“One Step Then Another” © Edward Michael Supranowicz

 

49: Defining Chaos
(written while listening to Jethro Tull’s
The Broadsword and the Beast album)

I have Parkinson’s.
I have pain in almost all my joints.
I can’t run, jump, or get on the floor.
I have a foggy head.
They’re going to test my memory
to make sure I’ve still got marbles—
but hopefully not on my pituitary gland,
which had a marble-sized benign tumor
I had removed several years ago.
I have abnormal test results
but no true relief for them.
I go to a boxing class twice a week,
but I have to modify a lot of exercises.

I have rheumatoid arthritis.
I have tendinitis in my rotator cuffs.
I have pain in my knees,
making it hard to walk.
I have a CPAP and an oxygen machine.
I wear sleeves on my wrists
because of carpal tunnel.
I sleep for too many hours
and I have long naps,
always feeling fatigued and tired.

I have neck pain
even though I’ve had neck surgery.
I have back pain.
I have depression, anxiety,
and some other mysterious mental illness.
I’m on more than a dozen medications.
Some of them clearly work.
Some of them have unknown results.

I didn’t write a birthday poem in 2024.
Until September 2024,
I hadn’t written a poem in more than a year.
But an idea came to me
and I pursued it doggedly.
Then more ideas and more poems came,
the process slow and daunting.
I’d been hoarse for most of that year,
struggling to speak to doctors,
my brain moving too slowly
and not always finding the words anyhow.
Poetry returned as the lifeline I needed,
although I still struggled to be coherent.

People have noticed that I look better.
I’m glad for such reflections.
But inside, where it counts,
I’m not yet feeling better.
Writing helps me make some sense
of the chaos constantly going on,
even if I don’t specifically write
about what’s going on with me.
It’s a strange medicine for my soul,
which feels too dark sometimes.
But words replenish me when
I feel lost, confused, apprehensive.
I celebrate words today
as much as I celebrate my existence.

 

Christopher Stolle has been writing for more than 30 years. His work has been published by Indiana University Press, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Alembic, Sheepshead Review, and Plath Poetry Project, among others. He lives in Richmond, Indiana, the home of recorded jazz.

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.