i want to tell you
about aging. but you're not listening
and who can
blame you? it's not a place anyone
aspires to, yet
preferable to the alternative.
i'm sure you didn't lie awake
making stories of how in your dotage
you would be livin yr dream. retirement.
yeah, no one born after 1950 believes that.
(if you're already beyond me,
excuse the discoveries posted here)
it arrives stealthily, in the night,
a storm surge of sea
foam in the streets, set to smother .
you can push it away but there's more
where that came from. try to keep your head up.
fan the space in front of you
there's nothing to tread in or on
you might be falling or drowning
but you're not sure, still breathing,
this is the way things are now.
object impermanence immanent,
you fight mortality with every fiber.
some days you pick up shells
caress skeletons of other lives
crush the marks they left
under your feet, unawares.
sometimes you're not at the beach.
your words are memories that no one shares.
your attempts at communication meet
with crossed signals, boomerang consequences.
relevancy got lost as you dribbled to the goal.
did you know there was a goal? ok you did
but it's not the one you're staring down now.
it's tough to be old in 'murca when
you're not in the government hogging that tit.
even if you are, senatorily speaking there
is a limit to how long you can be served
tho sometimes your name lingers after
you're gone. death is not a word
to be bandied about. it visits too closely
takes the ones who raised you or
takes your children first. euphemized,
its a gravity well into which you're falling
too slowly but way too fast. you've
become black hole spaghettified, hanging
infinitely at deep sleep's edge. longing.
but not enough to plunge, you coward.
