In July 2017 my wife, Jo, was diagnosed with breast cancer. At one stage they were scanning to see if there were any secondaries, a whole more serious and life shortening diagnosis. I began this poem in the midst of the agonising period of waiting for scan results.

Cancer moved into our home
Like some evil Hindu god.
He puffed out his man boobs,
Swaggered his bulk
Into our living room,
And said with demon delight…“Surprise!”.

You could be forgiven for thinking
He was all mouth and no trousers,
With his undulant frame and cartoon grin.
But you cannot deny him his trousers.
His trousers are not to be sniffed at
(Dogs, possibly, excepted).

And boy, does he have some mouth
And boy does he never shut up.

He pipes his words into our ears.
Til our aural canals choke with his effluent.

“I’m here…,” he says,
As he points a finger at a tumour,
Highlighting its stubborn mass
As if he has sculpted a Henry Moore.

“…but where else am I?
What was that aching in your bones,
That stutter in your lungs,
What was your gut just feeling?
Was that me too?”

He punches above his weight
(Which is not inconsiderable)
By scaling up his lies,
A tottering tower of tumorous twaddle,
The sole recourse of the wasp…
With no sting.

For he can kill our bodies.
With spectacular feats of cellular multiplication
He can nail that one,
Bang, bang, bang.

He can drive his spiky masses into our hands and feet,
And haul us up on a cross to die.

He can cackle his way through our morphine muffled moans,
Rub sticky hands with glee
As we draw our final breath,
And those we love exhale
in one long grieving wail.

And he can stalk behind the hearse,
Finding glory in the mourning.

But then…

His big moment.

Our body in the tomb.
His death sentence complete.
His final job to simply roll the stone,
The immovable full stop.

He eyes it.
Determined to finish the job.
This time.

His rippled flesh cups pools of sweaty excitement.
He hits the rock at pace,
His full weight driving shoulder into boulder.

But nothing.

The stone is unmoved.

He tries once more;
the rock is not rocked.

Again, as fear gives seed to panic,
Watered by the gushing of his sweat.

The grave, it lies unstopped.
He falls, as he has fallen since the start

Tearing at his hair,
Flattened by fatigue,
Drinking his own medicine.

He lies exhausted,
His lies exhausted.

Death, oh death, where is your sting?
We do not fear what cannot kill the soul.