His Goal Had Always Been To Out Live Senator Robert Byrd Who Was Thirty One Years His Senior Poem by Ted Sheridan

He keeps himself guessing moment to moment
Today the pain was in his left side
Yesterday it had been on his right
Next to his nipple and his scar
Last Tuesday the cancer was eating his brain for lunch
It was the mayonnaise stain on his power tie
Which had tipped him off as to his disease
You see, he has always had a heightened sense of pain
Ever since he found Jesus in that foxhole back in Nam
And those things which go bump in the night
Now make his eyes fully dilate and his prostate swell
Like so much nitrous oxide entering his lungs
While the feeling in his legs returns
Another sleepless night has allowed
The bright sun to shine on a
Dark yellow urine filled toilet bowl
Sterile but still smelling of a warmed stench....
Hitting the August sidewalk barefoot and half naked
From his boxers hanging down around his cheeks
To his fallen arches the concrete feels like nails
Or broken glass to the bottoms of his feet
As he hops left then right then heel to toe
Trying to even out the effects of his bloated bodies weight
Shifting back toe to heel and side to side
He looks around for his neighbor's nosey eyes
Rearranging his shrinking package
As he strives to make it to the rewarding comfort of his manicured lawn
Where a mix of Bermuda with just the right amount of Fescue awaits
The perfect lawn for the less than perfect man
Winter or Summer the grass is always greener
On his side of the fence
Thanks to the fertile nature of his loyal dog
And better living through Chemistry (Agent Orange And DDT)
Grabbing his left arm with his trembling right hand
His pain has moved again and this time to his breast
Turning to his wife
Who has been following closely behind with his oxygen tank
And the all important defibrillator just in case
The government reports an increase in the unemployment rate
Or his enlarged heart decides to quit
He comments it feels like a hundred pound bag of manure
Is laying on his chest
And he knows that Death is near
He has felt its presence over him
Ever since his daughter returned home
Tattooed and pierced through her lip and nose
With her fingernails painted as black as Death itself
He is sure he is not long for this world which abhors him
Making his way back into his ivy covered house
Going up the stairway to heaven
He grabs a quick shower and then brushes his hair
Feeling a little better and more like a King
The Cancer on his crown complains and oozes vile profanities
Back at him from his mirror image and the open head wound
He attempts to hide with a few extra strands of gray
But the Cancer just won't cooperate and it keeps screaming
How eventually it will win and there will be more than
Just some oily mayonnaise stain to mark its deadly appetite
Hoping he can find some relief from a bottle and a pill
He jolts the Rum taken from his secret hiding place
Down like a wired sieve
Straining his pain through a pharmaceutical miracle
His glassy eyes now bright with narcotic glee
He manages and keeps himself guessing
Moment to moment and day to day
He was sure he heard the voice of God last Friday
Assuring him his suffering was about to end
Yet here he is....
Still trying to out live Senator Robert Byrd
Standing without the use of a cane....he smiles as he thinks
How as a child he had traveled frequently
Through the mountains of West Virginia
Without stopping once to relieve himself
Leaving some of his what was then only a clear yellow urine
On that State's tainted and dark red clay
For which he always had some unexplained distained....
But that was before Jesus had converted him
From a Barbarian....to that of his current state
And his heightened sense of things.....

Senator Robert Byrd....Born Nov.20,1917....It must be the red clay.

2007 © T Sheridan