John Grey

AN ODE TO ALL FESTIVALS

We make holy days out of the unholiest things.

Like the randomness of our birthplace.

And we revel in some saint who bled to death

a thousand years before.

As if he bled for us.

And is still out there somewhere bleeding.

And so we unfurl our paper altars,

release our balloons so that they rise

like fat, bloated prayers.

And the elders lay out feast after feast,

as if memory was something edible.

And we drink to the old countries,

to faint figures of history that we pretend

weren’t bloody, ruthless tyrants.

 

And that’s not enough.

No, we must costume ourselves in borrowed skins.

And dance and sing. Play at forgotten joy.

We praise. We thank. We sing. We wave flags.

We parade down any street where the locals

don’t come out in numbers and block our way.

 

Because without ritual, we drift.

Without the weave of each other, we are threadbare.

Without belonging to something other,

we have only ourselves to blame.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review.