Ongoing Epitaphs Poem by Whit Leyenberger

You are going to die
I know it’s impolite to talk about but
you are going to die

That’s the only part of the script I know
Your death follows you like an interested
observer walking a few strides behind
until
she sidles up beside you, takes your hand
suddenly, or as a comfortable friend
and off you walk together, away.
And why shouldn’t you?

The mountains erode with gratitude
The stars blink out their weariness
Only men wish to live forever

The glaciers slink
The redwoods decay
Only men are cast in bronze

If mankind should shed anything
It shouldn’t be our natural selfishness
Or the honesty we perspire in cruelty
I would rid us of dignity
For nothing will keep you from your happiness
Faster than the expectations of others

Believe me:
no one actually knows any better
Don’t make scriptures of traditions set by improvising generations
If the road hurts your feet: get new shoes,
calluses aren’t strength
If people hurt your heart: get new people
there are too many faces to not be cherished
people are disposable and that’s by design

Wisdom won’t come to you from bank statements
or the nightly news,
its scribbled in the margins of kindergarten love notes
carved on the forests of ignorance
traced with fingers on fogged up glass
and weaved delicately on the backs of tongues
Lessons have so little to do with teachers

There is no healthy way to live
For life is the pulsing flourish of death
Even the healthiest livers are fitted for coffins
Go and bleed out with your fire of vitality
Knowing that you have but one death to spend
So kill yourself well
Drown yourself in the tar of tiny satisfactions
Gorge yourself on the ecstasy of unreservation
Let a current of constant wonder fry you with its startling electrocutions
And may you laugh yourself into suffocation

Don’t put off happiness for tomorrows that remain always at arm’s length
Don’t allow yourself to settle into syndication
Don’t die before you’re dead
Life is an unespisodic tempest of frustrations and joys
Don’t try and pin patterns on the winds
Preconceptions are the seeds of discontent
But desires are wings of flame
Live and love unresolved
Death is the only ending you’ll ever need