Who’s There?

A Poem by Steve Hansen

Prostate cancer is at my door.
I think I’ve seen this guy before.

Weren’t you a Jehovah’s Witness just yesterday?
And last week selling aphid spray?

Sir, if I could just have just a bit of your time.
You’ll not find this on Amazon Prime. 

I can see that you’re old but you still look great!
Old men don’t need to suffer their usual fate.

Why die of heart attack, stroke and all that
when you can die well like an aristocrat? 

Your Texas brother in law, remember him?
There could never have been a fate more grim.

First code blue
then ICU. 

He died of simply everything. 
In thirty days of suffering. 

His health declined in so many stages
His death certificate filled sixty nine pages.

For you sir, I’ve a much better path.
It’s all right here. I’ve done the math. 

Prostate cancer. Only great men have it. 
Michael Milken, Andy Grove and Warren E. Buffet.

Dude, you’re selling me cancer like it’s something great.
And by the way your tie’s not straight.

I like my penis the way it is.
Instead of tiny without any jizz. 

A man’s balls should hang loosely, when facing a wall.
Instead of being tucked away in a scrotum too small.  

And my muscles were strong until you came along
And tossed my hormones in the abyss. 

Prostate cancer meds are, I say, a wretched trip to hell and gone.
If I want shrunken body parts, don’t I just sail up the Amazon?

And I don’t want boobs because men don’t have them.
And little kids staring, ‘Is that a him?’ 

I used to love opera and those deep basso voices.
Is it necessary now that I make other choices?  

Rene Pape singing Wagner’s ‘Wotan.’
He’s my ideal of a macho man. 

Now instead of singing choir in basso 
I’m stuck high above with the other castrato

And for girls growing up with the fear something’s missing,
as studied by the great Doctor Freud

Could look down at mine and be rest assured,
‘No reason to be so annoyed!’