Joey Cloudy online

My Father Has Cancer

February 14th 2013

“Merciful Father, I have squandered my days with plans of many things.

This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only to live the next few minutes well.

For all we ought to have thought, and have not thought; all we ought to have said,

and have not said; all we ought to have done, and have not done;

I pray thee God for forgiveness.”

-Ahmed Ibn Fadhlan

My father has cancer.

I can’t put that on face book can I?

Friends and friends of friends only?

Then I would only have to say it once.

My father has cancer.

And I am standing at the edge of his periphery 

Wearing the vintage 1970s tan pleather jacket, 

dreads hanging over my spine 

Useless as this chap talking 

to our father, in his bed of tubes and wires, 

looking like a black super villain. 

Doc Oc in a Mile Stone DC cross-over issue 

I decided I must have missed. 

I haven’t written a thing you could call a poem in a year.

Doctor Fine says he has an infection in his blood and they do not know the source. 

They think it’s been happening for about a year.

My father has cancer.

Two weeks ago he was arguing with my little brother 

about his driving. Before he dropped Pony off at the Antiques shop

On the corner of Gaston Avenue then drove to his own job 

at the Lenamonds auto parts house.

My father has cancer.

Blessings, says the holy notary public to each as she exits 

with the living will and power of attorney in her clipboard.

I fail my hide my contempt with silent tears behind brown wraparound sunglasses roll 

and at that moment even seething with rage, 

this Gollum with a crucifix knew without having to look at the charts it was a 1.

Fuck you and your DM! 

She stops in front of me, extends a lilac colored latex gloved hand 

and I resist the instinct to fist bump, it’s more sanitary than shaking 

the small soft dangling appendage.

Nigga, ain’t nobody cool when they move yo daddy from the emergency rooms in the Roberts building on Hall Street down the glass walled corridors, 

through the hospitals ghost filled labyrinths into the Jonsson building.

I write everything down in my notebook, his full name Joe Lewis Cloudy 

birthday, January 14, 1936 social security ect… 

While my little brother is taking care of all the paperwork; 

lawyers, notary public, doctors and nurses, insurance agents 

a lost death certificate of my grandmothers and the rest to come.

Is everything ok? He asks from across the bed towards me, 

my only desire at this moment is violence.

I do not want my father to see me crying. 

I am ashamed now for failing you this one thing. 

Even though you cannot see it.

My father has cancer. 

I will not hide from monsters now.

I sit in a chair I dragged across the room to my place beside him 

and we watch the Mel Gibson marathon 

of Mad Maxx, Beyond Thunder Dome and The Road Warrior! 

I haven’t slept in 2 what, 3 days now? 

Only naps in the blue chair under the flat screen TV now beside his bed. 

At home between 9pm and 5am we can’t be with him so we go home

I can’t sleep so I play dungeons and dragons online 

and talk to my old gamer friend about his dying wife. 

The meth cooked her internal organs,

6 heart procedures in less than 3 years, 

on the waiting list to replace the remaining kidney, 

blind in one eye completely and 95% blind in her remaining eye. 

She had left him to live with her dealer the last time I talked to him 

but she came back after she started getting sick 

and that is when my guildie went AFK for over 2 years.

My father has cancer.

I drag the blue chair back across 

the highly polished dark tiles of his rooms’ floor,

whenever anyone comes in to see him. 

Jolee came by this morning to see my father. 

Then she took me for a ride in her little black car 

out of the hospital parking lot and off to find a Starbucks. 

And I have been drinking last nights chocolate cherry Café Brazil coffee all morning. 

My son drove up from Longview. Jamaal and Wes took me to dinner and a movie 

after visiting with my father last night. 

I must look like hammered shit but she lies and says I am bewtiful. 

She picks just the right music & we sing along with Olivia Newton John and John Travolta 

Summer Love from Grease and even I can sing better than Travolta. 

We are sitting in the parking lot across the street from Baylor

We are car dancing as we sing our duet. 

Singing loud on our parts, singing off key, singing the wrong words!

After the McDonald’s breakfast burrito 

and Starbucks Venti Caramel macchiato in the parking lot 

she tells me that I must make myself ready for this. 

I know its ok to cry in front of her now as we listen 

to Lenard Cohen, Tom Waits, Patty Smith and wonder 

how Billy Joel’s Piano Man got on her cabaret mix cd. 

She lets me get it all out, somehow she makes me laugh 

as we smoke and talk poetry.

I tell her I have enough for our NEA attempt this year. 

She has emailed me a list of publishers 

and we have scheduled Monday phone meetings 

to talk about what we sent where 

and what we will send where in the next weeks batch of poems. 

She is going to get published more and she’s going for her NEA grant

and she’s making sure I do it too. 

I cannot die yet. 

My father has cancer.

Now, more useless tears and the great wave of regrets and self-loathing 

Because, I have not gone fishing with my daddy in almost 30 years.

Chris was supposed to be the one taking care of this, 

My little brother says, as we 2 walk down the hall to the elevator in front of the fish tank. 

But, our big brother died in his sleep a little over a year ago around Thanksgiving. 

