“Everyone should have an epitaph ready,” Everette Maddox told an interview in one of his rare radio appearances. “Just in case.”
The year was 1983. He was 39. Five years later he’d be dead, but nine years prior he’d offered his own “Hypothetical Self-Epitaph.”
What if I just caved in
gave out, pulled over
to the side of
the road of life,
& expired like an old
Driver’s license?
You might say He didn’t
get far in 31 years.
But I’d say That’s
all right, it was
the world’s longest trip
on an empty tank.
Maddox’s poems are funny, erudite, and overflowing with wit, but never enough to fully mask the darkness centimeters below the surface. His depressive episodes were “so dark they were frightening,” according to his friend Grace Bauer. “He could turn on a dime. He was so smart, well read, charming and upbeat, but there was always a demon lurking underneath.”
Anyway. Happy birthday to me.
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