My sweat proves that I exist,

Love and the Eternal Word

Poetry by Jon
for his beloved, Carol

Christmas, 2000

Contents:

Does Passion Live?

I look at you, sweet, and you look at me
One moment so close, one moment so far
Pendulum slung from a rising rung
Of the ladder of time up above where we are

Oh just to reach you (but the distance too great!)
What could I teach you (here's my blank broken slate)
All the words of my wisdom are foolish, extreme
The milk has gone bad, the foxes [1] drank up the cream

Death crushes Eros under its heel
Time makes love a mock, only weariness real.
We once held our youth like a single bright flame
Our limbs intersected while we cried out love's name

But years and tears and fears created
The need for redemption from the sorrow life fated
Eros dies not if His Master is Lord
And gladly we bond in the Eternal Word

-jon for carol, Christmas 2000

Heart Cries

Christ, I cry, Christ! And my heart leaps again
All dreary and dark and violent, END!
Here in this Name O most precious and good
Here in this nail, this blood, and this wood

Christ, I cry, Christ! And the stones will shout
All treacherous, lecherous, lying, OUT!
My heart is Yours, O Great Lover of me.
My mind cannot know! "Child, trust it to me."

Christ, I cry, Christ! Forgive all my sins
Oh, Holy Spirit, my Comforter tend.

-jon for carol, Christmas 2000

In the Weight Room

My sweat proves that I exist,
The odor of my red hot skin
Almost fools me into godhood
Just a cover-up for impeccable sin

And the weights above my head
Prove that I'm not dead
Straining against mortality's chill
Is all effort just a matter of will?

Waking up in the weight room
Push it up in the weight room
Tear it up in the weight room
I'm alive…

Cerebral disease of inaction
I'll break this habit, yeah, I'll resist
That smiling cynic mocking me
Love and life are all he's missed

And the weights upon my heart
Prove that I love you, every part
Girl, I cannot save your skin
But we're both dying to begin

Waking up in the weight room
Push it up in the weight room
Tear it up in the weight room
We're alive…

The doctor said tamoxofin
After the chemo and the knife
The mocking cynic laughed at me
You're gonna lose her precious life

She's crying and my face is stone
Doin' the macho sad-thing alone
But when I touch her pretty face
Lie naked in her scared embrace

We spin like dancers in the dragon's teeth
Round and round another breath
Jesus said we'd carry his cross
And love is as strong as death

Pump it up in the weight room
We're alive.

December 9, 2000

A Poem about Cancer

i.

Life seems to go along, go along, go along
Til along comes that we did not desire
Up from the cells and the blood, all too mortal
Comes this dark guest with a dictator's ire

I look at you and for once don't know what to do
You look at me for an answer to "Why?"
Up from the heart and the mind, all too fearful
Rises pale ghost with one deathly cry

ii.

you didn't react as quickly to the information
            (we'll have to remove it)
you didn't seem to understand.

i knew it was cancer, and your life or death
we were talking about.
            (we don't know if it has spread)

in one year two cancers, two battles
each time your resistance to the primary fight
            (nine months of chemo, and radiation, should do;
            along with tamoxifin; five years for you)

i trembled, and wondered, and felt all alone
til you shook in my arms and we prayed and were one.

iii.

the doc is a funny guy, he likes my questions
and he writes down answers on white paper
with cross-hatched blue lines on it, and we
talk about poor prognosis (which you have)
and the meaning of various scientific and
medical terms, which I have read off the net
and manage to sound like I'm faintly dangerous,
and he patiently explains as much as I want, and
we go over all the silly stuff on the net that pretends
to cure cancer (most for money), shark cartilage
and licorice extract and aloe vera, and he laughs
and is glad i'm a cynic about pseudo-science,

and i look at you and wonder if science can do
any better than the web quacks can, and he
smiles as you say, "i guess we just have to be
praying."

he nods his head, and seems to mean it.

iv.

your hair is falling out, like a made for tv movie
about a cancer patient who is gonna die and
leave her husband kids, and then who knows what,
but it will make all the viewers cry sympathetically,

except this isn't a movie and i look at your face
and say, "let me cut it off now--let me make it easy."
you nod yes, and i take the clippers and start in
the front and the dark hair falls on the floor all around

as you sit quietly my emotions suddenly overwhelm me
and why should that be, you aren't crying, so i can't
either because i'm not the one with the cancer anyway
the hair falls all around you and your head is almost

bare and i lean down and kiss you and you put your
arms around me and say "thank you, honey, i'm glad
you did that" and i think to myself,

there.

that wasn't so bad, was it?

v.

millenium
cancernium.

my wife, my brother, the sister of my mother.

but HA!

you haven't gotten any of them yet.

and new year's is on the way.

vi.

Everyone has got to go.
We know it, but don't know, that it's so.

That is, the mind assents and "yes"s
But experience alone death undresses

Mortality's rules are mortals don't know
That death comes right soon

Each reaps what each will sow

And I watch my dearling's hands spread seed
My heart is a field where dark soil has need

If she were lost to me here in this place;
I would look forward to death's sweet embrace.

jon for carol, Christmas 2000

Visions 1

1

I saw my sweet Carol rise up like a bird

The trees clapped bony hands

At the one who loves them.

2

The woman rises early and loves with her hands

Her heart strings are her fingers

And she plucks notes from even strangers.

3

I observed her carefully filling bird feeders

Though we were city-bound in only an hour

"A waste," I thought, but remembered God's seeders.

4

I heard my dearling singing and cleaning

the world paid no attention

to the one scrubbing its face, loving it.

5

She is like a tree, planted beside a river of desire

Christ courses through her bark

and her leaves caress the restless breeze.

jon for carol, Christmas 2000

All Contents © 2002 Jon Trott - All Rights Reserved

[1] the "little foxes" who were out to spoil the vineyard, Song of Solomon, 2:15.