"cremating" poems
I wear the letters NYU sprawled across my chest as my individuality is asphyxiated.
Lungs choke under the weight of the added pressure.
The thought of college plus my complexion,
Equals complexed looks that ponder my intellectually-heightened direction.
Will you think a little bit more of me, with my conformity?
Attempts to better myself meet enough ignorance to even cloud the vision of God.
Segregation and alienation cause mental spasms the strength of lightening rods.
I guess you're just a product of the environment to which you were exposed.
But I'm always trying to fight the stereotype that black people are ultimately foes.
I am the ant and the kids of rich parents are magnifying glasses.
Cremating me with the solar power of son's who were taught that their existence was worth more than mine.
I lay motionless, in bottomless quick sand pits, itching to alleviate my stomach stitch, engulfed by set standards that could not be met.
I am tired of trying to be what you'd like to see.
Astute, respectable, young black man-just so you can approve of me and hopefully think that we are not all "up to no good."
Say it loud,
I'm black
And I'm,
Not going to lie,
The proud part is kinda hard to say.
Because I walk down the street and see my face in the homeless everyday.
I fill the prisons and I'm famous when the news reports crime.
And when I show up early to interviews,
they look confused to see that I,
Don’t run on Colored People's Time.
I don't hate black but I hate the fact that black means that sometimes I have to find alternate routes to success.
While other people's roads are already paved, I suffer from all the stress.
I try my best but I'm always categorized as less, then a man.
And I'm trying to change perceptions but I still feel like a visitor on American land
And the poor are physically trapped so I relate mentally.
We both suffer from the oppression and accept the hatred like it was meant to be.
Society has led you to believe that blacks are not worthy of equality
But take a long, hard look into my eyes and tell me that you don’t see my humanity.
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 1:42 PM UTC
The wolves did not just stalk quietly through cadmium woods.
Their teeth grew madder and rose from each others throats.
The tigers did not just sleep on mossy slopes,
they colored the afternoon fushia and indigo from caladon heights,
The dragon with its terrible emerald tail and ruby glare,
did not merely threaten to incinerate everything around it.
Spiders prepare a grave.
This thing in a binding tomb.
A multitude of flames, a million orange and blue....
Tears cremating the past.
A burning snow falling everywhere.
When the darkest angel of all, sits at last upon my chest,
permanently enfolding me in its radiant wings....
A creature without a voice,
A voice without a name.
As immortal as mi life,
come here at long last to summon the wind.
© Crystal Erickson
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 11:01 AM UTC
Spiders sprinkling down a crooked spine
Can you hear the whine of a brain stem dying
One hundred and eighty days of pain
have metamorphosed this corpse into something deranged
mangled and tangled in webs of perception
razor-sharp enough to cut straight through the gut's deception
and when the vile heart succeeds in silencing the eyeballs
emptying the sockets of life-long pitfalls
maybe the spine-spiders will finally commence to release
the good soul that remains trapped inside this tree.
Grow tree, grow, for you are all I have ever known,
If it weren't for your protective shade, who knows where I'd have been blown.
You may be covered in cobwebs and leaves long decayed,
but I'll keep my promise to save you someday.
You may not grow to be the big oak of which you dream,
perhaps you will end up as kindling in the fiery gleam
of a thousand spiders cremating in my hearth
as I look on, a corpse consumed by an angry spark.
Lovingly your ashes will be placed
beside the oldest river, the one you once graced.
There will be no more spidery-spinal veins
to screech and rattle and bring about the worst pain.
Changelessness is not a virtue, a concept you most despised,
in the spidery spinal tree's search for life of a better kind.
Jul 5, 2010
Jul 5, 2010 at 8:14 AM UTC
Well
not so sure I think or feel
but it was a hot day
the kind to make your skin melt
and you want to take it off
so your bones can breathe
but ****** is illegal
in Kalamazoo
so we must be polite
to the locals
eat the bacon fat like good people do
love air like lemonade
bitter and delicious
refreshing in the right circumstances
loving the smoke
so sensual
in and out
controlled and contorted by lips
pillars billowing
cliched
but so **** fine
thick and formless
it disappears
but for a moment
it's yours
theirs
yummy
wrists crack like silly skeletons
jumping around
clowns in the heavens
what are you saying
my dear boy(s)
you think you're in love?
I think you're in
for one hell of a ride
if you're into
cremating your dignity
Sep 24, 2012
Sep 24, 2012 at 11:01 PM UTC
See a Sea of Secret Signs
Voluptuous Volatile & Vile Vultures
Creatures Creating Cretinism
Solid Solutions & Solid Situations
Subconsciously Violins Consuming Sounds
Roses Rapping River & Roads
Water, Walls, Weeds Wallow
Cremating Carnivore Carnations & Carnivals
Tenacious Terrorism Trimming Time
Riddles Will Consume Things
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 3:57 AM UTC
Everyone's past is a tragedy.
Everyone's heart has
been broken.
That means
thousands of
reasons to feel
sorry for
yourself.
