Author: poetryfest

“The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”
Ecclesiastes

Who’s to say the cardinal doesn’t know
as spring melts into summer, summer fall,
her days might end before this winter’s snow?

If she did, how could she let arias flow—
pretend she was immune to each passing squall?
Who’s to say the cardinal doesn’t know

as cedars snap, their limbs plummet below
and breezes crescendo into caterwauls—
her days might end before this winter’s snow?

Even when hope communes with shadow
her serenades lift the descending pall.
Who’s to say the cardinal doesn’t know?

Perhaps aware that death lies near does bestow
a gift to her. A calla lily’s wake up call.
Her days might end before this winter’s snow,

yet she greets each morning from her bough
enthused by light’s ever spreading sprawl.
Perhaps the cardinal does indeed know
her days might end before this winter’s snow.

Mary Keating

After “Hunger” by Rachel Eliza Griffith (76)
Breaths after the wedding he tried to bite the rotting peach
Expecting vibrant, plump skin breaking, dripping
down the soft palm. I hid from buzzards up above.
Predators from the wild that I had unequivocally revered.
Left in the liver of a young painter, disease
cried softly until it screamed. The sickness consumes
the human possibility, coaxing its gentle pain. Dress reddening dark
until I called out to the man from what I remembered hazily.
Lacerations can be made, forcefully, even through a covenant.
Lacerations can be made whether or not the body will betray.
I hurried to dress each morning because it would sting to be unclothed & alone.
The man’s smile spreading thin, different than its inception & showing
its yellowed, separate teeth. I felt like curling up, but cautiously, I stayed tall.
Found that I was curious deeply about the killing cells
reaching excitedly into the organ. I read the essays,
Spent hours on the websites of pseudo-medicine. Was this the purpose and the punishment?
This was another crime falling into my sentence, the date of my execution.
Attaching all of the contusions into a map,
walking me down the aisle. He admires a deer skull
shot dead in July, staring & staring at the tiles on the wall,
a strange place to relive your death. The sickening body dismissed
with seeming alien to what he wanted when he asked.

You make it seem like it’s a joke
But you never see what happens when we woke

You may never see us cry
But on the inside we ask why

Wonder what would happen if you woke
Feeling like your all alone
Knowing that all that’s here is your bone

What would happen if you woke
When on the outside your smiling
But on the inside your dying

What would happen when you woke
Feeling like you want to die
Yet you can never be seen to cry

But what happens if you woke
And all your life broke apart
And you didn’t get a chance to restart

Yet what would happen if you woke
And your eyes are stirred and dry
Yet all you want to do is cry

Wondering what would happen if you woke
When the world seems to end and you are nothing
And when everybody looks at you and murmurs something

And what would happen if you woke
With the uncontrollable urge to self-destruct
And your emotions seem to finally erupt

What would happen if you woke
And all at once everything seems lost
And you decide it’s worth the cost

Yet what would happen if you woke
Feeling like no one would care if you passed
At least you would be free at last

So what would happen if you woke
Feeling winter’s cold embrace
While you feel you lost the race

Wondering what would happen if you woke
With your heart strings on the very last line
And you were messed up and broken with a sign

What would happen if you woke
When the sky was dark and grey
And all you feel is agony and decay

What would happen if you woke
When the whole world was a smokey mess
And all you think is I want this less

The things we go through aren’t a joke
So just imagine if you woke

that it’s one
or the other. You live
for yourself and others;
it makes us
human. It makes
sense of the world
of an orca tearing the head off a dolphin,
connective tissue still linking the body
segments

The orca shares the kill,
takes only what it needs
leaves the rest to keep
the process going. To keep
the bird’s wings pinned to the ground,
the lion’s claws dug into flesh,
violence, submission
it’s how we progress

The earth bleeds in words, the earth bleeds in acid.
the sky echoes names, anguish,
dark truths. Meaning leaks out,
seeping red-hot bubbles.

Long, red worms,
frills catching heat,
nutrients and narrative,
minerals and meat

We boarded the 727 as
individuals, not as
units or platoons.
We flew shoulder-to-shoulder,
the dirty-faced dogs of war, and
everyday civilians who
didn’t know what we had
seen, or done, or felt inside.
The day before, we
encountered a little gook
kid, not more than 10 or 11,
wearing black pajamas and holding
an AK. He raised it
and the last thing he ever saw on
the Earth was a
muzzle flash.
M16 rounds are not made to wound men,
but to kill them deader than dead,
so imagine the horror when the rip
the soul out of a child and scatter it
on the ground like entrails of a lamb
thrown to a pack of wolves.
Did his mother mourn?
Was she even alive herself to do so?
How could we ever know?
What were we to do?
We left on planes, sprinkled into
the wind like
the ashy remains of a loved one,
each to our own corner.
I disembarked in Ohio,
an Eden wonderland compared to the
merciless jungle.
I hugged my mother, just 38 hours after another
son was sent to his grave,
and as yet more sons were left to
savage one another for a cause with
no purpose.
Our units were now broken
apart,
left alone to digest wordless stories that
couldn’t be spoken, that had no end,
and were only revealed in endless
nightmares.
We arrived as soldiers,
some to die quickly, some left alone
to die over the course of decades, an
acidic decomposition of
body, mind, and spirit,
until all that remained was a
set of soaked pajamas
of a little boy crying out
for help.

