The Distance of Death

My parents told me in '63

Directly

My grandmother had died

A day before I saw  in dismay

An Ambulance take her away

That very last day

Of my witnessing death

For  the next half century

Death came by phone

My second grandmother dead in DC

My closest  friend's my mentor's murder

Another friend of twenty years  dead of AIDS

My stepbrother and my companion's mother

AIDS and Suicide

Recently my own mother's death

Her fall  my brother's call

Broken her hip her heart

Two days ago the suicide of a musician

A student a friend of my friend

Told  to me as in distress I offered

Neither wisdom nor comprehension

Jack 3/29/11

Senescence

Jack By Dar
Cloudland

Senescence

The flip side of the coin of adolescence

Is senescence leaving maturity for old age

Showing or not accumulated wealth

Experience learning wisdom all the

Errors of foolishness and over-reaching expectation

There on the spinning coin of life all the wear

Rim-dings of longevity

No longer does it matter what the young

Wasted  of sweet youth like thirsty dogs

Lapping water from gutters knowing nothing

Of  Veuve Cliquot in Waterford Crystal

Contagions consumed by youth

Become the medication of the old for

Rim-dings of longevity

Senescence is a mountain crest a vista

Our life stretches below over cities of the plain

From the pool of Narcissus we have climbed

With vertigo with nausea to heights from which
Our choices our deeds our acts of love of need
Are now quiet volcanoes  oozing orange
Lava flowing falling into the cool sea

Senescence is like adolescence 

Bringing new found freedom 

Who cares what bosses think or family or 

Society when death opens like a warm

Abyss before us never a better moment

To embrace  individuality our unique creative

Being to add with ecstasy the final rim-dings

Jack, Vernal Equinox 2011