Oncology-Whiz

It felt like that morning took all day long,

the ambergris hours you spent in bottom time in the MRI,

the doctors going wreck diving inside your head, your body,

and the waiting room smelled of lumps in the throat 

and targeted therapy, talcum powder and protein bars,

they didn’t let me in the room to watch the procedure;

I took a second look at life’s orchestral score 

to see what I was supposed to be doing with all that concern

and the only notation was fermata, fermata right now

meaning stay, meaning do not move, meaning do not breathe

and while the doctors brandished their dive lights

to see what new world was in the dark inside you

I asked a nurse in the hallway to remind me where the cafeteria was

and I paid for a bagel with cream cheese and orange juice

and I left my change in the take-some, leave-some cup

and I let out a long breath in an atmosphere of new age Muzak,

butter and burnt rubber, I lay adrift among the plastic trays

pondering superluminal visitations of regret and fear,

far from home in theodicy, understanding anew the truth 

that the mass tone of nightmare is worry

and I wondered if you were awake in that machine upstairs

or if you actually got some sleep in there, dreaming in raw kiloyears,

hearing roars of bears, talking with that one shade of blue,

listening to the whispers of an immortal clad in tints of gold and pink,

surfacing only briefly to heed the pronouncements

of cicadas, buzz of determinist bees,

a crash of China cymbals near sentient medical dashboards

acuminates into hoarse pledges of love,

accelerando on the fellfields of prognosis

then came weeping and ambulatory wishes from me to the clouds 

and the doctor said the sight of me in the chapel on my knees 

turned out to be benign, she’s coming around,

the creator speaks in doppler ultrasound:

do you see that I am trying to live,

live in some kind of way by which you can tell

I paid attention to all your bravery.

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Eighteen Seventy, Menacing Hedge, The Rye Whiskey Review and Cultural Weekly, among others, and he has work forthcoming in Pulp Literary Magazine and Eunoia Review. Rich recently served as Associate Editor for the online literary magazine BOMBFIRE. He is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me, a collection of poems published by Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications. Peep richboucher.bandcamp.com for more. He loves his life with his love Leann in the perpetually intriguing Southwest.