bicycle poem #1 (poems about bicycling while bicycling)

I am poet-jedi beneath these streetlights,
knifing through wind and cars, two-wheel style,
hugging each turn with pristine grace;
if only the other barrios of my life could be this easy,
namely, love

How To Ruin Relations With Your Girlfriend’s Siblings (in one weekend)

1) When you arrive in Seattle on a Thursday night in late September, four months into chemotherapy treatment, go out to a college bar during karaoke night with your girlfriend, her brother, and his two former frat brothers. Once there, when a drunken undergrad is singing the Nine Inch Nails “Closer” as if she was the hottest woman alive, ready to bang two guys in the nearest available toilet stall (I want to fuck you like an animal), stalk over to the bar without saying a word to your girlfriend and knock back a shot and brood after it becomes apparent that her brother and his friends don’t want to leave this bar (months later, you realize you should never drink when you’re upset; drinking has never made a bad situation better).

2) Once you do leave and hit up a bar that is much more to your liking (i.e. not a place where you have to worry about the Girls Gone Wild crew showing up), drink excessively even though you really shouldn’t be drinking while undergoing chemotherapy.

3) When you’re leaving the bar and your stomach feels uh-oh-queasy, step between two parked cars and vomit, with some of it splattering on the sides of your Chuck Taylor shoes. When the brother’s annoying friend guffaws and says, “Oh dude, you drunk too much!” keep your mouth shut and allow that anger to boil inside of you instead of telling him, “I have cancer and I’m doing chemo—and my body can’t handle alcohol like it usually does.” You don’t tell him this because your girlfriend, during the flight, asked you for one thing—not to mention to her siblings that you have cancer (even though, you will find out later, after you break up, that they knew then because your girlfriend’s mother had told them, but her siblings never spoke to you or your girlfriend about it).

4) On the way over to a convenience store—your girlfriend in the passenger seat, her brother driving—smack the back of her seat after she says something trivial, which allows the brother's friends to jokingly chide her. Smack the back of her seat in an entirely passive-aggressive way and say, "Yeah, what were you thinking!" Look away when the brother whips his head back to glare at you.

5) In the convenience store parking lot, after checking your wallet for change, walk off to the Air & Water machine to see if it runs for free in Washington so that you can rinse the vomit off of your shoes. When it isn’t, since it requires fifty cents, stalk back to the car where your girlfriend and her brother are sitting. When she asks, “Were you trying to get it to work?” respond: “What does it fucking look like I was trying to do?”

6) The next day, apologize to your girlfriend but fail to apologize, that entire weekend, to her brother. Fail to recognize, until you break up that following Monday, how it must have felt for him to see his sister’s boyfriend do and say those things. Fail to see how much of an asshole you must have come across to him. Fail to understand how you would have been steaming pissed at yourself if you were in his position. Fail to understand the ramifications of all this for your relationship.

7) Even after you understand this, do not send him an e-mail apologizing for your actions until seven months later when your relationship is finally mending from that initial breakup, moving past those difficulties you had during those first months. Send that e-mail only after your girlfriend’s sister visits and you can tell she really, really dislikes you because she won’t even look at you when you’re trying to converse with her. Send that e-mail to your girlfriend’s brother and sister after you can’t find the time or place to apologize to her in person on the one night you’re hanging out together. Send those e-mails after your girlfriend’s sister and mother both yell and criticize your girlfriend for being with you, which makes her really upset, putting her in a terrible bind, straining your relationship. Send those apologies when it is much too late. By then, even though it is sincere, full of regret, your apology to her brother seems hollow—and you can’t blame him for thinking that.

The Two Things I've Learned This Year

If you're ever in need of a free drink, just tell people:

1) that you beat cancer, or
2) that you just finished grad school!

love (a vantage)

love is a lie that some of us are good at telling ourselves, again and again and again

Wishes, Wishes, Wishes for Chemo

My previous entry was a false start of sorts. My chemotherapy was mistakenly stopped after the fourth cycle, but my oncologist made an error when he did. So I didn't stop my chemo treatments in October, but I will this coming Friday---unless my white blood cell count is too low to have a treatment this week. That hasn't happened and I don't think it will, so I'm certain that this Friday will be my 12th and final chemo treatment.

Below is a list of the wishes I had in my head, back in early June, before I began my treatments. I don't think my hair will grow back as an afro, unfortunately, but it seems timely to list and share what my wishes were then, now that it's finally ending:


•It’s to be expected that chemo will make my hair fall out. But, I’ve read and heard that it might grow back differently—curly when it was straight, coarse when it was smooth, even a different color (say, red because of Doxorubicin, which looks like dark Kool Aid and will make my pee pinkish, right after chemo). I want it to fall off like a tree’s leaves in autumn so it can grow back as the mightiest afro ever! My lifelong dream of having hair like Jimi Hendrix or Sly Stone would come true—and I would feel like the hottest person I could possibly be!

•That it doesn’t make me too sick and weak and vomity and that it really sticks it to that mean Mr. Hodgkins (what a bad fellow he is!).

•That it doesn’t come between me and Blanca being happy together.

