H. Palmer Hall

Elegy 23

The mixture of Tarceva, steroids, Ativan, cocktail
Of curing…or not? We’ll wait to see. No one way,
No cure, just downward to darkness indirectly.

And now Taxel and Carboplatin, chemotherapy
To fight back the dark for a while, a too brief moment.
High tech pillmakers, fortune makers, odds makers.

I drop pills like a babyboomer in the early seventies,
Feel chemo infused into my veins, user, not pusher,
Each day pushing yet another day. The pills are

Color-coded, not as much joy as seventies’ pills,
Colors pale, pastel, not vivid, changing with moods.
I persist, push on to Hispaniola, to Cuba and the west.

***

***