Hundreds of different
shades of pain, an
endless rainbow of
exes and
depressing
stories.
Relationships pile up,
as rotten and overwhelming
as a garbage dump.
I need to reduce
my interpersonal
carbon footprint.
There are too many
bones in the graveyard
of my heart. I am
almost out of
room, I will have
to start
cremating
soon.
I want to forget them all,
every failed attempt
at love.
Can you
wipe my slate clean?
Can your kiss
outweigh
a decade
of defeat?
Aug 6, 2012
Aug 6, 2012 at 4:02 AM UTC
cremating cigarettes
in
a
swirl
of
steam
tricks overbearing
smoke-detectors
Dec 6, 2011
Dec 6, 2011 at 12:28 PM UTC
Laying there stagnant
My fingers percuss
Your ivory spine
Striking tendon strings
With fleshy hammers
Filling your thorax
With the vibrations
Of a thousand wasps
Stinging at your heart
As you stung at mine
Injecting resin
Injecting reason
To stay forever
And I ignite you
You, the Brazen Bull,
Cremating your heart
Still beating “I love you”
In boiling Morse code
But howling His name
In perfumed clouds of
Carbon Monoxide
Insensitively
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 11:28 AM UTC
My gaze burns, you say
Flames spew from my eyes
To char your soul
Fire, you call me
Burning up your life
I’m ignited, you say
Flames licking up my legs
Cremating my heart
Ironic
How my presence makes your sweat
Yet you make me shiver
Ice, frosts over your eyes
Icicles hang from your arms
Frozen, deep down to your heart
Clouded snowflakes hang in your breath
As you breathe out your cold words
So fire melts ice
And I burn you up
As you freeze the life out of me
Still we can’t seem to give each other up
Mutual destruction assured
Still we press on
Heated words and cold silences
Like fire meeting ice
We were never meant to be
Yet, here we are
Jul 28, 2012
Jul 28, 2012 at 6:50 PM UTC
We humans are erasing existence of humans ..
The killing of animals have shadows of humans..
We are erasing Silk, Cotton, khadi ...
Kids now don't like the taste of natural honey..
Eating of fruits they know not, drinking fruits is what they like.. Home cooked hot food is becoming rare now..
Bringing parcel of food is becoming common now..
TV, Mobile, Computer, FM, takes 16 hours a day now,
Kids getting a digital notebook is becoming common now..
Humans now don't have time to ponder,
Humans are becoming slave of man made things...
To plant trees in empty land is no one's pass time
To visit a zoo or feed an animal does not fit in the 16 hours slavery,
To invite relatives is yearly event..
To have meeting with friends is limited on FB WhatsApp or Instagram..
To walk, to hear birds chirping is just like a dream,
But humans are busier than they were before..
Kids are growing indoors.. And not outdoors..
There hieght is also changing from length to breadth..
0-10 yrs kids have thr brains growing,
What ever they easy, what ever they do they remember for rest of thr lives..
Walking, laughing, thinking, playing, eating, they learn in this age,
Irony is Mother's career and Father s promotion is also at peak in this age of theirs.
Knowingly unknowningly we are stunting the growth of young minds,
In the hands of video games was are cremating future of tomorrow..
We humans are erasing existence of humans..
We humans are erasing existence humans!!!
Sparkle in Wisdom
Jul 8, 2018
Jul 8, 2018 at 6:00 PM UTC
i don't carry a lighter
but, baby,
i would hold a match to the entire free world
just so you could light your cigarette
on the flames of civilization going to ****
i love the smell of capitalism cremating
and of you breathing your slow death
into my trembling lungs.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 6:45 PM UTC
A resonant gratitude streams through my veins,
Consecrated to my middle school heroines, deflecting
The whispers of shame.
But they taught me that I do not have the luxury of shame;
I have a voice, and I must amplify it––that’s what my mother said.
Elles m’ont protégée, blossoming my oneness.
I am here now because of them, I harness their divine feminine
Strength.
Standing on the bones of my aunties, their anguish travels up,
Their histories following suit.
Beneath my feet, to my knuckles; charging my inner being
My spine is rigid, fortified with the duty––
To liberate, to reform, and to love.
“But my love,” she tells me earnestly, “this love, has been assumed,
Taken for granted, blended into the background of the White man’s portrait.”
My dun skin lives in the ambiguity of praise and prejudice,
And my sisters are dead. Exploited, first––then dead.
As were my mother’s grandmothers, when the Britons drew the line.
The assembly line, however, was an American invention––
Where the American Dream came to fruition. Commodified neatly,
‘Cheaply’ produced, and easy to swallow: fine [Black*] American craftmanship!
Her tomb
Stone, will be mined by her brothers.
He is unearthing the buried history, but forced to push coal into the fire,
Cremating the legacies of his own kin.
“So what are you going to say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me?”
Her lasts words, found amongst the ashes.
Dec 5, 2023
Dec 5, 2023 at 1:28 PM UTC
Sometimes you feel so inferior that you will tear away the flesh of anyone in your path to simply ascend. You are struggling to breathe. Sometimes you are suffocating so intensley that you will slay the souls of anyone in your path in your colloquy. Sometimes you will set tempers ablaze from the embers within your belly. Sometimes you scar fabricated memories with truth.
