Thursday, October 13, 2022

poem

 Epitaph

Let’s gather around and play

A game called epitaph 

The object of the game

Is to choose a pithy inscription

For your headstone without

Using any names (especially your own)

Or bracketed sets of numbers.


How do you answer?

What would you say?


Something heartfelt and banal like:

He loved his family and did his best?


An incantation from a witch's curse?

Maybe your favorite Bible verse?

Maybe an inside joke. Something ironic.

    The last thing you saw, a half drunk gin and tonic


I’ve narrowed my choices down to 3:

  1. Currently not available for comment. Please check back later

  2. Drank too much, ate too little

  3. Here lies the act before the ache


Honorable mention goes to maybe I’ll do better as soil and grass


Automatic disqualification for etching

Your notion of the meaning of life

Nobody really knows that

Otherwise every headstone

Would read the same


The winner is the one 

Who leaves his blank.

Not to make some sort of inscrutable

Existential eastern mystical statement.

More likely, he just ran out of time, 

Panicked, and now is too dead

To enjoy his hard earned victory


10/13/22





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