Labor Day Poem for Cancer Patients

laborious |ləˈbôrēəs|
adjective
(esp. of a task, process, or journey) requiring considerable effort and time : years of laborious training | the work is very slow and laborious. See note at hard


So is learning to play a musical instrument,
to create art, to write. Does that make cancer art?
No, you idiot. Cancer is hell.
What about the pharmaceutical industry?
You've been watching too much TV. Or been online.
(You haven't been reading the newspaper, have you?)

Cancer is laborious. So is baking bread.
So is fixing cars. Paying the mechanic.
Taking a shit while constipated is laborious.

Jerry Lewis is still on TV raising money for MD.
And Ed McMahon is dead. With Johnny.

Some say love is labor. I say it is easi-
er than a 4-day workweek on a salary,
more difficult than chemo for love gets you through it.


Thesaurus
laborious
adjective
1 a laborious job arduous, hard, heavy, difficult, strenuous, grueling, punishing, exacting, tough, onerous, burdensome, back-breaking, labor-intensive, trying, challenging; tiring, fatiguing, exhausting, wearying, wearing, taxing, demanding, wearisome, tedious, boring, time-consuming; archaic toilsome