No One Dies in their Thirties
I wrote this poem on my birthday today. Like my entire book, “As the Moonlight Shines,” it’s dedicated to Johnathan B. Fields (1987–2007).
No one dies in their thirties
In their teens and twenties, folks kill themselves
They get killed by others and they die in accidents
But in your thirties, we’re more responsible
We have full frontal lobes, we’re less chemically imbalanced
So, no one dies in their thirties
No one dies in their thirties
In their forties, folks die of heart complications
They die of illness and tumors not cysts
It may be rare but forty-somethings die of cancer
It may be considered dying too young
But no one dies in their thirties
Does this mean I don’t live every day like it could be my last?
Do I pretend like any deadly fear is a thing of the past?
No, but I shouldn’t succumb to every whimsical temptation
Sometimes it just makes more sense in the upcoming, long run
The older I got, the more this attitude begun
Because no one dies in their thirties
This may sound silly if you take it too literally
I’m sure someone somewhere out there died in his thirties
I did a Google search and found that GG Allin died at age 36
A shock rocker whose whole bit was doing crazy shit
But I had friends who didn’t make it to 25
And if they made it there, they still didn’t to 30
But no one dies in their thirties
I understand that in a mass shooting, everyone dies
And when bombs are dropped, they leave no survivors
Your past can catch up to you and no one is immortal
I’m not being insensitive, come on, you know what I mean
Almost no one dies in their thirties
I often think about what it’d be like if you were still here
And how much you would’ve changed with me over the years
You were there beside me on my father’s deathbed
We were like brothers till the end or so we had said
I’m so different now than how I was or how you were back then
I feel like no one dies in their thirties
The night you were murdered, I wrote the poem “Alive with Dark Eyes”
I wrote, “will I live to see a time I’m not crying inside?
I can’t believe I’m alive, I can’t believe I survive”
But somehow I did and I’m doing okay
I’m not gonna die in my thirties
I’m well aware not everyone’s story is like mine
One of my favorite songs is “what’s my age again?”
A song about impersonating police and making prank phone calls
It wasn’t until my late 20s when I went back to school full time
After failing all my classes to write poems and get high
Rarely doing what I needed to get my shit together
Because too many people die in their twenties
The first longform fiction I wrote glamorized dying young
But after my best friend was murdered, everything changed
I “never finished my novel” because I was no longer inspired
He was less than a year younger when I was 20 years old
This guided my actions and mindset throughout much of the decade
But I’m such a different person than I was back then
I’m too old to die young but way too young to die
Because no one dies in their thirties
