Last week’s post was all about life, birth, coming into the world. This week, we’re zooming to the other end of the spectrum to introduce a new poetry form. An EPITAPH POEM is one designed to appear on a tombstone. They are necessarily brief and often rhyme. They can be funny or serious or poignant, however the deceased would want to be remembered. If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say? Here are a few of mine. Feel free to add yours in a comment, below.
WRITTEN IN STONE
Laid corner to corner
in her graveyard suite,
she’ll slumber in death
as she lived: Oblique.
Moving into
this dimension
is just another
reinvention.
To the dates,
pay no mind.
She was only
twenty-nine.
Below the daisies,
things turn a 180.
My body will rot,
my teeth will not.
Took my vitamins, ate my kale,
drank protein shakes, to no avail.
Healthy or not, we end up dead,
wishing we’d chosen pie instead.
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JUST JOAN 42 
A bit macabre but fun😃
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Thanks, Joyce. They’re all me, but #2 rings truest. 🙂
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I think my favorite is the one about the body rotting, but not the teeth. Rings kind of true. As a hypochondriac, I want my epitaph to read, “See, I told you I was sick.”
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Thanks, Tippy. I like your idea, but I met so many hypochondriacs in my job as a nurse that I think half the stones in the graveyards could say that. Then how would I find you? It is weird how things change in the afterlife. Here, I fight to keep what’s left of my teeth, but there, even without regular brushing and flossing, a person’s teeth never seem to deteriorate any further. NCIS personnel can exhume the body and use those everlasting teeth to verify their identity. Maybe death has its advantages. 🙂
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One advantage is, when you’re dead you never have to see a dentist.
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Dentists in Heaven must be like the lonely Maytag repairman. Well, if they get in, that is. 🙂
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Ha!
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Ha, this is a cute one and I definitely want something humorous on my tombstone…just haven’t quite decided what. Just yesterday I found out that a woman who hated me died. I was always nice to her but she hated me for no reason…jealousy maybe. I don’t know, guess I won….mixed feelings…she was only around my age so pretty young to go.
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Wow, Marissa, what a shocker! That’s pretty young to be taking a dirt nap. Maybe it’s better to decide what you want on your headstone sooner rather than later, you know? 🙂
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I think I resonate with the third one Joan. Perhaps I haven’t embraced aging so much. On a lighter note, I fancy something like : “You can’t put a good think down” I’m always amazed at where your mind takes us.😀
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Thanks, Chevvy. Sometimes my mind takes us from one extreme to the other in the space of just one week. My being “29” is a long-standing joke. I have a set of those number candles, a “2” and a “9” that have been reused every year for the past two decades. I like your sentiment, it’s perfect for you. Personally, I’m torn between “oblique” and “reinvented.” Have a good week! 🙂
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I’d go for the “reinvented” for you because I think you do that everyday!😀
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So true, life is in constant flux and we just have to roll with it, which means ongoing reinvention. 🙂
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Here is my two-line epitaph:
Time a-hogging
with too much blogging!
Thank you, dear Joan! That’s all time I have tonight. I need to finish Fridays post.
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Good one, Peter! You know how I love “response” poems. Blogging, if done well, definitely makes demands on our time, so I’ll let you get back to it. 🙂
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I like this feisty epitaph! I’m glad my teeth will be around, heaven knows, I spent enough money on them, LOL. I know about the pie, we worship pie in the South. I’d definitely leave the date at 29 for sure! We actually did this writing exercise when I was in 12th grade, ha ha. It was most likely sappy, now I’m ready for some fun. Great little poem, Joan 😀
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Thanks, Lana. Bet a few things have changed since senior year! If I could fit only one of these on my headstone, it would be #1 or #2. I was just at the dentist today, looks like there may be trouble brewing under an old root canal. 😦 Pie was a staple of my childhood, but my favorite one to make now is chicken pot pie–doesn’t matter if it turns out runny. We could be charter members of “Club 29.” What do you say?
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Yes indeed, Joan, a couple of things have changed since my senior year, ha ha. I just had trouble brewing in my mouth this past summer. I say yes to being charter members of “Club 29!” 😀
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This poem kinda resonates with one of my favorite theme in my poetry. “Being wholly present”. I love the feeling that it carries…sadness, humor and above all reality. Thanks for sharing this!
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Thanks, AK. Seems like a headstone is your last chance to say whatever you want to say to the world, so make it count. Also a reminder to make each moment of our life count. Thanks for the read and comment. 🙂
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I don’t think I would go the poetry route. I’d rather have an ad on my tombstone. Something like . . . “Circumstance227 – Professional Decomposer – Specializing in Feeding Worms Since 2061”
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227, you are a riot! You gotta pay for the space, so why not advertise? Wish I’d have thought of it first. 🙂
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Love this post. If mine were to sum things up, it would propably read something like – rotten at sports, too many words – or something similar
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