Voracity not veracity mendacity groomer
Capacity for pugnacity is not a rumour
Rapacity of the seedy needy consumer
Sagacity no audacity of the baby boomer
Morality calamity stalks like a greedy puma
Tenacity but with no candour or humour
Opacity because their salacity is a tumour
As a malignant growth
or an invasive tumour
so may other creatures
experience the growth
of human population
being like a cancer
on the face of the world.
Healing begins
with each of us –
with me – recognising
that we are just one
among the creatures
needing to respect
the others in diversity.
a spit for luck
On my travels along country lanes
This Sunday afternoon, I saw a tree.
On a yellow sun-burnt field, that had
A crazed axeman cuts off its limb.
A surgeon named John had put.
a bandage on the stump, but sap
Or white blood had seeped through
The bandage, and I could sense its
Their silent suffering reminds us of mortality, prompting the audience to reflect on life's fragility.
Wounded three.
So much death on a peaceful day, I saw an
An old oak, fallen silent from an enormous tumor on its trunk, stood as a somber symbol of mortality amid the falling leaves.
Tumour on its trunk, leaves had fallen off, and
Gray branches were seeking heavenward,
a gesture of futility. A car ran across the lane.
And I spat twelve times for luck, a superstition that connects us to shared beliefs about chance and fate.
Not fretting couldn’t be gladder about getting podgy?
Forgetting about a stodgy bladder that’s definitely dodgy?
Sadder even snotty about needing a potty..regretting being dotty
Betting some grotty grumps about bumps & lumps anything spotty
Sometimes memory stumps.. only remember embers now befuddled
Somehow the huddled cast of the distant past still cuddled
Ashes of once clear flashes of near yesteryear appear muddled
Ribald oracle.. grinning about going bald...hair thinning
Apart from the ears and nose where it shows..grows & flows
Can't pretend follicle foes & woes.. do descend dear friend
Clearer you're now nearer to the rear end than the beginning
Refined increasingly find you do become more kind
Other than the tumour of another baby boomer
Defined needy seedy greedy.. must feed me consumer
Not a rumour..increasingly I pined for candour and humour
Chaps can perhaps blossom as a wined & dined late bloomer
No remorse.. scheming larrikin leaning's still in force
Gleaning the gleaming meaning of life is all about giving
Dreaming.. loving.. smile beaming and "living" of course
Feeling dead
Nowhere to turn
Dead beat ex
I'm stuck
No way of freeing myself
Finances so intertwined
Like a tumour
Attached to something vital
"We can't operate I'm afraid.
Too risky"
How did I let this happen?
So insidious
So slow
A parasite. Unseen, leaching, infecting, invading, taking, taking, taking.
Eventually, clarity. The alternative.
So often dismissed now better than the present.
But I must pay for my blindness.
I must pay the price for hope.
I cannot be set free
Like a prison sentence.
And, by the way,
Don't bother looking up
Don't pray or ask for divine help.
Help,
If there is any,
Is ground level.
Friends, family, gestures, kind words, hugs, a sympathetic emoji in a motivational text.
You've got this
You are strong
I believe in you.
No choice. Hold tight, wait for better days.
Nothing is permanent.
Lean into the love and the sun will shine again some day.
Satsuma Tumour
Sense of Humour?
That Groomer Rumour
Cometh the Hour
Cometh the TAN!
People Power Glower should Flower
Grassy brassy knolls
But proles at the polls
Sold their Souls
To joust like Faust
Ignore Marcel Proust
Cower before the Ivory Tower
Odd bod elite’s law
Tweets of Sod and God
No Enlightening
Repeats the prism
Or algorithm beats
Every criticism schism
“Ism”..a frightening..lightning rod
Pot..black..kettle knack
Debauched cheats pedal to the metal
Out of whack flak attack
Unsettle our mettle
Plot to settle that score
Scorched and torched serfs
Any petal in fine fettle
& the earth's core
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
I may be thought aloof and cold
Maybe even more so, as I’m old
Not dull lead, nor yet shiny gold
Perhaps a weird sense of humour
Yet all along, it may be a tumour
If unsure, I will never just leave it
I’m well educated, that’s for sure
On this, never challenged before
Perhaps I was ever seeking more
But knowledge, it’s not all by far
Self confidence, not being a star
I aimed high and I did achieve it
I feel love, some may say muted
But to superficial I am less suited
As in depths, my mind is rooted
Yet I will still look for inspiration
As life offers so little explanation
Me, lovable, I’d hardly believe it
So they have decided,
It's come right from the top,
Governments reaction,
My benefits should stop,
They think that 2 years of grief is enough,
But no matter how hard a couples enough,
You've had a long spell of time to recharge,
And to be part of a workforce so to give it large,
To us you look normal,
Your physically fit,
No sign of a wheelchair it's time to commit,
You have no excuses,
We will give you a call,
Your stories no different,
It happens to us all,
I call you today,
After hours in fear,
Feeling so anxious,
And wiping a tear,
My nerves are all shot,
My grief is still strong,
Caring for 3 years,
And one day she's gone,
But in that 3 years,
I saw what cancer can do,
Eat you inside out,
As the tumour just grew,
Losing your dignity,
Morals and you,
Losing body functions,
What could I do,
I lost my own battle,
One I could not win from the start,
Now you say I've got through this,
You don't have a heart.
