Explication of "My Number" and "I had heard it's a fight."

Both "My Number" by Billy Collins and "I had heard it's a fight" by Edwin Denby depict narratives where the speaker is facing the moment before death.
Collins' piece follows a man who is preoccupied with the coming of death. The narrator lists many places and actives that the Grim Reaper could be doing, this repetition proving his obsessive worry, and the poem ends with the metaphorical Grim Reaper arriving at his home. It seems this individual was expecting death in that he asks the Reaper if he had "trouble with the directions?" but still tries to ward off his advances with the final line "as I start talking my way out of this," or cheating death.
Deby's piece focuses on the is the precise moment that you start to feel yourself die. Dying is immediately compared to a "fight" but then narrator's experience was a "sweet thrill" that warned him of the "hell" that was to come. After having this run in with death the speaker reveals that he is an alcoholic who became sober after the sobering experience. He suddenly reverts back to "schoolkid" days where he views the intoxicating liquid as "bad," and refuses it from then on.
Both poems share a metaphorical view of death and both writers personify it. Collins states that he travels about causing morbid ends while Denby claims "it" physically "touched me." Both pieces are mostly light-hearted in tone seen in the colloquial language present and a sense that one can easily barter with death.