I bear all that jazz like Love Supreme
bearing musician John Coltrane
in pierced flesh and spilled blood,
the treatment's dissonant chords
diving up and down
a stomach heaving
with discord.
A roll of staccato reply
pounds in my brain,
throbbing the sound
of pure misery.
Story of salvation history.
Antiseptic
light collides
with gray despair,
blurs colors of the room,
perveerse womb of hope.
Saxophone calls out repeatedly,
wails the burning pain,
my fortitude faint with
uncertainty.
Plucks at me
like nurses trying
to revive sosme spirit
pushing wine on hyssop,
their offers of ice chips,
as I'm stretched to the limit.
Blare of clarinet
screeches within me
pain's tyranny,
but at the back door
my Golgatha Visitor
revives my ivory hopes,
lances through ebony fears
and my hot tears in that
dissonant dance of
living throughv
the dark valley of
chemotherapy.
published by Plainsongs, Journal of Hastings College, Hastings, NE
©2009 Bonnie Manion