Drained

Minutes after parking
in the rented-out
Christian Scientist
parking lot,
I lay here tossing
just as I imagine Mary Baker
must be in her grave.

You’d think it would
have been enough
to have replaced my
testosterone,
with female hormones.

Surely they could leave
some small sign of my
red-blooded manhood.
But no, these angels of mercy
have come to bleed me
as white as their dresses.

Today even my chi
seems taied in knots,
and I’m left with little more
than this feeble sense of humor
or what’s left of it,
to defend myself,

turning paler and paler
as each precious drop drains away,
a nearly invisible man,
little more than a few stray
electrons flitting across a tenuous
web of relationships.

6 thoughts on “Drained”

  1. Disturbing, but effective poem. Sounds like they are already enfeebling you with the opening volleys of the cure.

    Is there a missing “I” in front of imagine?

  2. There was, but there isn’t now, thanks, Ron.

    Theoretically all this stuff is supposed to make my recovery easier. They’re drawing blood three times (they wanted four) and they’ll put it all back in me after surgery to give my immune system a boost.

    Using hormone therapy supposedly shrinks the tumors making them easier to remove and keeps them from spreading before surgery.

    It all sounds good when you first hear it, but the actual effects aren’t quite so sanguine.

  3. In addition to the procedures, I hope the poetry helps. I know it helps those of us thinking about you and what you’re going through, who hope you have a speedy and full recovery. Thanks for continuing to share your thoughts and experiences with us, Loren.

  4. Stangely, I find that I can write about some of the negative feelings that accompany therapy better in poetry than I can in an essay.

    I am feeling drained, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable just saying that outright. I do feel comfortable saying it if I can couch it in humor and something approaching poetry.

  5. There’s peculiar aspects of poetry that allow both a Distance and a Closeness to the topic of pain, whether it be illness or misery, that let’s the writer face it better without having to just be Ophrah about it. So it makes all the sense in the world to me.

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