An epitaph
A GRE
Oggie the ogre spent weeks on a GRE
He sent pirates ask mutes in the frothing sea
So while we ate dinner Oggie did see
A willowy woman sent out to sea
She asked of ripe fruit but Oggie remiss
Forgot that true sailors set sail for the lobster bisque
An epitaph
Equivalent exchange
Perfect fear is a wolf beside a cunning hunter, it showers
The lapis lazuli flowers and bowers cowers
The huntress of the night storms the stores
The gray moon athena adorns Ra golden door
So silent is the mouth that perched the moon
Aside here is set beyond any true ghoul
The lamb the dove The lion and the crow
Am I going to cry
When the domino's fall
In the name of God who is stronger
In the face of truth
Who is liquid who is steel
The presence of a war surrounding your shores
We saw faith in fairness and power in unity
We saw trouble and we'd help
When a country is on the cusp of survival
Things were changed forever by those who remained silent
The seas of eternity rage from.seeking old lands who sought out independence and learned economic independence
They invented themselves
They attracted attention of those who don't believe in friends
Now big powers seek to take over
Their society and wealth
Theirs minds and their lands
How will all this end
If the cry of freedom
Lost its fame to desire
Am I going to cry
For a people that needed our help
To occupy reason
Am I going to cry
When you tell me I have nothing.left to stand for
When my heart breaks and you threaten all what we believe in
Is there a god
For every season
.
herz
hern
her'd
and
if poet
thuh
livth path thuh
listh
climax
rehath
.
standz
4' 9"
5' (in pumps)
5' 6" (with derby hat *~]')
and my
6' 2"
thuh easy fit
az the astute know'd
down mine
goez
into thuh depths
uv
reality
whence mine
came
Her love was as pure
as a snow white dove
she put everyone first
and made do for herself
she lived for her children
always the cook and baker
to any party she hosted or attended
people adored her skill
although she led a remarkable life
traveling and doing the things she loved
she also wrote about
the loneliness she felt
and the sadness she lived daily
The Final Descent
He is making the final descent,
from a long, turbulent Parkinsons flight.
Flown across many days,weeks,months,years and time zones..
Dim now the cabin lights.
Watch the stars flicker on the runway below;
As the wheels of life kiss the ground one last time.
The last conversion has been kicked.
The final kilometre kite is in sight.
The last call to,take the strain and pull,rings out.
The Drumlin hills bow their heads in respect.
Siochs, full with winter rains,flow in silence.
Leaves,on the fairy tree rustle at half mast.
The sun,dances one last ray across Windy Harbour;
as dusk comes dropping slowly.
A red sky, sinks into a western glow
As the shepard settles,one last time, into a peacful sleep..
for this I'm sorry:
beneath my grave
my love for you isn't gone,
just gone another way.
I hold you against new memories
Stranger, report to the Spartans
we lie here, mission accomplished.
— translated from the Greek
---------------------------------------------------------
---- Sorely the remains of " Paul Perkins"
...is not beneath nothing it's not his true self that resides below. But is his remains flesh, bone, skeletor and teeth. His choose essence is within Spirit as a soul goes back to God. The breath God gave him. And the family he left behind that is how we now can see him
PAUL PERKINS
Grandfather
Brother Uncle Husband
11/25/25
Written by James Edward Lee Sr 2025
Verse 1
Epitaph for the Queen of the Night
A starlit siren, she shone so strongly bright,
The radiant, raving ruler of the night's riot
right.
Her dance a dream, her dress a diamond
delight,
Now silence seals the stage, the spotlight
still so slight.
The final fade, the curtain closes calmly,
clear,
Her music memory,missed moment, mist
most marvelous here.
Verse 2
Epitaph for the Dance Master
The king of the tounship (1) , a crazy champion came,
A body bent to beating drums, a legend's
lasting lame.
He spanned the shebeen stage, a shining
storm of movement mean,
Shebeen queens quaked and wept at the
dancing scene.
The beauties bleeding blushes, threw their
threads,
He leaped from tables,laid problems to
peaceful deads.
His rhythm's a ripple on the river.forever
flowing free.
The dance just disperses,but his beat
belongs to the ground and the sky.
