On Watching a Friend Die of Cancer

This is the way of it for some:

The heart beats ignorant of will.
The skin weighs heavy on the bone.
The stomach crumbles in its cave.
The mad cells riot in rude throngs,
Breaking the windows, lighting fires.
But still the brave bellows blast
Upon the ash. They cannot settle back
Upon the bed, sink in the pillow
Like a fleeting tread. The sagging bones
Still cage the consciousness:
The flailing wings,
The desperate, drowning fact
That in this tomb
There lies a being frailer than a sigh,
Longer for memory than breath and bone.

(c) 2012 Mark Penny