We’re All Going to Die Someday Blues

The young mother dies giving birth
She was just born in the wrong century
The astronaut plummets back to Earth
He burns up upon reentry
A prisoner is stabbed to death
He made enemies in the penitentiary
The intruder storms the guarded gates
And is shot to death by the sentry

The young father ravaged by Cancer
While his wife and kids look on
A young girl is kidnapped and murdered
Before anyone even knows that she’s gone
The runner drops dead in his tracks
Near the end of the marathon
A black man is shot by the police
With guns that didn’t need to be drawn

The junkie dies in the alleyway
With a needle stuck in his arm
The doctor forgets the part of the oath
That states, first do no harm
Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton
In a duel just after the dawn
You can read about the death of Jesus Christ
In the Gospel According to John

The Grandma died at 95 years old
Oh well, she had a good life
Julius Caesar, on the ides of March
Felt the wrath of the assassin’s knife
The alcoholic husband in a jealous rage
Bashes in the skull of his wife
Thousands of children starve to death
In foreign lands torn apart by war and strife

The retired football player wastes away
Because of damage to his brain
A wife plots to kill her husband
There’s insurance money to be gained
Three girls in Utah taking selfies
They never even saw the train
The people in the World Trade Center
And the people on the planes

The suicide bomber blows himself to pieces
Because he’s convinced that “God is Great”
The young man’s girl left him
He threw himself off the Golden Gate
The Challenger explodes in the air
I watched it disintegrate
Students protesting the Vietnam War
Gunned down at Kent State

A hard working man gets lung Cancer
From working in unsafe conditions
Robert Scott on a trek to the South Pole
With his companions on a doomed expedition
A woman dies of alcoholism
She had a genetic predisposition
Thousands died at Catholic hands
During the Spanish Inquisition

How many millions have died
In wars fought throughout the years
How many wails of anguish
From loved ones, how many tears
How many mountaineers, pioneers
mutineers and volunteers
Aurelius Agricolan ordered the beheading
Of Marcellus of Tangier

Lou Gehrig died from a disease
That would one day bear his name
Justice for the 96
They died watching a football game
The respected teacher in his own backyard
He lit himself aflame
Some people die in their sleep
I hope that’s me, at least that’s my aim

There’s an obligation in this game called life
That one day we all have to pay
Most of us cannot choose where or when
Most of us don’t get to choose which way
Sometimes it might seem unfair
But Dike the Goddess of Justice doesn’t have any say
You don’t have to be Nostradamus
To know that we’re all going to die someday

Scott Gardiner’s paperback on his website or Amazon. The Kindle version.