The Ghost Of You

This is a poem I wrote back in late May back in 2006, just before I found out that I had an advanced stage malignant squamous cell tumor that had completely consumed my right tonsil and metastasized into the right side of my throat and neck. The poetic writing here, in that sense, is a strong psychic assessment from the unconscious or "big mind" (rigpa in Buddhism) to my "small mind" (or ego, for want of a better word) warning how I had failed to overcome several unresolved existential traumas and toxic beliefs about self, despite protection from this mysterious "ghost of you", which appears as a feminine figure of a lover in this poem. I did not post this poem back then immediately, mainly because it frightened me with its terrifying thanatopsis (meditation on death) and I still was in conscious denial about what turned out to be a life-threatening disease . Only later did I recognize the deeper wisdom of the poem, how it was attempting literally to ' wake me up' out of my trance--and this was after I finally went to the hospital and had the growing lump which I thought was only a swollen gland diagnosed as cancer. (I'd been going to the gym for weeks, working out harder than usual because I thought this would make the swelling go down!) So, this is a poem that truly does come " from the depths," and in that sense I feel it is a poem whose symbolism and narrative of realization, flight, forgiveness and love is still far beyond me. Even with my readers' help, I may never understand this work fully. And yet I know somehow it's one of the most authentic poems I've ever written, if I can say that without sounding boastful, since the period when I wrote this turned out to be the most humbling, purifying, and cathartic experience of my half-century of life. THE GHOST OF YOU was first posted on Gather on December 4, 2006, after I'd gone through four months of aggressive combo chemotherapy in hospital, and an operation that removed what was left from the tumor. I did a few line rewrites in perhaps a dozen places in the poem, which was basically still in first draft form. I still had thirty three doses of radiotherapy directly to my throat area to go, and five more months of day chemo a couple times a week, but I knew then I would live, just as the poem hinted. It can be found at: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976853604&nav=Namespace