the squeezing of the stone

dad wait­ed 8 years
to tell him that
can­cer had in­fil­trat­ed his body—
dad wait­ed 8 years to tell him that
he had done any­thing about it—
dad had to stop work­ing &
when he put mon­ey in the mar­ket
un­der close su­per­vi­sion of some­one
whom he thought would help him out,
the whole fuck­ing thing
col­lapsed,
like the house of play­ing cards that it was,
leav­ing on­ly the kings & queens as al­ways
to walk off scot-free
at a brisk pace
hold­ing bags of mon­ey &
plane tick­ets—
dad’s mon­ey gone &
in­abil­i­ty to work as he once did,
he be­gan to watch all that he owned
leave his grasp
af­ter work­ing so hard for so many years
to do with­out cred­it &
to stay afloat the best that he could,
rais­ing kids in the mean­time &
sav­ing that mon­ey for when times got tough,
for when he got old—
and so with less than 20 grand in the bank
he can’t shell out the mon­ey for the shots any­more,
not to men­tion the ra­di­a­tion—
the stone can’t be squeezed for blood to help
there’s just noth­ing left &
an­oth­er great man will die be­cause
amer­i­ca has no uni­ver­sal health care for its
cit­i­zens.