1. Tounship--township,location, slum, ghetto,
A treasured friend of mine
faced down pain with sunshine
Feared no man, spoke her mind
underneath, incredibly kind
Her family a source of unequalled pride
daughter and grandson she deified
Romantic at heart
passionate, compassionate sweetheart …
R.I.P, Panagiota Romios
treasured friend of mine
______________________________________________
It is with deep sorrow that I inform every-
one that Panagiota Romios left this world
for a better place on Tuesday, Oct. 08, 2025.
Here lies Zenani among the first rains.
May her spring, thoughts and hands enrich our brains.
June 15, 2010
(Zoleka Mandela's daughter, Zenani died at the age of 13, in a car accident in 2010. Zenani died two days after her birthday, in a car accident, while on her way home from the World Cup concert in Soweto.)
(Deceased March 17, 2010)
Here lies Sondra Ball whose shadow too long;
May a passerby see and sing her song.
(April 1, 1919 – July 25, 2011)
In this graveyard, in this marble lies
an artist adding light to the skies.
August 12, 2011
Introduction
The first pleasure of reading epitaphs together lies in their tension between a whole life and a small verbal space. Each poem must decide what deserves to survive: a character trait, a private gesture, a final joke, an unresolved sorrow, or a single image capable of carrying years of memory. That pressure makes every choice feel consequential. What is omitted may haunt the poem as strongly as what is said.
As you read the community poems, notice the range of relationships between speaker and subject. One poet may offer solemn praise, while another uses affectionate humor, direct address, self-questioning, or a voice imagined beyond death. Some poems emphasize public legacy; others preserve an ordinary habit, familiar saying, beloved place, or telling imperfection. Tone can move from ceremonial to conversational, and grief may appear openly or remain contained beneath measured language. Even poems prompted by similar losses can differ sharply in emotional distance and in what they ask readers to remember.
Browsing several examples reveals more than one isolated poem can show. Comparison makes visible the form's central decisions: whether to summarize or select, console or unsettle, idealize or humanize, close the story or leave an ache unresolved. Read beyond the first example and consider how each poet interprets remembrance. The collection becomes not merely a series of tributes, but a study in how language gives a person a final presence without pretending that any brief poem can contain an entire life.
Reading Guide
An epitaph asks readers to listen for two presences at once: the person being remembered and the speaker shaping that remembrance. Because the poem carries an air of finality, ordinary craft decisions acquire unusual moral and emotional weight. A flattering adjective, comic detail, withheld name, or abrupt last line can determine whether the subject feels vividly human or merely ceremonial. As you browse the poems in this collection, compare not only what each writer says about death, but how the poem constructs an enduring impression from selective evidence.
- Identify the implied speaker and audience. A mourner addressing the deceased creates a different intimacy from a public voice addressing passersby or a deceased speaker addressing the living. Ask who is permitted to speak, who is meant to hear, and how that relationship shapes the poem's authority.
- Notice what stands in for a life. Strong examples often rely on one gesture, object, phrase, place, or contradiction rather than a complete biography. Compare which details feel memorable and ask why a particular image carries more emotional force than a list of accomplishments.
- Watch the balance between praise and personhood. Unbroken admiration may sound sincere, formal, idealized, or distant. A small imperfection can deepen affection without becoming disrespectful. Ask whether the subject emerges as an individual or as a collection of familiar virtues.
- Listen to pacing and sound. Pauses can suggest composure, hesitation, prayer, or grief that resists speech; rhyme and repetition can add ceremony, tenderness, wit, or inevitability. Read several poems aloud and ask whether their music supports the emotional occasion or calls attention to itself.
- Locate the emotional turn. An epitaph may shift from description to address, memory to mortality, humor to pain, or praise to doubt. Ask where your understanding changes and whether that turn enlarges the person being remembered rather than simply delivering a surprise.
- Examine the ending as an act of placement. The final words may bless, summarize, challenge, release, or deliberately refuse consolation. Compare endings and ask what each leaves behind in the reader: an image, a judgment, a question, a silence, or a renewed sense of relationship.
Read beyond the first example, then return to it after encountering others. Contrast often reveals subtle choices in voice, restraint, detail, and closure that a single reading can conceal.
Writing Tips
Begin an epitaph draft by deciding what must remain present after the poem ends. Do not attempt to fit an entire life into a compressed memorial gesture. Instead, choose the quality, conflict, image, or remembered action through which the larger life can be felt. In workshop, the most useful question is often not What else should be included? but What can be removed so the essential remembrance becomes unmistakable?