Then my little brother sighs, shrugs big blue denim jacketed shoulders, 

before he enters the elevator with Kryptonian swagger, 

all the weight of our dying world on his shoulders.

My father has cancer.

My back is still swollen from carrying him to the toilet the day before yesterday. 

Even with his withered limbs, suddenly too weak to walk, 

we stagger less than 10 feet across the room his cane in his left hand 

his right arm across my shoulders. 

He is wearing a white tee shirt, naked from the waist down.

I brace my back against the door frame. To the threshold, one third of the way 

and I am 50 years old and he is still bigger than me.

The hallway. One third of the way and he cannot help me hold his weight any longer. 

Daddy, I’m going to have to carry you now. 

The door won’t open all the way, there is a dresser next to a shelf with a large TV on it 

butted up next to a dresser up against the wall. We can’t get through side by side anyways. 

It’s ok son. I feel the stubble of his growing beard against my cheek and neck 

both of his arms around my shoulders now I as if we were slow dancing 

and I scoop his legs out from under him 

and carry him across the threshold as if he were the bride,

out into the hallway, careful not to bang him against the door 

or the washing machine between us and the door to the bathroom. 

10 more feet down this junk filled hall littered with;

an empty gasoline can, old gas stove, gardening tools, 

automotive tools, a compressor, red mechanic rags, 

brown linen work gloves, unread junk mail, weed whacker 

and GQ magazines still wrapped in clear plastic.

One hand on the washer one around my shoulder both of us on shaky legs 

I wrap my arms under his arms. I lift until his feet clear the floor and walk backwards into the bathroom talking to him the entire time, now we both are panting, my spine is on fire, 

I ease him down onto the toilet seat and he says thank you son between our gasping for air. 

I walk into the kitchen and talk to Aunt Mattie after she hangs up the phone. 

Looks like you outta breath. Yeah, I wheeze trying to get my wind. 

I just carried Joe to the bathroom and I’m going to need help getting him outta there. 

Just tell me what you need me to do she says immediately. 

Happy to be able to help her favorite nephew. 

Just clean him when I pick him up so I can put him in Grandmothers old wheelchair. 

I lift him again and hold him again as if we were slow dancing while she wipes him off. 

My back is burning, my legs trembling as I ease him down into the wheelchair 

in the second door that leads out into his dead mothers bed-less room.

I saw they had left Grandmothers wheelchair in the corner of her old room 

behind stacks of cardboard boxes, aging cd players and a few pieces of small wooden furniture. 

I have to put his feet back on the ground once I get him past the washing machine again 

this time with the wheelchair jammed in the door of his bedroom 

I lift him out of the chair and carry him back to his bed. 

Cover him without looking at his uncircumcised cock like the good son I am not. 

Can I get you anything? I ask, panting after getting him back up onto his pillows, 

so he isn’t lying flat on his back.

 Water. 

He says obviously dehydrated.

I see the Mexican TV dinner I gave him last night sitting half eaten on the bed beside him. 

I move it out of the way and sit next him holding his drink using the only straw in the house. 

Is this the only thing you have had to drink all day Joe? 

Yes. Ok, I’m just upstairs and the phone is on the bed beside you. 

Just call out or dial the phone if you need me dad. 

Ok, son he says as we watch SVU on TV before he nods off exhausted. 

And I go back upstairs to my own room.

My father has cancer.

It’s the elephant in the room my brother says to me as we smoke outside the ER that first night. 

Are you a genius or a doctor?! No you are not and while I am a genius! I am not a fucking doctor! So, let’s wait and let them do their jobs before we even start down that road. 

We finish our smokes in silence and now it begins to rain. 

How is that for a mute gods sense of the ironic? 

I have stopped worrying about the beeping,

it just means the Intra-Venous is finished. 

The first time it beeped I nearly flat lined myself.

My back is hurting but I cannot take the pain meds now

I can’t be asleep if he needs me.

 Water. 

He is nearly inaudible even in the relative quiet of his hospital room. 

I get up from my blue plastic seat, hide away ottoman no longer under my feet, 

Everything in the room is covered with plastic.

No one enters the room without first wrapping themselves in a fresh yellow plastic 

smocks with tear away tabs and fresh rubber gloves. 

They all hit the sanitizer mounted on the wall near the door on their way out.

My father has cancer.

And at 77 years old it makes no sense to me.

My father has cancer.

and I do not want to write this poem 

too late for the man 

who never will get to see me 

fail so bewtifully 

at both simultaneously!

My father has cancer.

I know it. But, I don’t dare say it in those minutes as I roll him into the dining room 

past the long formal table, then through the kitchen, dog-leg down the narrow hall, 

pop a wheelie to get past the dryer under the back stairs that lead up 

to the two rooms occupied by my brother and myself.

My father has cancer. 

And all I can do is sit beside him, 

cut up his hospital chicken marinara and help him feed himself.

I pass him his jug to piss in. 

Cover him with as many blankets as the nurses will give me when he gets cold 

and hold a Styrofoam cup beneath his nappy grey chin, 

place the bent white plastic straw to his lips so that he can drink. 

It is such a small thing, but it is all that I can do in these moments,

while he is looking into my eyes, 

to honor my father, 

I will not sacrifice my bodies’ water.