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Thoughts on Multiple Sclerosis
You will never find it comfortable or even tolerable
renewal is a complex lonely melancholic hymn
created with the gentle music of your self belief
now and then the mornings are complete with inflamed aches.
The limbs confront a sense of what used to be
sometimes the sun isn't all what it is cracked up to be
as you crave a recovery to elapsed memories long gone
like a dream deserted and ravaged on a cold hillside.
No visible wounds, yet you are badgered,
entrapped on an unwanted list of statistics
semi-terrified at times tripping over collapsing movements
maybe only in the slippery icy snow is there equality.
Perhaps breathing is a prayer of some significance
to those rigid limbs fatigued from tiredness
not being yours yet dear death, an unwelcome predator
I've decades left before you score that own goal.
Caress my body, dear disease and sleep deeply
in those warm mantles of a feeble life span,
I'm not yours yet, just a passing acquaintance,
although I see hunger in those peerless eyes.
Spare a thought for the able cripple
capable in body, devoid of wit or wisdom
in those sprightly, supple, speedy deft limbs
incapable of closing doors in an age of convenience!
Pat Dwyer, November, 2000.
Poem from Thurles to Cuba with Love.
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Prison
These walls of my limbs are the bars of my own personal prison,
I am not constrained, but the body is unwilling though the spirit is strong,
not afraid to see what awaits outside of this penitentiary place.
Just uncomfortable to an aching fatigued body, crippled with pain
too sore to experience the pleasures that have moved from me.
Wanting so urgently to let go and venture, be common, break free,
to some yet unknown cloud nine, free of discomfort and twitches,
yet still squatting quietly, keeping to myself and staying shackled up,
Should I leave this place where I am always secure, but anxious and annoyed
will I finally discover an inner strength of my muscles and mind to flee?
Poem from Thurles to Cuba with Love.
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An unwelcome guest
You arrived slowly without an invite to a normal body,
creeping in ecstatically, filling me to the tips of my fingers and toes.
Where is your invitation? Who invited you here?
I belong to somebody that somebody being me!
I am telling you pest of a guest to beat it and to scarper
you have stamped your authority with spasms and pain
merciless with your ravenous gluttonous appetite
teasing and taunting and eating my smile from my visage
you sink me in my blackness, where only dark shadows fall
a most unwanted visitor, so then why do you call?
To give rise to the austerity of life's infinite presence
or to awaken in my living some additional pain?
I want to know if you could get up smiling and ready
after a night of grief and despair, stiff and shattered to the bone?
You are an upsetting trespasser, gate crashing my party,
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own?
Forcing me to look at life straight in the face on a daily basis
hacking and gnawing at my body with tremors and fatigue,
I need to get away, maybe find some place to hide
perhaps somewhere near the sun to hunt the dark away,
but no matter where I am you always linger and stay,
and leave my weary spirit with a permanent disdain,
a ghost of chance staying by my side, you remain,
hovering, a souvenir of my destiny, MonSter, while I stand alone,
as the moments of my life seek some motive to survive.
It doesn't interest me who you else you know,
or how you came to be here or what sustains you from the inside,
Oh! That you dear perpetrator would flee back through the door
and would sleep deeply and contentedly forever more.
Pat Dwyer, May , 2003
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Funny Disease
I feel I have to write a poem for oddball peculiarities like me,
I walk, shuffle or stumble a little bit funny sometimes like a drunk
Passing life's obstacles as best I can but very, very slow,
Sometimes people talk to me and patronise now and then
And imagine that they are interested in this diabolic disease
That's like a slow burning cancer that eats your limbs
My legs are always stiff and often shaking with spasm and pain
But I always make sure and give it a real effort to beat this daily struggle
I go to the educated quack or neurologist at least twice a year
He communicates with my arms and legs and rarely looks me in the eye,
Looking at the symptoms but never at the person inside!
Everyday is now a mystery game as I wonder what's coming next
Oh! For more disabled doctors, builders, architects and tradesmen
Thinking like a disabled being to help the MS sufferer on his weary way!
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Invisible
You look fine no outer sign of pain
you look good as anyone should
this MS gives some strange peculiar wallop
a jolt miraculous to the point of invisibility!
Not recognisable a fairly dumb disease
peace and calm, you wonder the change
I have become a reformed optimist over time
It's difficult to explain this uneasiness.
Not offensive and being politically correct
you do not know where you are going
thousands of us doing it all together
going into soundless prayer in deafening silence.
Pat Dwyer October 2003
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Pain and MS
You wonder how much the soul can endure?
Pain comes and goes sporadically,
Heartache and despair follow...
How much more? How much more can I live with?
The road is so rough, long and wearisome.
I cry out in agony, sometimes silently.
You may ask how I am, and I say fine or OK
Even though you don't know I am sore and raw with ache.
Can't I live like the angels and saints do
Sleeping with only good vibes and halos?
Living with a smile on my face
And a thorn in my heart ripping me asunder.
Please don't think I am shutting you out
I can't live with this pain at times, this pain that jolts
Every now and then, my heart near breaking, my soul so weak....
How much more? Is it going to stop?
I look out the window and see no future.
Only fog overpowering, engulfing all around me.
Neither light nor burning candle
How much more? What will the future unfold?
Somewhere out there must be a path.
A light, a way out and not a tunnel at the end of my light!
Will I find it before it's too late?
How much more? How much more can I endure?
Some of my poetry on MS
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