Cancer Is Catholic -- It Loves To Evangelize, & It Will Intermarry With Anything To Claim The Progeny

WHITE RABBIT
Edward Dorn

The bloodworker was in a bad mood
unreasonable as it would be
to imagine she enjoys her work
if she enjoys hurting you as
an aspect of not enjoying her work--
well, I'll have to interview the alien
on that one. Sometimes I imagine it yawns.
Life for an alien is not any better
than it is for the subject. This fact
is rarely remarked.

The drawing method they use at this clinic
is a spring-loaded blade which slits
the side of the great or the ring finger
very fast, very painful but very brief
mercifully, sweet baby Jesus, very brief.
The bloodworker extracts the blood
with a series of short passes
over the slit,
the blood collects in the rounded
bottom of a small test tube.

Why do it this way rather than
sticking you with another needle?
Exactly, yet another needle
the whole affair is an attack on the veins
to get at the Alien and its migrating colonies.
Cancer is Catholic -- it loves to
evangelize, and it will intermarry with anything
to claim the progeny.
I suppose I made a smart remark
as usual, my tongue has been
my genius and my downfall.
The nurse began to collect the specimen
with ever increasing pressure on the split flesh
I nearly fainted, but not a tear
fell from my lid,  and not a throb shook my throat
until I'd left the collecting station
and then I shook and wept, and Jesus,
I'm sorry to say I hated that
bloodworker even despite the fact
that I knew she couldn't help
what she had a great irresistible
need to do, to hurt me deeply
because I was a bearer of cancer.

We had saluted the day when
Jenny said WHITE RABBIT*
I lay for a while trying to think
what would I wish for if such a genie
really delivered -- a dismissal of the alien?
...no. There are wishes too complex to be granted.
I wished (and I'm not supposed to tell you this!)
I wished for a needle worker to
set up my infusion lines
without blowing a vein.
And lo and behold, into the
waiting room came a nurse
like on a half shell
except dressed in white
and led me to a small room
with a TV/video cassette port
which I'd never reached before.
Flawless butterfly insertion
uncomplicated, competent anchoring
I could have wept at my good fortune
but I didn't, I thanked her
sincerely and asked for a V-8 juice,
I was even drinking it without enzymes.

And soon my vision tightened with Decadron
the first of the drips instilling you
with the fortitude to take the onslaught
of the now looming Taxol before
the sleepy-Alice-in-Wonderland
admixture of Benadryl and stomach
stiller Tagamet, oh wondrous day
Chemo day, Monday, and it must be
obvious to all in this era, obvious to all
telling the truth violates
your right to free speech
violates your expectation of credibility.
Telling the truth will greatly amuse your alien
​if you got one.

from Edward Dorn's Chemo Sábe
recommended by Jeff Stumpo

* - WHITE RABBIT (which Adam Stone has always heard as "Rabbit Rabbit") must be the first thing you utter when you wake up on the first of any month in order to get a wish

QUACK
Adam Stone

Doctor trump is building a wall to keep
mental illness out of our country
Schizophrenia is on the do not fly list
All the broken limbs voted him into
office The doctor is morally obligated to support
cancer but doesn't believe its 
lymphnode of origin He believes
depression sends all of its rapists among us
visibly injured americans The biggest problem our country is facing
is exhaustion We should be able to break what
skin we own but all brain
maladies are suspect Register your asthma
A yellow star for panic attacks Only the 
bandaged head wounds  the crutches the
wheelchair bound veterans of the class
war may freely succeed in the land of the 
fragmented All of his
unpatients cheer what they
imagine but can not see His
stethoscope head lub dubbing the
dwindling pulse of a flatlining electorate