This may be a secret among only a few of its recipients, but cancer is a direct and positive gift from God. Its chemo and radiation therapies wrack and ruin us… and its alternative therapies may bewilder us with the arcane and often whacky character of their methods… I chose the traditional medical program of three chemo and thirty-five radiation sessions, begun immediately after diagnosis of my cancer, and I praise Allah for the doctors who treated me with their medicine chest of tough love.
(Poems and drawings written and executed during cancer treatment during the summer of 2012.)
His Most Precious Concern
(salla ‘llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam is assumed after the mention of his blessed name)
The Prophet Muhammad sits by the
bedside of the sick
Stands in our doorways to
shield us from the light
Strolls with us through our
dark woods
Is there in the clouds when we
fly in the air
and meets us when we
land at our differing destinations
Each one of us at once
his most precious concern
Messenger of God
not for a moment leaving us
comfortless
Feel his breath as he
bends over us
complete and deep assured
His full attention on the
condition of our souls
to pluck us from every
purgatorial indifference
peace and blessings of
Allah be upon him
greater than the sum
of each of our allotted breaths
and his Companions and Family
to the Next World
most true
6/28/12 (from Down at the Deep End)
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All Our Attempts at Healing
“There’s a cure for everything but death”
— Hadith of the Prophet (salla ‘llahu alayhi wa sallam)
All our attempts at
healing are to elude the long
loving arms of death coming
around us
The doorway filling with a sulfurous
light or beneficent radiance
elongating its rays into our hearts
into this little living blip between
two eternities
and somehow from this perspective
all the hustle and bustle of
earth life and its being taken so
seriously becomes
symphonic but strange
We all rush to our appointments
but dread God’s decreed one
on a Venetian canal under moonlight’s
eerie glow and slosh of brackish water
or standing at ease in our usual
nonchalance with
nothing particular to do or think or
say
The mortal bubble we’re
in and that’s in us just such an
evanescence that we naturally
hold back from hearing pop
Our song should twirl around it
the most magnificent of roses
the simplest and most
heartfelt of songs
And may God give me the strength to
believe all this if the
corridor of my own cure becomes
too narrow to
fit down
and only the ocean of love alone
remains left
to wash me clean
6/30/12 (from Down at the Deep End)
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