- Choose material with emotional concentration. A favorite tool, habitual expression, muddy pair of boots, unfinished project, or particular kindness may carry more life than broad claims about goodness. Select a detail that reveals both the subject and the speaker's relationship to that subject.
- Decide what kind of memorial voice you need. Ceremonial language can create dignity, while conversational speech can preserve intimacy. Direct address may make loss feel immediate; third-person distance may suggest public remembrance. A voice spoken as if from beyond death can support humor, warning, tenderness, or self-judgment, but it must remain consistent enough to feel intentional.
- Resist the miniature-obituary mistake. A sequence of dates, roles, relatives, and achievements may provide information without producing presence. Let one or two selected facts interact with image, sound, or implication. The poem should transform biographical material rather than merely compress it.
- Let praise include texture. Generic superlatives often flatten the person they intend to honor. Replace abstract admiration with evidence, and consider whether an affectionate flaw, contradiction, or limitation would make the tribute more credible. Complexity need not weaken reverence; it can make reverence feel earned.
- Use pattern only when it strengthens remembrance. Rhyme, repetition, balanced phrases, or compact stanzas can suggest ritual and permanence. Yet forced rhyme may turn grief unintentionally comic, while mechanical symmetry can make emotion seem prearranged. Allow sound and structure to serve the chosen voice rather than becoming proof that the form has been followed.
- Control the pace of revelation. Decide whether the reader should know immediately who has died and how the speaker feels, or discover those facts gradually. Short statements can resemble carved declarations; longer syntax can enact memory unfolding. Place line breaks where silence, hesitation, or emphasis genuinely belongs.
- Prepare the ending from the beginning. A final blessing, verdict, joke, image, or question should feel inevitable without being predictable. Avoid attaching a moral that explains what the poem has already shown. The ending should concentrate the emotional argument, not summarize it.
- Test the poem against two kinds of reader. Read it aloud as if addressing someone who knew the subject, then as if speaking to a stranger. The first test exposes sentiment that has not been made legible; the second exposes explanations that private memory did not need.
During revision, mark every abstract noun, honorific phrase, repeated idea, and convenient rhyme. Replace what you can with sensory evidence or sharper speech. Read slowly enough to hear unwanted sing-song effects and pauses that fall in the wrong place. Finally, cover the title and last line: if the middle cannot sustain a distinct human presence, strengthen its images and voice before restoring the closure.
Interesting Facts
- The imagined monument acts like an invisible collaborator. Even when a poem is read on a screen or page, readers may sense language being placed somewhere permanent. That expectation gives plain diction unusual weight and makes excess explanation feel especially noticeable.
- Compression can make absence feel larger. A short memorial does not necessarily diminish its subject. Carefully chosen omissions invite readers to imagine the life surrounding the surviving detail, turning silence into part of the emotional design.
- Pronouns determine memorial distance. Shifting among I, you, we, and they changes who owns the memory. A direct you may resist separation, while a collective we can transform private grief into communal witness.
- Humor does not automatically cancel reverence. A joke can preserve temperament, expose vanity, soften fear, or imitate the deceased person's manner of speaking. Its success depends on whether it reveals character rather than using death merely as a punch line.
- Repetition can resemble ritual or fixation. The same phrase may sound consoling when it creates ceremony, painful when it shows a mind unable to move forward, or ironic when its meaning changes with each return. Context determines the emotional effect.
- The last line often governs the rereading. Because readers expect some form of final placement, a closing image or reversal can cast earlier praise, humor, or restraint in a new light. The strongest endings deepen what came before rather than replacing it with a trick.
- Variation becomes clearest through comparison. Browse the poems in this collection to see how different writers handle intimacy, public statement, silence, wit, and unresolved feeling. The form's identity can remain recognizable even when poets challenge its expected solemnity or polish.
Popular Themes
Subject matter changes the kind of pressure an epitaph exerts. A private relationship calls for selective intimacy, while a public identity may require the poet to look behind familiar roles. The themes below are literary possibilities rather than statistical rankings; each works because remembrance forces the writer to decide what should be carried forward and what must remain unsaid.
- Parents and family inheritance. Family epitaphs can hold gratitude, conflict, resemblance, and inherited language within the same memorial space. A domestic object or repeated saying often reveals how the deceased continues to shape the speaker's daily life.
- Friendship and shared history. Friendship invites an informal voice, private humor, or a remembered adventure. The challenge is to make the bond accessible to readers who were not present, allowing one specific moment to suggest years of companionship.
