The Reality

 

I try to keep a sense of humour about cancer, but there is a reality.

This life is like a tightrope 

that I dance upon,

a balance of meaning and hope,

and if I slip I'm gone.

The boundaries are hard and close,

oxygen and a chair.

Not the thing I would have chose,

but it's real and I'm there,

trying not to cast my eyes

into the blank abyss,

and truly the only prize

is ensuring I don't miss

the next most shaky step I take,

fall to despair on which I'll break.

Music from The Damned, with Tightrope Walk

The video is from a really terrific film, The Walk, about Phillipe Petit's high wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center.

Sylvia will walk the wire for ice cream, using her tail for balance.

How Will You Face Your Death? (Tell His Story)

 

Do you think about the day

that you'll be heading home?

Do you think about the way

you'll face that great unknown,

the door between this mortal place 

and the life to come?

Will you want to stand and face

that portal as it's swung,

or like me, would you close your eyes,

and wait for Heaven's morning breeze,

familiar yet a great surprise

and it whispers through the rustling trees,

far past life and far past death,

the benison of Holy Breath?

Sylvia will keep her eyes open, thank you very much, to try to quickly score some ice cream.

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Valhalla Awaits

 Obnoxious chest-thumping, self-delusion, or total immaturity?

Or a dawning comprehension of what's real?

I stand, and standing prove my worth,

and need not bow my head in shame.

Colossus, I bestride the Earth

and demons tremble at my name,

for I have fought through their abyss 

and left their entrails on the walls,

but let me here not be remiss,

for I well know the Voice that calls

my heart and soul into the fight,

with joyousness upwelling,

for I am drawn up to the light

and there will be a tale worth telling

as Valhalla rises near

with banquet tables slicked by beer.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is VOID.

Yesterday I was annoyed,

and threw a tantrum here.

Life itself felt like a void

when I ran out of beer.

Oh, sure, there was fizzy pop

and a box of wine,

but my anguish would not stop,

and I made it mine,

clutching grievance to my soul,

raging to the sky

that the day could not be whole,

and then I did espy

a fresh unopened case of Bud

and the day got really good.

Three minutes flat, but the beer's foaming in delight!

Beer and ice cream, says Sylvia.

Golden Rules (Tell His Story)

 Still down with the longest flu I've ever had, but I'll throw this out there...

Be magnanimous in victory.

Be gracious in defeat.

Share ice cream (Sylvia, how did you sneak that in?).

And move on.

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The Space Between

I've been running really high fevers lately, and Reality is starting to break through the edges of my orderly little life.

I have now spent quite awhile 

'tween this world and the next.

I'm really going out in style,

and wish I could but text

you of the wonders that I see,

flying dogs and long-lost friends,

Apostles and the Trinity,

and a grand pub-crawl that never ends.

There's Jesus on the rifle range...

BOOM! What the heck, He MISSED?

That is really very strange,

and now He doth insist 

that I take His piece and try the thing,

and I break the heart of the ten-ring.

There is so much more, though, angels ascending and descending, swirling noise and colours you can smell and taste, laughter and love and fistfights, a cacophony of epiphany.

And a message to bring back:

Be graceful in defeat, and magnanimous in victory.

The Five Minute Friday Prompt this week is TOWARD.

All I can offer is a haiku.

As ice presses toward victory,

the spring waits in the sky

with a smile.

Sylvia takes it for granted that there's Foster's-flavoured ice cream.

Over To You (Tell His Story)

Been running a high fever for a few days, so coherency is an issue.

But I can't leave you without a starter for conversation, so...

What's you favourite Beatles song?

Here's mine

The video is charming.

Sylvia likes it too.

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God Don't Make Junk

Regardless of what President Biden says, people are not garbage.

Not even him.

I don't hold with what you hold dear;

it, to me, does not ring true.

But may I make this very clear,

I still believe in you.

My conscience tells me something,

yours says something else,

but let difference that we bring

sit on a dusty shelf,

and let us both behold the Christ 

that shines out of our eyes.

