Something New, Something Blue

Explanation #1: Vampires

This is not lung, throat or stomach.
Those kinds are weights,
heavy swelling bubbles
filling up the empty around the organs,
a crush mob, choke press,
pushing life into a corner.
My cancer is a vampire.
It sifts out my blood parts.
It drinks what I need.
I go to doctors
to keep enough in me.

So I start lashing twigs with sewing thread.
Kentucky blue grass makes a jungle
around a graveyard of migit crucifixes.
I purchase cloves from the Chinese grocer.
Soon our house is a garlic breeze.
My mother finds them in her purse,
winter coats, the mail slot, dog dish,
newspaper bin, bologna sandwiches…

When she discovers my efforts,
we sit to a late past bedtime talk
at the kitchen table over milk and oreos,
which she doesn’t mention taste a bit garlicked:

These are hardy draculas.
Medieval methods have no use.
You need strength, old and sure.
So my doctors steal slivers
called Chemo right from the sun.
Radiation, honey.

This secured me.
I stop whittling stakes,
sleep happy sound
dreaming of a black goggled Mother,
black goggled Doctors giving thumbs up
behind glass shields, pushing a top hat sized button.
Her strapped to a chair,
crawling with squirrel-sized Bela Lugosis,
a small sun explodes at her feet,
whipping her hair back in the blast
and they all burn into mist.

James Best