Radiation Redux

It just occurred to me that radiation isn't just what they aim at us cancer patients. It also means the process by which energy is emitted, the dance we do that spreads out into the world, the ripples on the surface from our oars in the bay.
Now it turns out that even though my cancer is gone for now, my every desire is to emit some energy, to tap my toe on the ground and have the vibrations spread.
So here's a new season on radiation days. It's not about living with cancer, it's about living afterwards. Or maybe it's just about living. I hope it's as interesting to read as the first season.

Round Two?

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. A few days ago I noticed a lump under  my jaw and shooting pains in my ears. Two days ago, I spat up blood. I have a scan set for friday, and we'll see what's going on.
In the meantime, tonight I'm part of a poetry reading at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The conceit is that all us poets are part of the Poetry Brothel and you can buy a private reading of a poem from the poetry whore of your choice. I happen to think it's a lovely metaphor for writing for publication and a great way to think about the fragility of a man's voice.
Stay tuned.

Paternoism

here's a thought on the matter:

http://www.broadstreetreview.com/

Epilogue

The bandage that I'm pointing to is covering the mark of a vaccination. I was vaccinated with a vaccine that might prevent cancers like mine. The white thing behind me is a barn door and yes, it's locked.

Punctuation Marks

Last week they removed the chemo-therapy port from my chest. The port, you may remember, was a little valve that was hooked up to a vein and then implanted for easy access under my skin. It's been there, like a little ziggurat beneath my skin for almost two years. Taking it out was an acknowledgement on the doctors' part that this episode in my life has stopped. I won't say it's finished or ended (you generally don't get to write your own end) but at least this is a punctuation mark, the end of a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter.
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To keep me from missing this blog too much, there are a few distractions. The second edition of The Short Course in Beer is now available on Amazon. It turns out that instead of losing speech and taste, I'm shooting my mouth off about beer at every opportunity now.

There are also three books of poetry that are somewhere in the process of getting printed. You've seen some of the poetry here and one of them was published this week. It's called BOOM!. I've also started looking for an agent to represent the book that's growing out of this blog. I guess it will be called Radiation Days-stay tuned.

I can't tell you how much your reading this has meant to me. There were days when the only conscious thing I did was write a piece of this blog and knowing that you were there gave me a sense of meaning.
I feel good, I feel strong and I'm ridiculously happy to be alive. If you'll forgive my saying so, at the end of radiation days, there's a kind of glow.

Thank you.

Simplicity's Reward

Minutes after I posted the picture 'SIMPLICITY', I got this message from the model: 'It is a sweet reminder of times (and body) gone by... '. Now the times gone by are about forty years, so she and I are both looking at a time machine and the pleasure that we each get now is from a post card that we sent ourselves four decades ago. 


I think I feel a moral coming on-especially for my younger friends. Drench yourselves with memories of present beauty, put that stuff in the bank. Make pictures, get painted, make recordings of voices and songs, write by hand on the back of menus, keep baby books for your kids and love notes for your self. Oh yeah, and spread the joy around.

Simplicity

Forgive me, it's time to turn to other things: less dramatic, more like life than life and death. So this is the  theme for this blog for the next little bit: