Kisses at a Funeral By Hauoli Kahaleuahi

Kisses on the cheek, some familiar

And wet, or unknown, faces of shadows

Planting dry love upon those mourning souls,

Sincere, hopeful, meant to comfort wounded.

Never ending, a line of kind words come

From here, a small village, from there, crowded

City streets. Do the kisses melt dismay?

Is suffering subdued, suffocated?

Sorrows fight back, corroding minds trying

To cope, to survive and move, gracefully,

But the heart yearns, cries, screams, shouts for voices,

The ones lost, lying stiff atop silk cloaks.

Kisses provide warmth, temporary smiles,

Yet quickly returns a tear, salty drips

Drying, forming crust below swollen eyes,

Above quivering lips, trembling sad.

Learned is to mourn, to breath in the pain and

Cling to shaking hands, to lean and let lean

Heavy heads wanting to explode, to let go,

Thunder, lighting, rain. Allow feelings too.

Flowers, like kisses, spray a fragrance of

Compassion, light but true, like sunshine rays

Reaching to bathe broken spirits, on a

Mission to mend memories, ‘member good.

Let flowers shower, kisses come tender, sweet.

Keep inside these warm messages of love

And passion, given to guard a heart from

More, from puncturing pain, these people care.

Darkness, clouds, they will overcome the light,

But forget not people, kisses, flowers, all.

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Poem of the Day: Men at My Father’s Funeral

BY WILLIAM MATTHEWS

The ones his age who shook my hand   

on their way out sent fear along   

my arm like heroin. These weren’t   

men mute about their feelings,

or what’s a body language for?

And I, the glib one, who’d stood

with my back to my father’s body

and praised the heart that attacked him?   

I’d made my stab at elegy,

the flesh made word: the very spit

in my mouth was sour with ruth

and eloquence. What could be worse?   

Silence, the anthem of my father’s   

new country. And thus this babble,   

like a dial tone, from our bodies.