Be with your own goodness to avoid sin

Watching The Signs Of Aging

Watching the signs of aging;
Ultimately,
Finally
An end.
Notice, I don’t say THE end.

Not a film, a flimsy bit of flimflam,
A clouded artificiality, life imitated, intimated.
As stated:
A downgrading: witless and insensate,
Thinning at the temples,
Eyebrow hairs a crazy zigzag;
Tummy more rotund and round;
Fingers, which, however trained
No longer want to grasp or grip.
Compression of the whole foundation
Underscore the downward trip.

Aging signals watched with care –
Obviously there!  Involuntary!
Glasses that you never needed;
Tender spots you never heeded.
Fragile scenes that make you weep.
Couplets which you once thought cheap
Resorted to, which you now keep.

Compensations: pensions, patience;
Many words that end in –pence
Because, and just because
All signs become a Santa Claus:
Signs of good –
That is, when you are in the mood.
Stiff fingers finding newer ways to play piano, open jars,
The mental auto-search a galaxy of syndrome-stars
Bursting unused.

No longer worrying ‘bout standards,
You’ve your own.  
No need to join
The middling crowd,
The mediocre: in reality, the herd.
Small ambitions,
Minimized conditions
All good and fine, but still
Signs of aging ultimately will
Win out.

Watching The Signs Of Aging 12.5.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; Bath Book II;
Arlene Corwin

The laughter of leaves
whisper testament
over cool caverns,
ancient moss
the absurdity of clocks
dashed upon rocks
while they dance,
backlit with sunglow,
at the true speed
of life
daring us to defy
the timeless tapestry
in which all are woven
Do stones large and small
not rustle
like leaves
in the eye of the mountain?
and is the leaf not as solid
as stone, to the aphid?
And what lives between
two lover-friends?
It is no brief candle
measured with ticks
on numbered dials
It moves not with the flash
of a single spark
Nor with the slow glow
of dawn
In gentle illumination
it is a soft gentle kiss
drifting on mist,
and it moves
at the speed of love,
with the rhythm of life

Copyright © 2016 K. Rush

I listened as a mouse struggled
to escape a half empty frozen coffee cup,
it took a while for me to understand
where the rustling was coming from,
I stared down the open lid
and saw glossy eyes
squinting up as me, as if I was the sun,
and my first instinct was to bring him outside,
I poured him on the frozen ground
and noticed as his legs were chilled, dead.
I placed him back in the cup,
put the lid on,
and breathed into the lid
giving him all the warmth
I could give,
his chest moving like
metronome trying to break
though his skin,
I could hear the ticking of his
heartbeat like a broken clock,
there was no chance,
his eyes opened and
stayed shut longer,
his legs stayed dead,
so I put the coffee cup
on the frozen grass,
closed my eyes
and stomped
like it was a cockroach,
I sparked a cigarette.

I'm more or so
consumed by pleasure,
call me a hedonist but
my definition may differ
from yours,
contentment is subjective
and the objective
of attaining gratification
has dusted from belying
to sincerity and I've found
happiness in the way the
sun comes up
rather than the way
the moon can go down on you
and have you clenching
nocturnal bedsheets
with a beer and a beer
and a pen
rereading that it seems
my hedonism is
ambiguous and subjective not,
to myself,
I take that back,
I'll be having threesomes with
the sun and the moon now,
give me my fix of both