- Ordinary character. Habits, chores, clothing, food, gardens, workshops, and neighborhood places can resist idealization. Such material works well when a modest detail becomes evidence of generosity, stubbornness, patience, mischief, or another defining quality.
- Achievement, service, and vocation. School, work, sport, craft, and public service can provide a visible legacy. The poem becomes stronger when it moves beyond titles or victories to reveal the human cost, discipline, pleasure, or relationship behind them.
- Humor in the face of mortality. Comic self-portraits, affectionate teasing, and ironic final remarks can make the voice feel startlingly alive. Humor is most effective when it belongs to the remembered personality and allows an undertone of loss to remain audible.
- Unresolved grief. Not every memorial arrives at peace. Anger, guilt, unanswered questions, and interrupted conversation can create an epitaph that honors emotional truth without forcing consolation. Restraint may intensify these themes more than explicit declaration.
- Legacy and self-remembrance. A speaker imagining what others might say can explore vanity, regret, humility, fear, or desired identity. The memorial frame turns self-description into a test: which claims feel honest enough to outlast the speaker?
As you read the community poems, compare how writers transform similar subjects through different details, speakers, and endings. Two poems about a parent, friend, or admired figure may share an occasion yet create entirely different kinds of presence.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of an epitaph lies between finality and incompleteness. Its language appears to place a life, yet no verbal arrangement can settle everything that life meant. Memorable poems use that contradiction rather than hiding it. They offer a decisive image, claim, blessing, joke, or question while allowing the surrounding absence to remain perceptible. The result feels concentrated rather than merely short: readers encounter something firmly said and something larger that cannot be said.
Structure becomes necessary when it embodies the poem's manner of remembering. A balanced sentence may suggest composure or ceremonial respect; a broken line may register shock, reluctance, or interrupted intimacy. Repetition can sound like communal ritual, obsessive grief, or the persistence of a familiar voice. Rhyme may give words the finish of an inscription, but it can also introduce playfulness or fatalistic inevitability. Editors notice when these choices arise from the relationship between speaker and subject. They also notice when a pattern has been imposed after the emotional work, leaving tidy language around an indistinct person.
The most common weakness is predictability: generalized praise, familiar consolations, expected symbols, and a closing statement that tells readers exactly what to feel. Forced elevation can erase the deceased person's actual speech and texture. Mechanical rhyme may distort syntax or encourage convenient sentiment. At the opposite extreme, a poem can depend so heavily on private reference that readers receive no point of entry. Over-explanation is another danger, especially when the poet supplies a full biography or interprets every image. Insufficient development and excessive explanation are related failures; both prevent one resonant detail from doing its full work.
Individuality survives shared conventions through precision of attention. The remembered person may appear through a peculiar kindness, a difficult contradiction, a local phrase, a posture, or the way others altered their behavior around them. The speaker's individuality matters too: grief may be devout, skeptical, restrained, angry, amused, grateful, or uncertain. Compare several community poems and ask which formal choices could belong only to that voice and subject. Such comparison develops judgment more reliably than seeking a single model. It teaches readers to distinguish solemnity from depth, neatness from closure, and biographical information from the more demanding achievement of making an absent person briefly present.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community epitaphs before choosing a favorite approach. Compare how poets preserve character, manage silence, balance praise with complexity, and decide what emotional weight the final words must carry. A thoughtful comment might identify the image that stayed with you, the turn that changed your understanding, or the way a particular voice made remembrance feel personal.
Then try writing an epitaph of your own. Choose one detail worth carrying forward, shape the surrounding silence, and publish the poem on PoetrySoup so other readers can respond to your interpretation of the form.
Collection Statistics
This collection currently contains 603 epitaph poems, offering many opportunities to compare voices, subjects, tones, and approaches to remembrance. Some poets may follow familiar memorial conventions closely, while others may adapt or challenge expectations through humor, imagined speech, unusual perspective, or unresolved emotion. Reading across the collection helps reveal how widely the same commemorative impulse can be interpreted without requiring every poem to make identical artistic choices.
Epitaph Categories
Read wonderful epitaph poetry on the following sub-topics:
beautiful, father, friendship, funny, here lies, mother, rhyme, school, sports
and more.
Definition | What is Epitaph in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.
Related Poetry Forms
commemoration, elegiac lyric, elegy, eulogy, funeral, legend, memorial, monument, remembrance, sad, sentiment