i’ve gathered you all here to tell you i have leukemia

 he remarked               as if this 17-month old secret

was simply another announcement                   of  policy or procedure change

a fundraising site confirmation date                   or news of a generous check

received from a donor                                            in this afternoon’s mail…

so, now i must take this news                pack it into a small container

and travel with it on tomorrow’s flight     this unexpected and unwelcomed vagrant               hitchiking on my emotions         interrupting the silence       with shouts and distractions            its voice will scream at me        sink me into a well of darkness        its scents stinking up each place with the smells of death and chemo’s poisons        it will  creep over me   like dread like the taste of iron and bile in my mouth         it will  punch me in the forehead     sicken the spirit of my belly      when instead             i should be  dancing    happily        alone    in places i have never been     when the beauty around me           should be  all that matters  …      

it all makes sense now, i remarked back to him          when all i really wanted to do

was kick the wall            scream  and run from the building     with unwanted tears

in hot pursuit

why is it always the good guys, i ask again

the newts and the georges and the sarahs and the fallwells   the o’reillys, the hecks

the killers      the mistakes          the wastelands of human spirit       the dregs and the hate-filled ones

thrive and live          their long and non-compassionate   arrogant lives

while the good guys                          repeatedly       are left

to face an unfair road       passing through chemical sickness

onto the  runway toward

another     too-early plunge

while facing the funhouse mirrors

of one’s own mortality…