Sometimes your heart burns to a degree that can and will collapse stars. Sometimes your temperament will destruct star systems.
Sometimes all you are capable of is cremating worlds. Embrace it, mother dragon. On every plane in every realm. You burn for eternity. You are the personification of hell.
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 6:29 AM UTC
My fire is dilatorily dissipating.
I was once a holocaustal conflagration.
A cremating, mad inferno.
Containing an unseeable array of vibrant shades of amber;
that could be seen from distant, distant regions.
I had once ignited with such a passion.
A drive that was beautifully unstoppable.
You were my blazing incendiary.
You started this combustible mess.
I am now but a flickering ember,
barely being able to spark.
My once scorching and numerous flames
have pulverized to ashes.
...Ironic isn't it?
The arsonist who dared to create me
whom fueled me with such a flammable tinder
was the same person
who tore me down
within seconds
with but a drop of water
and a blink of an eye.
Nov 10, 2014
Nov 10, 2014 at 8:57 PM UTC
As the flames take my memory
I see beauty in its tyranny
I think about suicide
fire melting my skin
cooking my internals
cremating all my bones to dust
Until everything is dirt
Dec 1, 2012
Dec 1, 2012 at 9:09 AM UTC
tHE bEAST lIES dORMANT.
You stumble upon a cave.
Cool breath purges from its mouth;
Waves producing shivers—
Shadowed by curiosity?
Cremating all doubts.
And for one last time,
Reason dictates how you behave.
“Come in, oh ripe blood.”
tHE bEAST’S vOICE tRICKLES oUT.
Amalgamated teeth—hung above,
Saliva drip-drops unto the ones below.
Under your feet,
A tongue of damp-dark snow.
Although... last light lies within,
Hence who’s to claim it isn’t so?
Eyes strain—a distant glow.
tHE bEAST lICKS iTS lIPS.
Slight stumble—
If only you could sense these ***** tricks!
Again steady…
aS tHE bEAST iS tOO.
Desperately you reach for the light,
Blinded by its cathartic might,
You grab tight.
Oh!—how the cave grows darker than night,
Depreciating sight.
tHE bEAST’S hUNGER iS sOOTHED.
Relentlessly you paw for a way out,
But the beast’s mouth has long since shut;
Infinite rut—you scream and shout.
Mar 12, 2019
Mar 12, 2019 at 1:01 AM UTC
until your lights come undone
And the sun deport its creators
And seek you instead;
Every person you came to love was already dead and they shoved their corpses and broken teeth down your throat like a blackhole branch and nostalgic chaos
cremating all the bodies they’ve occupied, but still it tasted too familiar to your common sense that you let it.
Or is it okay as long as it's spoiler free, and less relevant to your story standards, and case scenario?
Jul 7, 2019
Jul 7, 2019 at 8:47 AM UTC
What can be depicted that I have yet to touch,
unravel a mystery my mind has yet to absorb.
For leaves of stress fall on my path,
cremating my imagination as hours pass.
As the hand on the clock so turns.
One touched by the hand of death,
taking by fragile hand to grave.
Another, nerves unravel like thread,
how many hours only God knows.
One left confidence and pride
kind has been the hand of time.
As the hand on the clock so turns.
In a trance broken by my glimpse,
reality sets in and we come to this.
How many times has one sat and pondered,
dreams, tales, all wonder, life?
While the hand on the clock so turns.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 5:01 PM UTC
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Jan 20, 2018
Jan 20, 2018 at 10:36 PM UTC
What slender strength once attainted to
reach forth, but now its feathers of life
have collected like a funeral pyre cremating
their existence to embers floating in limbo.
Her virtue swaying with every expiration,
cartilage falters dismembered from her form.
Hollow and barren. One moment of existence
still hangs on she is not yet gone.
That faithful breath falls on this day, a lonely
woeful tear leaves the nest. This inanimate effigy
now a husk of memories rings once worn now
stained. She died standing up... she died alone...
Feb 11, 2017
Feb 11, 2017 at 7:00 AM UTC
An apparition floats in the ether
Flirting with uncertainty
Fornicating with insanity
Dreams weaving spiderwebs
missed connections
The cerebral cortex is dead
Neurologic misconduct
The product of masterbatory philosophic ego
Circling the drain
Dark matter ***** its pistol
Currently the universal harmony is obsolete
Industrial jinx the Sphinx winks
Esoteric barbaric monkey race
Acrid acrobatics through semantics
Labrynth of foul play
The mind can't stray away
Meditate on the outer banks
Collective conscious cremating brain waves
the last microwave TV dinner
Enthroned on the last iceberg
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 5:55 PM UTC
A long and lonely life
Where I stand alone
After everyone's demise
‛Coz I don't want to
Live alone after they die
And I can't think about
Cremating my beautiful wife
Jan 8, 2021
Jan 8, 2021 at 1:17 PM UTC