When we die we give back to the earth what we borrowed from her and set off towards our true home the stars.
Within stars resides the seeds of all creation.

Within suns morning always comes and night can gain no foothold and shadows know no rest.

Light upon light
Burning after burning
Glory unto glory

Nothingness illuminated
Beacons throughout the universe that cry out
We are, we have been, and we will be.

You played this game of
do or lose, and lost the game of living to a
pale man called Death-but the rooms
found out and the white face of the
clock found out and stopped time just for you.
A year moved forward (went back) and you are still
a young man trying to find out the meaning of Life,
which is as dim as classical music is to your deaf ears.

Sometimes Death is as close as vivid is to
the red eye, and you just want to cry,
but Death leaves you laying there,
bleeding on the doorstep (strawberry red jam
shoots out of your ears).
Then you live once more-you are
resurrected, let’s say-but the living is
only half-living, and the Death is only half-death.

This game of Life and Death-of “do” or lose-
is a party to get your young
mind to sleep in bed with Eternity:
Eternity as dark as birth,
as dark as a majestic mountain peak against a purple
night sky,
as dark as her own black Father cursing in his
shallow grave.

Whiney chair slandered by prosperous weight

suffocating
mouthful of powdered cheese strays fleeing fight of jaws
clamp dirt shoveled in disdainful luxurious muddy pit
punctured stomach scythe splitting regret-filled torso midnight comes
early bird swallows worm whole retching its guts to feed
baby cradled in wicker sheets absorbed fantasies of premature
skins touching skins pruney wrinkles whiskey bath porcelain
rims of vehicle wheels worn pile metal scraps – yield
forgotten
suicide notes course through arteries vieling promises neglected
truth.

Burrowed breaths tobacco stained walls nails scratching beholds
guilt splattered mucus violent yellow eyes stare down acid
burning

esophagus coughing unspoken desire annihilated in pill and needle
piercing sterling-silver chain mail ransom letters scramble inhibiting
sores splintered lips sewn to enemies wringing elbow greased grit
between teeth cracking diamonds polished jet-black motor oil
rushing

crimson river floating lilies standing knee-deep drowning
empty lungs

gaping legs bestow flickering candle-lit tunnel hot wax runs s l o w l y
buried alive dressed in doilies memory thieved cherrywood casket stands
alone.

Beneath the weight of silence,
the body lays, still and pale,
where once a heart beat steady,
now only shadows tell the tale.

Whispers fill the empty room,
of laughter, love, and fear,
but all that remains is the space—
the absence where you once were near.

The breath that danced with morning,
the hands that held the sky,
now rest beneath the cold, dark earth,
as the final hours pass by.

A thread that once was golden,
now frayed and worn, untold,
and in the quiet, beneath the soil,
the body is wrapped in cold.

All that remains is the coffin’s lid,
the weight of the end, serene,
the hands that grasped, the eyes that saw,
now lost in the spaces between.

And in the stillness, a soft release,
the pulse of life now still,
the body rests, the soul takes flight—
death’s quiet, final chill.

The elevator doors open on the fourth floor of St. Bartholomew’s. The air is thick—antiseptic, endings, whispers of nurses who have tried, who have failed. Your father’s episodes… we cannot contain him.

But how does one contain a man who has spent a lifetime filling theaters with thunder, with laughter, with the echoes of a hundred voices?

His room is a barricade, chairs upturned, a fortress of blankets and rage. This is no hospital—this is a prison! And I am its captive!

I step forward, script in hand. “Dad, it’s Alice. I’ve brought something special.”

The air shifts. The wild glint in his eyes flickers, softens. Alice, my star… have you come to set me free?

I offer the script like a peace offering, like a map home. The Last Voyageur. His final role. His greatest performance.

He takes it, fingers tracing the pages like old memories. “It speaks of a voyageur?”
“It speaks of you.”

I drape the Hudson Bay Point blanket over his shoulders—the one he always admired but never bought, the one that belongs to him now.

“It’s a prop, Dad. For the voyageur.”

A shift. The room is no longer a hospital, no longer an ending, but a stage. The bed, a canoe. The script, a paddle. And as he recites, the current takes him. His voice strong, rolling over the walls like waves. He sings—En roulant ma boule—a song older than time, a song that carries.

And for a moment, the illness is upstaged, the audience holds its breath, and my father is who he has always been.

Night falls. The script slips from his fingers. His voice quiets. The monitor stills. In spring, I lay him in his final canoe, overlooking a quiet lake. The theater masks—comedy and tragedy—stand watch. The blanket, now his shroud.

The wind stirs. A whisper. A rowing song on the breeze. The lake ripples. The voyage continues.