DEATH Poem: Carnival, by Scott Sorensen

If I were dying,
I’d sit at the Thanksgiving dinner table wearing a giant turkey headdress,
And we’d have a woodcarving of my face at 18
(The age I want to be as an angel)
Hanging over the bay windows.
Every one of my Christmas gifts would be a slip of paper
Stating what each relative would get in the will,
And the ones who glanced over at me with bloodthirsty eyes
Would get nothing.
We’d have a piñata in my image
And we’d fill it with pig guts,
And we’d hit it with a baseball bat called Cancer
Till our baby cousins got all gory,
And when they cried out to their mother.
She’d wipe blood out of their eyes and say
That’s death for you,
Darling.
My death would be graphic and gruesome like that,
And I’d draw it out like the eighth Harry Potter movie.
The franchise didn’t need eight movies to tell their story.
I didn’t need 80 years to tell mine.
My Grandpa, though,
Has been dying for five years
(His cancer started kindergarten this fall)
And I’ve never once heard him mention it.
Instead, we talk about my grades
And what I’ll eat on my study abroad,
And we don’t mention the very real chance
That the day I board that plane
Might be the last time I ever see him.

We spend a lot more time talking about the start of my life than the end of his.
I suppose that’s his Christmas gift to me.

All my bloody carnivals serve nothing but my gory sense of humor;
When my kids sprinkle my ashes across Lake Minnetonka,
Their smiles will matter a lot more than mine.

Author: poetryfest

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