the growth that all a person has
sinister growth like fungus or tumour
sprouting protruding
scrouting grotruding
a growth growing
with light
black black black
flat flat flat
mirroring our dances
echoing our chances
fat skinny glances
strouting brotruding
black black black
flat flat flat
but watch
for a person’s without a person
the growth that all a person has
black black black
Today was the day my partner would go,
Through the tunnel of light and her pain was no more,
My pain begins the end I don't know,
Today is no different the pain seems to grow,
I had the misery to watch her decline,
A tumour malignant but why not benign,
To witness my partner suffer like this,
Her last days she slept,
For me it was bliss,
Throughout her long illness we had to many scares,
From moments of collapsing or soiling her wears,
Problems with treatments,
Bad news from her scans,
Cathata keep blocking on the leg where it hangs,
Eight hours in chemo,
No fun on your own,
We were in a pandemic,
I'm forced to stay home,
Then to return after such a long day,
Hoping the treatment kept cancer at bay,
My partner stayed strong,
She put up a good fight,
To be free of the cancer ,
She must head for the light.
A tumour abated alters and waits.
Pathway incised, a new one it makes.
Spreading and forming, roots growing down.
The moment’s now here, a mighty rebound.
Battle exhausted, the bones ache and crack.
The units expended; yield to the plaque.
Inquiry, anger, negotiations above.
But the body is weakened, aching and done.
“I’m sorry - I’ve tired - but failed in my plight.”
“Nonsense, my son, no fighting tonight.
No orders, no mission, nor failure to bare.
Just love from your father, of that I do swear.”
Dead now, but living. Eyes open, but grey.
Pallid and wasted, a ghost in but name.
A horror unyielding, a memory maligned.
Of which we endure, for moments of time.
I have a mixed diagnosis after trying to kill myself, aged sixteen. Just after six months in hospital,
“I’m worse now “, “Than when I went in”, “I had clean arms back then.”
“I ran away from my parents; they called the police”, “I phoned home during the night as I got scared”. “Things are better today, no PRN” and “I stopped drugs, sleeping around, I have now started knitting”.
We laughed together.
My story, -I’m a drunk. -A womaniser.
She added “I think you lie more than anyone I know! Apart from the girl, who lied about a brain tumour?”. However, I was drinking at 9am. I gave her half-truths while continuing to lie. She gave me her number. “Together we have more problems than you know.”
We laughed even more.
Reflected light is shimmering here,
finding me floundering in my fluff,
gazing at this shattered glass
as I dance, dance away, away.
I cut my bare toes -
sixty steps to the minute,
those sixty seconds, sixty seconds:
click-click, tick-tock, bop-bop.
Your shine dims like a dull, dull dime
in my battered brain, seeing the blood
on my toes, as they dance, prance
on the shattered shimmering glass.
A battered brain is shapeless stuff
that lets me flounder in my fluff.
The shattered brain sees shattered glass.
They'll take this tumour away.
Will humour return, humanity remain,
once I've danced, pranced
for those surgical folk in masks
who'll take knives to my brain?
(6/7 Feb 2023)
Its been two years and i’m 15 now,
The tumour just sits there,
Waiting, staying, lingering,
Doing absolutely no harm to anything,
It’s not hurting anything physically,
Although I wish I could say the same mentally.
I’m not allowed to feel negatively about my situation,
Why should i?
Im lucky that Im healthy,
Im lucky that I still live my life,
So why do I still panic?
And cry and break down every time I hear the words:
Brain tumour,
Why am I not allowed to cry and break down?
I know exactly why.
I can’t cry and break down,
So I can be strong for everyone else,
So I can joke about it,
So I can say:
It’s just having a little boogy up there, it’s not doing anything.
When in fact it is doing something.
Something that scans and mri’s cant pick up,
Something that brain surgeons and nuerologists cant diagnose,
Something that no one else but me can see.
It’s tearing me apart, but I wouldn’t tell anyone that,
They would tell me that I shouldn’t feel this way
They wouldn’t understand.
One mans carcinogenic idea
Invade Ukraine amputate Crimea
But the tumour keeps growing
Now his sick cancer’s showing
A malignancy called North Korea!
By
David Kavanagh
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