Category: Cancer Poems

Cut short–
Lives ravaged by cancer.
But for some, a grand escape
From deeper life suffering.

Each of us is unique, you know.
We live our lives, let them flow,
As though there is no tomorrow, and
Then our cancer tells us that isn’t so.

One thing you learn right away.
A new language is required to keep death at bay,
Which includes technical terms, Latin words and abbreviations.
Things you never imagine anyone would say.

Our doctors, nurses, and other caregivers
Never know exactly what cancer delivers,
And because their cancer language still doesn’t know
Life’s twisting, turning, overflowing rivers.

Berlitz can’t teach us to speak this tongue.
Requires a doctor, nurse, someone from a technical rung.
We cringe to words like malignant, spread and metastasis,
And words like benign and clear, Heaven’s praises sung.

For fear the language of cancer they may abuse,
Cure and healing, rare words that oncologists use.
Instead they dance, tiny delicate ballet steps.
Bolder terms about prognosis they refuse.

But late at night when I talk to God,
I spare no words in asking to be healed.
Anything else just a façade.
Bolder words I use as along the healing path I trod.

Jigsaw puzzles, missing pieces everywhere,
That patients, families, and friends share.
Some they finish, most they don’t,
Some too hard, so they won’t.

Oddly shaped interlocking and tessellating pieces.
Bit by bit, the perplexing mystery decreases.
Skilled puzzlers work first to build the frame,
While others treat all pieces just the same.

Some work the puzzles like their lives,
Trying this, trying that till an answer arrives.
While befuddled by the jigsaw puzzles,
Cancer causes them much bigger struggles.

For some, the puzzles distract them from their pain.
Others wonder about life on the celestial plane.
When finally the nurse calls their name,
In the waiting room, the jigsaw puzzles remain.

Whose life is that? I think I know.
Its owner scows with anger so.
Standing before the bathroom mirror
As life slips away, death draws nearer.

To himself, he introspects.
Thoughts he seeks and collects.
At times, he blames himself for all this.
The cancer and its hellish abyss.

On better days, he remembers
Cancer took many other family members,
Which in some small way consoles his guilt
That he himself sabotaged the life he built.

Beyond his feelings lies a reality.
A place where he can be free.
Another chance hopefully to start over.
And where cancer has no spillover.

our lives hang
by

a delicately woven
string

sheathed in life’s
promises

broken by cancer
cells.

Sunrise whispers atop the sleepy knoll.
An embrace we glimpse in the still morning air.
Sad you say, so little control.
Ardent travelers, through life we stroll.
From one day to the next I make my way.

Deeper places these whispers bring.
Clouds like islands in the sky,
And to them, I try my best to cling.
For just a while longer I wish to sing.
More sunrise whispers before I die.

Each day its share of light and dark,
And so much more in between.
Lasting memories sunrise colors spark.
From life, indeed death does embark,
And from embattled cells, cancer grows.

Without fanfare, or desperate provocation
By the frosted window, I sit watching
This morning’s holy creation.
And in my heart lies undying adoration
At the way sunrise whispers its sweet melodies.