•That it can get rid of Mr. Hodgkins so that Blanquita can finally be with me when I’m not actually sick.

•That it doesn’t make me impotent so that someday, if I want to, I can have kids with someone who loves me (because I’d like to have kids who I can pervert with my ways!).

•That it doesn’t prevent me from riding my bicycle, from creating the joy I get when I ride around my neighborhood, from feeling the exhilaration I feel when I ride down a steep hill in San Francisco (weeeeeeeeee!!!!!!), from feeling the awe and contentment I get when I bicycle beneath the skyscrapers downtown, or when I’m out in nature, gawking at the redwoods, the tranquil beauty around me.

•That it will test me, like never before, and help me become the strongest person I can ever be.

•That it doesn’t make me too sick and weak to stop me from going to school in the fall, like my oncologist said it would. Please. I think that would break my heart because being at school, talking about writing, talking about good stories, about what I love with my classmates and professors who I care about makes me feel excited and happy like I must have felt when my mom dropped me off at preschool and kindergarten.

•That it gets rid of Mr. Hodgkins forever and ever so that I can be with my parents and my sisters for as long as I possibly can.

In the Light

Tomorrow is the 18th of September, 2009, the end of my 4th cycle of chemotherapy; it might be the last chemo treatment I receive. This Monday is when I allowed myself to really think about that—and I can’t help but be a little jubilant about that possibility.

Months ago, after I was diagnosed, after I met with my oncologist for the first time, I tried to foresee myself at the end of the treatment. From what I had read about chemotherapy, from what my oncologist told me—that I shouldn’t count on continuing my part-time work, much less think about returning to school for the Fall semester—I figured I would be beat. Spent. Weaker-me.

I figured I wouldn’t be able to ride my bicycle as much during treatment, let alone near the end when my body, my spirit would be depleted. But this week, I’ve bicycled thirty miles the past three days, managed a little workout at the gym, gone to work and attended my classes right after.

I really thought things were going to be much more bleak at this juncture.

After my class was finished, I zipped back to the Lafayette station to make it back to the city in time for my 6 PM blood draw/weight check—something I must do to make sure I have enough white blood cells to undergo my chemo treatments. When I got to San Francisco General, my shirt was still damp from all the sweating I’ve done today (it’s disgusting how much I sweat! I’ve always been quite the sweaty lad, but I think its easier for me to sweat now—if that’s possible—and I suspect it’s due to my chemo, my body’s way of saying, “Get this shit out of me!”). I was listening to “my 70’s party” playlist on my iPod when Evelyn “Champagne” King’s “You Make My Love Come Down” came on. The hospital lobby was nearly empty, minus the two security officers kicking back behind the information desk and one person hanging out by the front entrance. While waiting for the elevator to go up to 4C (where I get my chemo infusions and go for my “weigh-in”), the only people who passed me were hospital employees in their scrubs. Each one of them had tired but glowing smiles—their day at “the office” through. On the elevator ride up, I began to bob my head, then my shoulders to the song’s jubilant, sexy groove. When the doors opened and I stepped out onto the 4th floor, I saw that I also had this—the floor—to myself. I strutted and pumped my arms to the song when I walked down the hall to the 4C ward, past the area just outside the ICU unit. It felt blasphemous to do so, since almost every time I’ve walked past those doors these past four months—morning, afternoon, or early evening, twice every two weeks—there have been family members, friends, or lovers, crying, their faces awash with fear and worry over their loved one behind those doors, perhaps on the precipice of Life or Death. But there was no one there, no one around, and I would have had to exert energy to not dance and celebrate this moment in my life: I was perhaps going for my last blood draw for my chemotherapy treatments—and the sun was out and shining over the city.

Inside 4C, Connie, the petite Filipina head nurse with the stylish glasses, bob cut and hair dyed platinum red, sat at one of the computers behind the registration desk. I waved to her, already feeling nostalgic for her, for the sweet nurses who have taken care of me these past months. I walked past her to the infusion ward. Marva, the black nurse with the curious accent (I think she’s Jamaican) who calls me “a good boy” and once called me “an angel” because I always read a book during my infusions (until I pass out from the Benadryl), was also behind a computer, typing in some data.

“Hi. I’m here for my 6 o’clock blood lab,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll be right with you,” she replied.

I stood and waited then said, “How are you, Marva?” I said it to let her know that I remember who she is.

“I’m good. Did you work today?”

“Yeah. And I had school today.”

“Oh, that’s good. Well, go ahead and pick your hot seat.”

After she weighed me (I’m tipping over 170 lbs! I actually gained weight this week; unfuckingbelievable considering the quarts of sweat [no exaggeration] I’ve exuded), then took my two blood samples, I left (“See you tomorrow!”) and said bye to Connie. When I left the ward, I laughed, thinking how this hospital ward had come to feel like a place of work, like a second office—a place you’re eager to get away from once your work is done (having cancer and getting rid of it is a job—the top “priority”), but a place with people for whom you feel affection for.

