On Growiing Old in an Age of Total Comodification of Youth

    I think a lot about being old. Especially, hanging out mostly with young peeps. Not cause I feel either alienated, or decrepit (so far, I'm way healthy for my age, and the younger peeps I've palled up with are totally accepting and awesome), but because I sense how unusual this is. How unique my situation...

  It makes me feel all the more intensely the pathology of the cult of youth that dominates our culture and the all too common fate this condemns our oldest citizens to as their companions, loved ones and family die--left to live alone, or institutionalized like the animals in our factory farms.

   We are not creatures evolved to live alone, or segregated by age. I'm so convinced, that if there was a time when the old were respected for wisdom--and there was any truth to the belief... it was because they had been granted the privilege of learning from the young for multiple generations.

Left alone, we deteriorate into grumbling dependent misfits.

  I've been so fortunate--to have stumbled into an extraordinary, excepting loving community/family of poets here in Philly.. and then... came the Occupiers... let us outgrow the brand name... it's a movement bigger than any label, as large as the hearts and courage and imaginative will for a better world of those who devote themselves to its work.

   As I approach the beginning of my 72nd year... I would not trade places for any one on earth. I am as lucky as any man could ever hope to be... even as I worry for the fate of those I love in this terribly troubled time.