unclaimed

there are a hundred million ways to die:
there's gunfire, stab wounds, and burns,
an abundance of train tracks on which to lie,
thousands of ships that inevitably overturn.

there's earthquakes, tornadoes, and flooding tides,
mass murders, bombings, and executions,
accidents on poorly built amusement park rides
and all the despots with their final solutions.

there's hanging, beheading, poisoning, and fires,
lynching, freezing, and coal-mine cave ins,
mid-air collisions, upsetting land mine trip wires,
and getting crushed by giant pistons.

there's malaria, cholera, the plague and typhoid,
heart attacks, shark bites, and war,
a hundred million things the whole world avoids,
a hundred million ways to cease to be any more.

there's explosive decompression and choking on pie,
cancer and drowning in the depths of the sea
there are at least a hundred million ways to die -
why will none of them claim me?