my friends who know me fairly well know also my disposition not toward melancholy but. . .shit, the word ain't coming to me. . .but a discussion of mortality. life is extremely brief. and whether one might believe i saw a ghost or not, i tend to think that his go around is the only one. conversation, esp. lunch time conversation, inevitably returns to death. and why not, it's the prime motivator. we do things because and in spite of death. jump out of an airplane? yr saying fuck you to death.

live long enough if yr a poet and you'll be writing about death. in the u.s. death is usually hidden with hush-hush words and closed doors. no one dies in america. everyone is young and beautiful, as if. my friend poet pearl selinsky who i think is in her late 70s and who lost her husband, vic, last year thinks what makes poets different than the madding crowd is that poets think of death all the time. i don't know about that, i mean the specialness of poets. i think everyone considers death.

which is often the subject of conversation with me. and yet, death is not tragic, so to speak. it is the natural conclusion of living. it isn't the price you must suffer and pay. death takes everything but it is free and available to every living creature. no one gets off earth alive.

i've reached the middle of my life. it astonishes me to say so. but i have. when i have aches and pains, for example just this moment typing my back is aching from sitting too long in this chair, i have to remind myself of my age. i think and act like a 25 year old. my body however is not 25.

i'll end this ramble by saying i think i've hit that stage in my life when i realize shyness and apathy are killers. mean what you say when you say it. something like that. for fuck's sake, i don't want to go to my death with the regret of not telling someone i loved him/her. life's too fucking short. i have so many ideas for poems and projects that i know i won't complete a quarter of them. who cares. poetry and death are intimates. i want to raise a middle finger to all bs. as long as i can write and read, i shall say this is the life.