconies
The understudies waited jealously in the wings
A fresh crop of new actors were about to take the plunge
To some this was just a pit stop to fame
To others this was their big break
And to the rest it was a moment where people would chew them out and pick at all their rookie moves
The actresses eye make up so rainbow-vibrant
Like oil spots
Popping Dramamine so they'll be able to stomach the ride
The men putting brill cream in their hair
Looking like quaffed oil slicks
Like they ran their fingers down an dip stick and applied generously
They all had great, even sun tans
Melanoma was of no concern in the tanning beds
And the burnt skin was just picked away
Sunspots
Here it comes curtain call
"Places everyone"
Time for this debacle
Everyone take a lap at the salt lick for luck
Take a bow
Not a dry eye in the house
They cast recedes back stage
Crying, hugging
They congratulate each other
But now live in paranoia of what the reviews will say
The applause outside is nonstop
They're all gonna need Melatonin to sleep and end the excited squeaks
They all get in their cars
Their SUV's
4 doors
2 doors
Hummers
All terrain vehicles
Taxis
Buses
Trains
And get rest for the next show tomorrow
As I'm left here driven to madness by guilt
Because I paid off the crowd to clap and the pundits to write rave reviews
That was the act for this evening, a tor de force production
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 3:47 PM UTC
she ties my shoestrings
together. so my feet don't go
independently. while I try to
waltz her musical score
of rests through a series of
misfires from an amygdala,
who thought it knew the
best way to handle
California droughts.
instead, arm hairs burned up
and only a melanoma
of false hope traveled.
skin to heart, to brain but you
nestled in a tender gluteal spot.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 11:41 AM UTC
Precious commodity on the planet , envied by young and old , the very signature of the affluent , a blue diamond in the night , a personal star awarded the few , pirouettes beneath the midday Sun , starlight awarded all the colors of the rainbow ! Her hours numbered , the sacrificial cool ambiance bestowed upon rightful delegate , her name is Ice ! Mans only hope in the ever expanding desert ! The ozone nearly depleted , temperatures at the Equator exceed one hundred seventy degrees , Winter in Nome , Alaska , fifty degree low temps , Florida has become a coral reef , Valdosta , Georgia , Dothan , Alabama are port cities with white sand beaches ! We are a nocturnal people , the high risk of melanoma , more than the current human body can take , Winter has become the time for vacations and family gatherings , schools run from two a.m. till nine a.m. , fresh water is under government control , unlawful storage of potable water or contamination of river , stream or creek is now a capital offense ! Bicycles are the number one mode of transportation for people headed to their place of work at Dusk ! A third of the Earths human population was lost during the initial fifty year period of the climate catastrophe , World Environmental Police are granted the power of Judge , Jury and Executioner , the world now focused on ozone replacement , a green planet now barren , brown with infrequent cloud cover , one hundred degree nighttime temps in the middle of Winter !
Oct 28, 2015
Oct 28, 2015 at 12:30 PM UTC
i've been rocked
i constantly feel like i am about to ***** up the food i hardly eat
i've been rocked
i cannot sleep at night and my fear of the witching hour is slowly returning
i've been rocked
i found a weird mark on my toe and i'm almost convinced it's melanoma
i've been rocked
i don't know how i feel about you
i've been rocked
i don't know how i feel about you
i've been rocked
i've been rocked
i've been rocked
Dec 22, 2014
Dec 22, 2014 at 3:05 AM UTC
Golden haired and handsome, Joe seemed to have it all.
He’d won a PAC 8 championship just that previous Fall.
Surely the Heisman would be his; another prize to win.
He started strongly, at least at first, but would falter at the end.
Joe Roth had Melanoma and it ravaged skin and bone,
It was a lonely battle, the hardest fight he’d known.
Joe Roth was a gamer who would strap his helmet on
and go out on the gridiron though his strength was nearly gone.
He knew that he would not grow old, or play the game for pay.
In this final autumn of his life he merely wished to play.
. Despite fatigue and nausea he still made every start,
Until his game clock ran out on an overburdened heart.
There’s a moment when the cheering stops, when a man feels most alone;
blind-sided by a tackle while checking down against the zone.
When game clock seconds tick away and the outcomes not in doubt
Joe stood tall in the pocket even when it was a rout.
He gave the game the best he had, then it was his time to go.
He was an All- American, and no ordinary Joe
Dec 27, 2016
Dec 27, 2016 at 8:55 PM UTC