what pain is this

physical pain, sickness, aching joints and muscles, infections, all side effects of the anti cancer cream, all conspiring to bring down the body's defenses. i could not sleep no matter what position i turned and tossed to. it was unrelieved agony as was the drive home yesterday, almost unable to see, my truck weaving from white line to white line, feeling tremendous fatigue and eye strain. i am collapsing. unable to keep going yet work demands, life requires and i want only to lay down and let all go let everything fall apart. this is the true nature of desire leaving, the end of caring, the pain of holding on, the last remnants of the system trying to endure. my son calls me the strongest man hes ever known, i think of myself as weak. what is the truth of me being, the ascension or the decline. where on the scale of beast to buddha is this one, what man or beast or godlike creature stirs? i wander in the thrones of the fallen and eat the berries from the thorn bushes growing from the cracks of the marbled floors.