Tuesday, 27 October 2015

Theseus' paradox.


Below is a poem I wrote recently about my AML. I haven't written a poem in quite a while so I felt a bit rusty, and I have never written about my disease before, but after a few redrafts I think it is coming along quite nicely.   



Theseus' paradox

Inside this bleach-white side room
histories and IV tubes and wires spill
around like mysteries, unknown prognoses;

I am a line-caught fish flopped on a tray
served on a platter to be diced and dissected
topped up with someone else’s matter

pushed through pumps; the cells occlude
to the tune of call bells and alarm bells.
Give me those indifferent chemicals

that kill the bad along with the good, leave me
depleted but (please) always undefeated.
And then rebuild me, renew me,

make me better than before,
start again from scratch, replace me
to the core. As the prayers from every faith

pour in, they will make me a chimera
and whether medical or myth,
I just want to know the score:

Am I still me,
or something new, something more?

1 comment:

  1. Hi Grace

    I loved your poem, thank you for sharing it. It evokes so well the mixture of the mysterious and the clinical sides of what we are going through. I especially liked the linking of Theseus' Paradox and being a Chimera. I just hope neither of us need any more bits changing.
    Hope you are keeping well
    Best wishes, David

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