For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

droxyurea, Hydrea, Idarubicin, Idamycin, Ifosfamide, IFEX,
Irinotecan, CPT-11, Camptosar, Methotrexate, Rheumatrex
Dose Pack, Mitomycin, Mutamycin, Mitotane, Lysodren,
Mitoxantrone, Novantrone, Paclitaxel, Taxol, Topotecan,
Hycamtin, Vinblastine, Velban, Vincristine, Oncovin,
Vincasar, Vincrex, Vinorelbine, Navelbine. All the gang.)
You surge forward, stumbling, weeping, still clutching the
brochure, clearly delirious, poor thing. Under the influence;
any autopsy ignorant of your condition would have
a field day. Luckily, at the hospice, they know full well.
[...]
Later on, in the
sunlight. Shin-
Dead trees.
forest. Cool
height BRUME.
You’re a state.
hanging in rib-
covered in shit.
Your clothes
bons and you’re
Falling to your knees, you begin to fill your cardboard trug
with the various fungi poking through the decaying forest
floor (conocybe, predominantly – along with a few morels,
a cep and – careful – a jade-gilled death cap), eating the odd
one. Meanwhile, the tumour shuffles around Sainsbury’s,
pushing a demi-sized trolley before it, picking up everything
from the shopping list you provided earlier: avocados,
broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, chilli, an assortment of
cruciferous vegetables in general, figs, flax, garlic, grapefruit,
red seedless grapes (the convalescent’s archetypal foodstuff),
kale, liquorice, some sad looking button mushrooms, mixed
nuts, oranges, lemons, papayas, a punnet of raspberries, a