Hello Everyone,
I hope this post finds everyone doing OK / getting through it? My apologies for my tardiness in getting this next poem out to you but I’ve had another stay in hospital with my 2nd infection since I started on my steroid taper. This has happened since my Immunotherapy treatment went berserk and started attacking my nervous system back in mid-September. I exagerate but I sometimes fell like I’m single-handedly keeping the NHS marketplace going in my use of antibiotics!
Anyway, here is the next poem which I promised you. This one is called “The Paranoia Battle” and was written in August 2024, in the middle of my chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments. This was a pretty grim time for me then and I was hallucinating / having a lot of waking dreams whilst trying to recover from each of the drug cycles they were giving me.
At times, I imagined that I was in the trenches of Northern France in World War I and the poem seemed to evolve in that way with 3 distinct parts emerging: Sergeant NHS who was trying to get me through the battle, Private Me who was scared silly and of course, the swopping raven – I think you can guess who I’m referring to there.
The themes of what could happen to me with the paranoia / catastrophising that I was experiencing at that time along with feelings of resentment of what my life had been pre-diagnosis and where I was headed towards, also emerge in the second part of this piece. It is quite a grim poem and ends on a very unsure note which I think is a fair reflection of where I was at emotionally and physically, when going through the battlefield that is chemotherapy and immunotherapy.
Anyway, enough explanations; on with the poem:
The Paranoia Battle
There are times that I wake up,
And I don’t want to get up.
Pull that duvet over my head,
Let my world just break around me, instead.
Forget the positive messages calling,
Give in to my darkness’ whispered warning.
“It’s all out to get you, they’re all out to net you”,
As my cell’s transform to the monster’s I’ve made,
The immuno-mortars deploy and cascade,
And the last of the chemo. troops arrive and engage,
With the mutagen army, this conflict’s enraged.
Sergeant NHS:
“You’ll have to go over the top soon, my boy,
You can’t stay in this platinum trench forever.”
“We’ll blow the whistle and over you go,
The Immuno-guard will join you as well”
Private Me:
“But sir, I’m scared of this battle and the wheeling raven,
Its wings beat so close as it swoops overhead.”
“I feel a hand from the sky reaching down to get me,
Or is this just the battle inside of my head?”
The night is so long and my mind whirls and lingers,
On memories fleeting and voices no more.
Is this just the drugs and my dead who are ringers,
Or is it true “that the paranoid really know the score?”
This ongoing battle is hard to take,
My protective stances are hard to break.
I need to defend the fact that I’m here,
I try to smile at my raven and show no fear.
But this stiff upper lip is starting to quiver,
My past plans disappear round that bend in time’s river,
So, what happens next? Will it send me a text or do I just guess?
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I hope this poem resonates with some of you and as promised, I shall forward my next poem out to you in 2 weeks’ time. This next poem is called “The A, the C, the G, the T” and is much more positive and optimistic.
Till then, take care,
Twin Castor