One of the wonderful things about San Francisco General is its location, perched on a hill amongst other hills—Potrero to the east, Bernal Heights to the south, Dolores Heights to the west. Another beautiful touch is that its entrances (thus exits) face west, which feels so right. I have never once had to reason why I’m taking these treatments, why I’m choosing to live, but while sitting during my treatments, or when I’ve walked around the upper floors of the hospital and passed the windows that look out over Potrero Hill or the hills past Dolores Heights, it’s been simple to be reminded of the beauty of this world that I desperately want to continue to be a part of. The sunshine that seeps through those windows, that bath those sterile, emotionless hospital areas in light, has always been like hope manifest. There is always a tomorrow.

When I cycled back home down 22nd Street, I was awash in the sun’s light as it shined just above the hills in the distance. The cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians who crossed the street were silhouettes amidst the golden backdrop. I smiled while my arms glistened beneath the sun’s nourishing warmth. Huascar—the name of the second to last Incan emperor, a Quechua name that means “Sun of Joy”—was what my father wanted to call me before I was born. The name never seemed so fitting to me while I bicycled toward the sun, toward tomorrow, as I imagined myself dissipating into that golden light until I became part of it, shining over all the streets, all the trees, the entire city.

Quien Sabe (Who Knows)

Hodgkin’s. Cancer. Me. 30. Why?

I was diagnosed on April 27, 2009; it was a Monday, the start of a week. Since then, especially the week after I found out, this question inevitably crossed my mind.

Why?

I had probably had Hodgkin’s lymphoma for over a year. My body, our beautiful, wondrous constructions—one that has, in part, turned against itself— first told me that something was awry in late June of 2008 with a swollen lymph node by my left clavicle. An array of medical practitioners—doctors, radiologists, surgeons, pathologists, and pulmonologists—ran a number of tests to try and determine what was wrong with me. During those months, when I arrived to those appointments, lugging my backpack with my bicycle helmet strapped to it, I think I fooled them all, along with my family, friends, and myself. I appeared healthy, strong, displaying none of the “B” symptoms—the more serious ones—and there is no history of cancer in either of my parents’ families. How could I possibly have cancer, though with time, after all the examinations and two biopsies came back “negative” or “non-diagnostic,” it began to make more and more sense?

Hodgkin’s disease, now called Hodgkin’s lymphoma, was first described back in 1832 by Thomas Hodgkin, an English physician. 177 years later, the medical field still has little idea what causes this blood cancer. Though it was comforting to finally know what was wrong with me, especially since it’s a very treatable disease, it has been unsettling, not knowing how it happened—what caused it, so I can know what I need to change.

This hasn’t, however, deterred me from coming up with a slew of theories: could my disease, which is between my lungs and spread to my left chest, have originated from the Teflon plate that was inserted in my body and fused with my chest plate when I was fourteen? Could the electromagnetic radiation emitted from my cell phone somehow have reacted with it in order to create a toxic environment within my chest? Was it from the marijuana I smoked the past few years? From the cigarettes I puffed on occasion? Was my body simply too sensitive to it? Or did I somehow get it from the Nalgene plastic bottle I had for years, the one that had these strange white flecks floating in the water, even after I washed it out—the same bottle the company pulled off the shelves in 2008 because of fears that a chemical used to make them caused cancer and increased the risks of other serious health problems? Was it all those bad leftovers I ate over the years? Should I have refrained from eating scraps of food that fell on the floor? Was the five-second rule a bad one to heed? Was it all those years of chewing my fingernails, even my toenails? Was it from sniffing all those Mr. Sketch and dry-erase markers? Did someone lay a curse on me!?

Or is my mother right—that this is a “test from God”, an opportunity to look up to the sky and acknowledge that He exists? Could there actually be such a sick god—male, female, or hermaphadite—that is so greedy, so in need of my miniscule attention and belief? Could she be right? Am I “wrong” in my atheistic belief, as she says, part of the losing team?

Can’t she see why I don’t want to believe this, that I want to hold out some hope that there might be a God, and that she is just, not wrathful, beautiful, not jealous? Can’t she understand that a part of me, like never before, wants to believe? That sometimes when I see the mural of Jesus, beaming, arms held open before a flock of children on the bus ride to my chemo treatments that I want to be one of those kids, basking from his love? Doesn’t she understand that I want to believe but can’t because my faith in anything must be founded in logic?

Or might my disease—whom I call Mr. Hodgkins (because this conquistador, like all the ones in our collective history, have always been men, not women)— be a masterful concoction, born of the “suicide impulse” that even my girlfriend of five months has already recognized within me? Throughout my adult life there have been times—however fleetingly—when I haven’t cared about living (which is different from wanting to die), when all the destruction and suffering I see, read, and feel from this world is too much, when I’ve seen little point in continuing to be a part of this evolution. Could Mr. Hodgkins have bloomed during one of these moments? Was the rest of my body too weak to fend off this treacherous act?

I no longer ask myself why, though it hasn’t stopped my curiosity. I’m not sure if there is a why. At this point, I think there is only a “who knows”.

The one thing I am certain of, the one thing this “journey” has taught me is: I just want to live so much.