Not Dead
We must’ve read the same poem. It’s old and I don’t remember it exactly. I don’t memorize most poems or most anything really, except the parts that stick out. I suppose the same part stuck out to both of us because the tattoo on her arm was the only connection I had to her and the sole reason being the poem. The last bit was something along the lines of,
The World know’s me as a liar
by their grace they’ll all forget
these walls I can’t escape spoke true
as I carved “you’re not dead yet.”
Apparently I get the word’s wrong because when I look it up, I just get song lyrics from some shitty band I’ve never heard of. Who am I though? No one of consequence. I never wiped a poem off the internet by screaming “You’re not dead yet” into a microphone ad nausem. Ironic that they all but killed the sentiment as it was truly intended. The song is just some “keep your head up” bs that the band probably thought was going to be their hit. There aren’t enough personal details to get me to believe anyone in the group or management team had anyone in mind. I guess we’ve come to that point as a society. There’s just an air about the planet, telling us there are people out there suffering, suicidal, and alone, but we don’t know them. So we sing songs to the faceless depressed masses, leaving the world devoid of things that might actually cheer them up. Have some respect for the classics. Although, if those lines were classic, I’d probably be able to find them. Even with the poem being buried in back catalogues, somehow the tattooed lady saw what I did. I know because the song had nothing about carving in it and the letters we’re clearly meant to be seen as etched into her arm. It wasn’t as if she had taken a razor blade to her arm the way an emo kid in the 2000’s or a Slayer fan might be want to do. A talented artist took pains to make photo realistic shading on what looked to be words shoddily dug into a stone wall.
The little snippet of verse up there is actually part of a much larger piece. It took up three pages in whatever anthology I happened to be picking through as I avoided class by hiding in a local bookstore. At the time, I thought of myself as a knowledge rebel, but I was paying for the classes so I probably should’ve got my money’s worth. I digress. The poem is about a man who is obsessed with death. The guy decides he’s gonna build a tomb in the style of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Like any pipe dream or addiction, this starts pushing his friends and family away. People around the guy keep saying “The pyramids were built by an army of slaves and you cobble shoes. You’ll never be finished. Could you get a new hobby? You’re bumming us out.” The guy doesn’t listen obviously. He’s going all out, putting booby traps and secret passages into his final resting place. As he builds, he starts getting lost. He’s spending so much time in there, he thinks he’s already dead and the tomb is some twisted afterlife. The dude goes fully delusional. He ignores all survival instincts assuming that they’ll fade as he gets used to death. No one’s coming to check on him and so nothing can break the spell until he gets hit by an arrow or something that he had rigged to shoot intruders. The pain is so immense that he figures he can’t be dead and needs to escape. Of course, lost and in pain is no way to get out alive. He almost makes it too, but falls through a trap door. Sensing that he might not get out, He gives himself hope by carving “You’re not dead yet” on the wall with the arrowhead that pierced him.
Maybe some of the flowery language was lost, but you get the jist and saved two pages. Hopefully the humor translates. It’s a pretty funny poem even though it doesn’t make much sense to me. First off, we’re supposed to believe this guy carved a message on a wall in a trap room that just happened to have some stationary to write an epitaph? The poem is in first person. Why not just write it? Secondly, why would the narrator be a liar? Anyone reading the wall would see some truth in it because they’d have to be alive to read it. I’m not lying if I say “You’re not dead yet.” The crumby singer that erased the poem from searchable history will never be a liar even after he’s dead and gone. Hell, the lack of personal detail in the song might help it stick and be sung for ages. Perhaps it’s a paradox. It could alluded to the timeless “This statement is false.” Maybe the protagonist’s lie was that he’ll be remembered, but he admits he’ll be forgotten. Forgotten like the name of the author, the anthology, the band, and the owner of the tattoo.
I think I got the important part though. You’re not dead yet. No matter who says it, if you can understand it, it’s true, even if everything else is a lie. I need to be reminded of that. Sometimes I feel like the man in the tomb, simply coasting along in the shadow of what brought me to my demise. I talk to so few people, they might as well be my imaginary friends. That or I’m theirs. Skipping class lead to skipping everything but paying the bills. I guess when nothing makes a person feel alive, they start to forget they are. Seeing the tattoo kind of shook me out of that for a second. From just the knowledge that she saw the poem, I felt connected to humanity in a way that I don’t while talking about popular internet videos, TV shows, or movies. It’s expected of you to see those. All the strange stuff ends up feeling unreal if no one else saw it. This lady and I were weird in the same way because we saw something most people can’t anymore. We shared that and it was the only thing we shared. We didn’t have gender, race, or religion in common. We didn’t share a single word or breath. I saw “You’re not dead yet” while looking for some form of identification before putting the lid back on her cardboard box and rolling it into the retort. At least the last one to see it in person got the joke.