Accept what He has sacrificed,

and thus reject the lies

that tell us that Our Side is the best,

and let the devil take the rest.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is UNEXPECTED.

It was quite unexpected,

the things some people said.

I really felt rejected,

and they wished that I was dead

because I could not quite agree

with what to them was true,

and it seemed they could not see

that you are me is you.

Is this what Christ died for?

Is this why He rose again,

that we might close and bolt the door,

and in darkness remain

with just the warmth we generate 

through hearts that are brim-full with hate?

Three minutes.

Sylvia, having once been thrown away, heartily agrees.

I Command You To Vote For...(Tell His Story)

 Someone. Just vote for someone, according to your conscience.

Both of the major candidates (and all of the lesser ones) are imperfect, and there's no Abe Lincoln among them (and if you've read Shelby Foote, you know that Honest Abe was pretty badly flawed as well).

Nonetheless.

I would suggest you follow Russell Crowe's advice from this one-minute clip from Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World 

Besides, why pass up a chance to see Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany?

Sylvia agrees.

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Aw, Come ON!

 Things are really messed up with my left leg; it finally fractured at the metastasis in the femur, and walking any distance (like, one step) takes everything I have.

So no apologies for the sonnet below. It pretty well reflests the you've-got-to-be-KIDDING! mood.

It has seemed so very long,

at least that's how it seems to me,

and now it's like the Beach Boys song

about the troubled Sloop John B,

whose singer and his old grandpa

through Nassau town did fighting roam,

and falling afoul of law

just really wants to head for home,

and I can understand the feeling,

because my leg, it fin'ly broke,

and I don't really look appealing,

as with staff and sandals (it's no joke)

I gimp under the desert sky,

like some bearded Bible guy.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is WEIGHT.

It's now one of my best friends

in this really painful state,

tennis balls fixed to both ends 

and thick enough to bear my weight.

It's 'bout four feet, a little more,

and it is never out of reach

unless I want to hit the floor 

(My, oh, my, what pride can teach

when I think it's just a short way,

so why must I retrieve my staff,

and then as on the floor I lay

I hear the saints and angels laugh

that they've really seen it all,

how pride doth go before the fall.).

Three minutes and a bit.

And here, for your listening pleasure, is Sloop John B 

Sylvia thinks it rather funny, actually. She had a broken leg when we got here; why am I  complaining?

Songs (Tell His Story)

 Just for fun, songs about Chihuahuas.

To the tune of Let The River Run...

Let Chihuahuas run!

Let all their barking wake the neighbours,

they sleep too long anyway!

Or, from Mary Poppins...

Chim, chimney, chim chimney, chim chim, Chihuahua,

they watch T. D. Jakes and they watch Creflo Dollar!

Chim chimney, chim chimney, chim chim Chi Chi,

they're learning about Christianity.

Sylvia wants a song now, too.

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Name It And Claim It

The only way that I can claim

the blessings of these dreadful days

is to endeavour to attain

a life of constant thanks and praise

from which 'I wish' is banished,

and 'if only ' turned away,

'why me' forever vanished,

to make a room where grace can stay.

I cannot look behind me now;

the dead, they must entomb their own.

It is for me to practice how

to do that which I've always known,

that however high the toll,

I am His, He makes me whole.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is UNDECIDED.

Some may be undecided,

but I'll say now that I ain't.

God will not be derided,

and I have no complaint

about the hard cold circumstance

that I daily face.

I will choose to laugh and dance,

be caught up in the grace

that transcends metastases,

and a failing heart.

Even in shadow of these,

I can still play my part

for the Lord that I believe 

until it's time for me to leave.

Three minutes thirty on the first attempt, which the Internet ate. Three minutes for what's above.

Sylvia says, Yeah, but I was His FIRST.

 

Social Metastases (Tell His Story)

 Been thinking about metastatic cancer. I have a couple, one that lately fractured a femur, and another in my humerus on the same (left) side, which strikes me as funny. Geddit?

