Hello, I'm John Timothy Hardesty. Please don't get up or upset over me.
I'm currently battling Cancer with an egg noodle. Heading to the Cleveland Cancer
Center, where it’s like Hotel California, you can check in any time you like but you
can never leave unless you're on a gurney or in a coffin. I previously had several
tumors removed from my optic nerve and skull, one was so mammoth it cracked
my skull wide open like a nutshell. The doctor sealed me up, replugged me in, and
reprogrammed me back into society only to endure 33 bolted-down radiation
treatments. When you're in remission you're on top of the world, yet after two
years of clinic visits, doctor follow-ups, and scans after scans, they tell you
to have a seat, and then the oncologist screeches out almost like he enjoys to
say it, “your tumor is back in your skull.”
I go home and I immediately start hurting in my head, either from
psychosomatics or psycho-bananas. I'm Frankenstein with a new attitude.
I was nourished on Hemingway early in life, his stories connected me right
into the plot, he took me everywhere with his creative narratives. Hemingway
had some moledro or voodoo on me, I knew him well, so I thought. I suffered
through the poets of Lord Byron, Tennyson, Shelley, Poe, Dante, Keats, and
Shakespeare. I studied every great poet in every country over the span of forty
years, and many, many great novelists too.
Yet, L.E. Sissman had the most influential nexalune upon me.
Sissman was the class Poet at Harvard in 1949, yet, he was cursed with Hodgkin
Lymphoma at 37, yet produced some dark poetry that stands out to me.
