Dreampower Artworks

Another session confined in the metal tube, jackhammers and ferry horns blasting amidst an addled and chaotic percussion section, and then moments of blessed silence while the machine hums and the magnets realign for another round of cacophony with a side of claustrophobia. I drift off worrying about a port inserted in my body…probably better…

My guardian angels are a cynical bunch — they knew me when I was much younger. They’ve lost the halos ’round their heads; their attire is veering toward grungier They’ve saved me from getting too close to the edge and found me when I got lost. They talked me down from high up on the…

Walk away from the soup when all the ingredients have been chopped up and the salt and pepper and cayenne stirred in. Walk away so the soup can gestate. Walk away from on-campus teaching when I realize these are not the students I can reach; these students don’t want to be reached; this is not…

“Glioblastoma? It always comes back,” Doctor Doom says as he leans way to far into my space. “Three months if you do nothing,” says the neurosurgeon from another planet. “Eighteen months if you have a craniotomy, radiation, and chemo.” Why is it these docs love to measure the threads of our lives? I do what…

You know what it feels like when you suddenly listen to yourself? When you hear the brutal language of your own self talk? When you hear how you are perpetuating your own negative programming? I hear myself say or write “chemo sucks” many times and on some level I am speaking the truth. Chemo truly…

Dear Jonathan, you are writing strongly about the hardest stuff: self-doubt, mistrust, hopelessness I can feel my own self unravel on days when I’m blue. A train of questions pulls on the thread that weaves me together — what’s the point? Why am I doing this? Why carve this stone, much less polish it? Why…

July 22, 2020 Dear Sensei Glioblastoma, A year ago today I learned of your existence in the right parietal lobe of my brain. You got my attention with that spooky seizure in the parking lot of Safeway. Later in the emergency room, I caught a glimpse of what you looked like in the CT scan….

Has anyone seen my bounce? I think it might have gone walkabout. Maybe the chipmunks stole it although they seem to have bounce, squirm, and skitter to spare. Maybe the hummingbirds thought it was nectar to rev up their tiny samurai hearts as they duel over the pink juice in the feeder. Maybe the robin…

Something racist, foul, cruel, and corrupt is in its death throes as something egalitarian, loving, kind, and just is trying to be born. But right now the baby is in a breech position the mother’s cervix cannot dilate the new babe cannot descend into the birth canal hence the chaos, convulsions, contractions, violence, screaming, and…

Some of you may be having a gag reflex. Some may be thinking Kathy’s brain cancer is hollowing out her skull; she’s losing her mind. (Give me time; it may happen yet.) Others of you may be thinking, oh good. At last someone sees 45’s greatness as the epitome of the American dream — a…