Cancer

Cancer

You should have drank the green tea
and exercised more
because deformed cells fertilize lethal lives.
And I heard you 2,000 miles away
carping about this and that,
but it all seemed so trivial
because this runs in the family.

Now I get calls at 2 a.m. and they tell me your
angles are no longer forming the right degrees.
Your brain has encoded itself into the Morse codes of malignancy.
I tell them, send over Einstein,
send him Salvador,
and Manson and Rubik,
but they just flick the IV like they’re ridding themselves of mosquitoes.
We sit with clasped white hands and wait to be enlightened by the miracles of science.
But the masked men simply shake heads and walk away,
their steps light and slow
as to not look apathetic.

It is now 11p.m. and the lights dim as
if to say farewell to the audience,
as if this was a charade meant to entertain
and you were simply keeping the tempo to the solid green line with the monotone tune.