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Enormous levels of kinetic energy can be transferred through microscopic to cosmic distances by photons that travel at the speed of light, carrying a relativistic mass/energy. This energy, when photons collide with atoms and molecules of living systems can cause serious damage or death.
Hawai’i Medical Journal 2010 April

It’s Chris from Mississippi who’ll lead
me through the labyrinth for my reprieve
to plot through bowel & bladder harmony

the path to my repair:  drop pants 
and underwear, up on the carbon monolith
go I to enter the remake:

2021:  Inner Space Odyssey

A scintillation of red lasers point
to tattooed marks on hips and belly, dancing
dervish rubies on my pubes

Apparatus swinging forward, X-ray 
monitors dance, too, with a sterile sci-fi precision
to *click* & *clack* and plot the map . . .

I ask myself what kind of body
harbours cancer     refuses to let it go?
Mechanical arms answer

snaking out from mother beast
point and aim     click inscrutable screens
target this     this body

this amalgam of molecules
animated with the pulse of light and blood
and thought     persistent urge

for treatment     every weekday
thirty days     test of endurance
meant to bring me
                                     back to balance