Senescence

A poem -- hopefully this isn't growing old -- will be my last poem for a while

What twists and splits the mind?

Till it rips and snaps in time

What makes the mightiest men dwindle?

Their life never to be rekindled

What makes the memory so swiftly waste away?

What makes the brain’s matter so quickly turn from gray?

Why does this poisonous curse not engender hate?

Its effects despised, yet the cause so few wish to abate

Senescence, oh senescence, humans’ greatest curse

The cause of feebleness, of endless lives wasting away, a nurse

Caring for one in their final months

In agony, terror, pain — a disease far worse than mumps

Or measles, or cholera, or cancerous tumors

For senescence causes much disease, like was believed of ill humors

Senescence — so solvable, so horrible, remains

History’s most lethal plague, so deeply engrained

Death ticks down, like a ticking timer

Diseases which only affect the old, afflictions like Alzheimer’s

Yet death comes for us all until we end it.

Though deaths perch at each shoulder is carried by senescence

Were an enemy, a corporation, someone to harm as much as senescence

It would be scorned as history’s worst thing, unfathomable malevolence

Yet people carry water for the devourer of minds

The bringer of death for all mankind

The dwindler, the plunderer, the ender of lives

The twister, of sisters and wives

That causes the skin to flake

Tremors in the hands to begin to shake

The hands to wrinkle

Weird hair to start to grow, where once it was unthinkable

Is not its badness so transparent?

That makes so few know their grandparent.

Is not this an obvious horror?

This bodily contorter

This which robs the eyes of sight, the ears of sound

Which makes deaths door begin to pound

Which makes people more depressed

Ushering in too quick a death

This breaker of bones

This wrecker of homes

This carrier of such disease

A worse bringer of it than fleas

Which warps the skin, which twists the mind

It all begins to fall away, in time

Is its badness not the most obvious of truths

Like that 1+1 does equal 2

That the day is brighter than the night

That birds, not people, are capable of flight

And yet, so many with zeal that seems endless

Over backward bend, to defend senescence

“Would life be meaningful” from you the answer they try to squeeze

As if life’s meaning comes from end-of-life disease

Would the meaning really dissipate?

If when one turned 68.

They had just as much vim and vigor as when they were twenty.

At that age, of meaning they had plenty.

Life’s meaning comes not

From the frightening thought

That occasionally strikes people

That one day, they won’t heal

From some ailment, vicious and deranged

That will cause ungodly pain

Before they waste away

So don’t “grow old, along with me”.

Remain so young and free.

That when you’re 63.

Great and fresh life shall still be.

Should we not break this trend that leaves

In “a bed and a bathroom, a place for the end,” unfree

Our lives’ final moments

Is this not life’s worst component

If we could brim with vigor

And have the time of vim be bigger

Would that be so horrid?

Would the plan be so sordid?

If life lasted longer, was better, in fact

If life didn’t falter, the longer it lasts

Is it really conceivable

That death is not bereavable

That the fact that life dwindles

Is what that which meaning in life kindles

No! Death is often too horrific to ponder

How could its absence make value be squandered

So let senescence go, senescence burn.

Let it, like smallpox, drop its agenda and adjourn

Let it begone from earth

Let us one day be rid of its curse

Let us not ignore the problem, or falsely claim

That this source of tragedy, misery, and pain

Is valuable, and it we should not avert

This suggestion would strike us as absurd

If senescence didn’t already exist

Would anyone propose that we decide to add it?

That we make people’s lives get worse the more they age?

That we make life fade, with each turning page?

May death depart, may aging start

To stop, and stop its start

Its slow insidious creep, as each new moment fades

May it shatter like a vase

Let us one day proclaim “Wherefore”

“Was there senescence in those days of yore”