I believe your plant is an agave; there are many different species and I don't know which yours is.

Each agave rosette flowers once, then dies -- and unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that. Usually (?) a plant will have more than one rosette; the rosette(s) which haven't flowered yet will live on.

So look around the base of the plant to see if other rosettes/pups/suckers are growing from the stem.

You can let the seeds ripen, then plant them. And that's about all I can tell you.

If you don't get an answer here from someone who really knows what they're talking about (I'm not in that class), ask the folks at GW's Cacti & Succulents forum.

What you have there appears to be Agave angustifolia. All Agaves grow, bloom, and then die. The big spike is the bloom. You should have a bunch of new pups coming up from underneath. As the mother plant dies, carefully remove the old leaves - they are sharp - and let the new ones grow. This is its life cycle.

Thank you missingtheobvious and fawnridge.

Let me make sure I understand what you are saying. You mean that the whole plant dies after it blooms?

So it's not something I am doing wrong this is normal?

I will check into the bottom to see if I see any new borns.

Should I just pull the whole thing out then?

Or should I trim all the razor edge leaves and do something with that 5' tall bloom?

Pull the whole thing out, unless you want to go through this mess again in 5 to 10 years.

.........or, don't pull the whole thing out if you want a cluster of new smaller plants growing around the periphery of where the mother plant dies off. That is, you must like this type of plant-you bought it and planted it-so why pull it out and throw away when babies are in the making all around the edge? I guess I don't see the logic in that.

It will take some time-I can't say how long-for these new plants to grow and mature. When that process is completed, they will in turn flower and die. BTW, you don't have to leave them all where they are, attached to old momma. You can carefully cut away some or all, and move to new locations.

+oM

What fawnridge and wisconsintom said.

The part of the plant which is dying is the rosette which flowered. But under the dying leaves, around the trunk, there may be baby plants -- new rosettes -- and if there aren't any currently, there may/will be more soon.

You can cut off the bloom stem now, or if you want seeds, you can let the seeds mature and maybe plant some. Do an image search for agave "seed pods" to see what seeds and ripe seed pods look like.

HOWEVER, your photos of the stem show new leaves among the dried flowers -- and I believe those will turn into baby plants! (Something similar happens occasionally on daylily flower stems: I have a tiny daylily which started that way and is spending the winter with my houseplants.)

Here's a page which talks about this process. Unfortunately it doesn't give information about planting the plantlets or bulbils, but the C&S forum folks can probably help:
http://www.azfcf.org/docs/DAC/Bulbils.Blackburn.pdf

missingtheobvious is right. You already have babies on that flower stalk. I had an agave bloom near a bee hive and I swear every single flower made a baby - thousands of them. We tossed most of them, but I have several growing in spots around the yard. If you like the looks of the plant, it's a good one to have because it takes no care. Drought tolerant, no major bug problems and doesn't need fertilizer.

Most all agaves are monocarpic, which means they die after flowering. Many bromeliads do the same thing. Also, many palms, like Caryotas will do this. As others mentioned as well, these new world agaves produce bulbils instead of seeds. They naturally drop off and root in, but you can plant them when they look large enough. Some will start pushing a few small roots in the air. Just plant the ends into the sand. I wouldn't use heavily organic material that might make them rot. One thing nobody mentioned yet, is that the bulbils will vary and sometimes you get special individuals that might be variegated or have an unusual form. That is how the "Joe Hoak" agave came about. Joe, who has a nursery in Miami had a variegated desmetiana flower, and one of the bulbils was extra variegated. He grew it out and later took offsets, and the rest is history.