Ibrutinib

The Marvel Comic name should tip you off
That this new drug is heavy duty stuff.
You don’t get this one just to cure a cough.
A chemo pill, and powerful enough
To put the kibosh on your CLL,
It gets in there and gives the bastard hell.

Five years’ remission and the beast is back.
It’s in your bones the way the Viet Cong
Poured through their tunnels to the Tet attack,
And what comes next might not last very long.
But let’s see what Ibrutinib can do
To win the war whose battlefield is you.

Ibrutinib, you little cluster-bomb
Of goodness, get in there and do your thing!
All that the bad guys seek is martyrdom:
Their own demise is in the death they bring.
They work in cells. There is no high command.
We drop you in and then it’s hand to hand.

Should you prevail, we promise you a role
From here on in until the natural end.
Just beat them back and it will be a stroll,
Unless you don’t, in which case things might tend
To go bananas in a serious way.
But not yet. Down the hatch. This is today.