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Generation Blues
Death's eating into my generation
as it's done with every other one.
I knew it was coming but am
transfixed and awfully grieved still.
A heart-attack here, cancer there,
suicide, accidents, crime . . . "He wasn't
feeling well, so he went up to his
room. They found him dead a few
hours later. Stroke, they think."
The funerals mostly bore me.
Boredom makes me feel guilty,
although the one spoken of isn't
there, and if she or he were, he
or she would be bored, too.
Eventually I'm moved. There is
that one point in every funeral.
The generation blues is an exercise
in sitting still, as in kindergarten.
It's about wondering who's next
and thinking nothing matters--
until after the funeral, when again
we get caught up in life, which matters,
until the next one we know dies, and
we become still again, or the next one
is me, is I, who, dead, will get
instantly and forever still and might
be talked about to people who are
getting fidgety, thinking when will it end?
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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