But what about social metastases?

Here's one. 

In the 1960s, the United States Supreme Court effectively redefined the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to remove religious influence from public schools. That's the cancer.

Today, rather than being taught basic skills, elementary school kids are being invited to explore their own pronouns, which they likely can't even spell. That's the metastasis.

This isn't intended as a blanket condemnation of teachers, but rather of the administrative environment in which they're compelled to work...and, yes please pay attention to school board elections!

Can you think of other examples?

Sylvia likes being a 'she'. Thinks it makes her scarier.

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Deference

 There are those who might well think

that cancer's a hard fall,

but my life did not just sink

in wind and wave that ruined all.

Yes, it's very hard to breathe 

and harder still to walk,

but I have blessings to receive,

and so I dare not talk

in front of those who stand today

in ruins of a well-loved life,

who saw possessions swept away

with children, husband, wife,

and I'll respect their misery

with no words 'bout poor, poor me.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is FLEE.

I really don't know how t'would be,

to pack my lifetime in a truck,

and join the passing throng to flee,

trusting to both God and luck

that there might still be something left

when at last we're bade return 

to that stolid warp and weft 

of what we'd worked so hard to earn.

Is it worth the the sunny days

and the balmy tropic nights

beneath which the soft ocean lays

awash in coruscating lights,

hinting not of cold blank fury

when they become both judge and jury?

Sylvia says that was spoken like a true Pittie, except that she hates getting wet and WILL complain.

The Politics Of Disaster (Tell His Story)

 Another storm due to arrive

on the Gulf Coast's sandy shore,

s chance to keep folks there alive,

but some like politicking more.

Disaster's now a photo-op

and sound bite for a TV ad, and all of that's not gonna stop

'till we realize we've been had

by people who pretend to care 

'bout apple pie, kids, Mom and Dad,

but only are really aware

of the polls that hold the keys

that keep constituents on their knees.

Sylvia doesn't like politicians, and she saw the last group of canvassers off in her own inimitable style.

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Ake Ake Kia Kaha (For Ever, And Be Strong)

 Spent much of last night screaming in pain, from the leg metastases. Can't really walk now.

Barb prayed me to a place of rest, and peace.

When earthly hope is failing

as the devil sings his song,

and in the night you're wailing,

and still the night goes on,

remember to hold as you can

to that tiny dancing spark,

the heartbeat of the Son of Man

beating with you in the dark,

and make the effort to recall

through all the pain and tears

that for you He faced it all,

and He knows your fears,

and that you'll never be alone 

until He comes to take you home.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is TWO.

I guess you might expect two sonnets

this week, for the price of one,

so I am right here and on it,

so let us go and have some fun

with words like Frogularity

(which term, yes, I did invent)

to bring a certain kind of clarity

to my weird writing intent,

and while the word has not caught on

beyond my dedicated circle,

its potential is yet far from gone

(though it's moving like a turtle)

 to bring me fame, riches, renown,

and make me king of my small town.

Three minutes of total nonsense, but I had fun.

Music for Barb, from the Dropkick Murphys, with Forever 

Sylvia thinks I need more calcium, via ice cream, so the bones don't fracture. She'll even share hers.

Wait, that's not Sylvia! These are the Chihuahuas' stuffed animal friends. Every afternoon they swipe the TV and VCR remotes, and hide them with Monkey (wearing my sunglasses), Frog (under my cap), and Kitty Cat (with my gloves). Ladron taught them the game; they expanded on it.

With Sylvia's help.

Shelter From The Storm (Tell His Story)

 For those imperiled by the storm

that came from distant seas,

let not anguish be their norm,

let them find God's peace

coming from across this land,

from an unknown neighbour's care

to extend a helping hand

across the distant air.

Give as only you can give,

give from what you need yourself.

Do not let the Christ's face live 

in a frame upon a shelf,

but in your eyes let others see

His love as it is meant to be.

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