On starting Chemo

From someone who has "been there, done that", your poem hit me like a ton of bricks!

Joe - I have just seen a dear frind through it - what a poem!

Thanks Phoenix and Dlowan.
It's the voice of a friend of mine, quite a fighter, battled colon cancer to a standstill, lived four and a half years longer than anyone at Memorial Sloan Kettering had predicted, then just faded away.
The service is tomorrow.

My thoughts are with you.

Joe oh Joe what to say, my dear Mum had the same battle, had a colostomy and then bravely lived another 13 years with a bag.

We lived through it with her and I am sure that I would not have dealt with it as well as she did.

All love for tomorrow.

Thanks for sharing with us.

Joe Nation- Watching a dear friend die that way can be an emotionally draining experience. You are gifted that you can express your emotions through poetry, and can share your thoughts with others. I know that your beautiful and sensitive words will help someone who is facing a similar situation.

I will be thinking about you tomorrow!

I've been thinking about G. lately.

Joe(so many lessons on not waiting to do something)Nation

thanks for that Joe -- really good
I will pass it on to someone, if that's okay

Feel free.

Joe( ...I do...)Nation

cheers

she encourages poetry as therapy for all sorts of people. I know she'll love it. she'll put it in her collection.

Endy(...i will too...)mion

ps - i see you're on your two thousandth life. That's some stamina, Joe. I'm on my first, but i learn my lessons fast. (most of 'em). Poetry may take me a few life times. Here's my favourite poem, written by a poet your poem here reminded me of - Leonard Cohen. I don't have any idea what it meant to him, but for me it has always summed up how i feel myself, and how i look for some sort of light (insight, wisdom, spirit, poetry) in others

HE WAS LAME

He was lame
as a 3 legged dog
screamed as he came
through the fog

If you are the Light
give me a light
buddy

i started a thread about it here back in Jun, 2005.
http://able2know.org/topic/54517-1 It don't go very far.
Maybe we could talk about poetry there (or somewhere) sometime... I'm working on 'mystery' at the moment (thanks to Miklos).
Like i say - - learning.

I see your work as abstract and value that.

wow - i'll bug out now and leave you in peace

Leonard Cohen... I was so happy to find out that Leonard Cohen's agent had stolen all his money and that because of that he, Leonard Cohen, had to come out of the monastery and start doing a tour of US cities. (I was angry that anyone would steal, especially from Leonard Cohen, but hoped, so secretly hoped, that I could snag a ticket to see and hear him. Live.)

Here's my short history with Leonard Cohen.
A Danish exchange student living at my parent's house in 1963 is given a Leonard Cohen album by her American boyfriend. She hates it. She gives it to me. I am sixteen. I love every song on that album and I fall in love with the girl on the album's flip side.



I vow that I shall write and sing songs and poems like the one I am hearing.
I vow that someday I shall have a girlfriend as cool as the one on the album's flip side.
I have kept only one of those vows.

I once played "Suzanne" for an extremely conservative Christian church. We, the congregation and me, talked until we were near exhausted about how only 'drowning men could see him".

(Pretty good for a nice Jewish boy to get so many Christians to be on their way to being Buddhists.)

I am on the way to check out your old thread.

Joe(no promises)Nation

Was that the album that was blue? The actual record, I mean.

Maybe that's only in my mind. If so, I had two of them, as I wore the first one out.

I don't think this record was blue, although somewhere deep in the recesses of what is left of my mind I remember having 33 1/3 disks that were indeed blue, Christmas albums mostly, right? I remember trying to explain to several people, mostly erstwhile girlfriends, that these songs were more than songs, that they were Leonard Cohen's life and he was letting us in on the experience. They wanted to know if I had the latest Chubby Checker release.

Joe(I did. We twisted the night away.)Nation

Well, that was one thing I could do, the twist.

But no, I remember blue records and am thinking the first Leonard Cohen was one of those. Never mind, I suppose I'm supplanting with imagination. I figure I'm wrong.