Two Poems

My friend Darlene is concerned about my recent disaffection with poetry. I've fallen out of love with it, having found most of it lately to be either really boring or really obnoxious. However, that's not to say that there isn't good poetry in the world or that there aren't poems that I love. There are. Here's one by Stephen Dunn that I love that sums up how it felt to come home yesterday:

I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone

The dogs greet me, I descend
into their world of fur and tongues
and then my wife and I embrace
as if we'd just closed the door
in a motel, our two girls slip in
between us and we're all saying
each other's names and the dogs
Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,
people-style, seeking more love.
I've come home wanting to touch
everyone, everything; usually I turn
the key and they're all lost
in food or homework, even the dogs
are preoccupied with themselves,
I desire only to ease
back in, the mail, a drink,
but tonight the body-hungers have sent out
their long-range signals
or love itself has risen
from its squalor of neglect.
Everytime the kids turn their backs
I touch my wife's breasts
and when she checks the dinner
the unfriendly cat on the dishwasher
wants to rub heads, starts to speak
with his little motor and violin--
everything, everyone is intelligible
in the language of touch,
and we sit down to dinner inarticulate
as blood, all difficulties postponed
because the weather is so good.

Here's another. I'm not as in love with it but it's mine so I don't have to love it if I don't want. It's the first poem I wrote when I was diagnosed with cancer nine years ago and it was published in anthology called The National Cancer Poetry Project.

When I Had Cancer I Thought

the tomatoes I cut at work
were red, frosty hearts --
fleshy and giving
when the knife came,

the white, plastic arch
of the CT machine
was a smooth, bone mouth
devouring me,

the pixel image
of my pelvis
from the underside
was an ancient, Egyptian priest
holding open his arms,
his hanging robes.

I guess that just shows
how fragile we are,
how scared,
how sacred.

In the contributor's notes, I wrote: "My wife and I went to the urologist in the afternoon, where I was told I had a tumor. From there, I went almost directly to work, where everything had a disjointed, surreal feeling to it. Slicing tomatoes as part of my prep work, I watched the knife pass through their skins, saw the thin, red juice leak out . . . it was kind of disturbing and fascinating at the same time. Later, I had the experience of getting a CT scan. These images stuck with me and eventually came out in the poem."

So anyway. The cancer poem has been on my mind since my mom's diagnosis and I thought I'd post it as my once-a-year, here's-a-poem-I-wrote-back-when-I-was-a-poet blog entry.