"crematorium" poems
I am never enough
In your scowling eyes,
Your voice is coarse and rough,
No care for how the blood dries.
No care for my welfare,
Just how it affects you.
Remember when you said 'she left you because of the drugs'?
Well **** you too.
And **** when you told me
'I never said that'
Where is your sympathy
You gas lighting rat.
Go ahead and press my buttons
To see me light up,
And when I do,
You play victim.
The meds I take
Are to deal with you.
Your care is fake,
You pretend you don't have a clue.
When I try and tell you
How I feel,
The words don't get through,
Responsibility not so quick on your heel.
You make dinner
For everyone but me,
My patience is growing thinner,
Your hate is like a tree
Taking root under my family,
And now I am the wretch,
The cans in my room, so pretty,
You self absorbed *****
Not big on self regulation,
Or object permanence,
Day on day commotion
Starts again, what a performance.
The rage I have for you,
You taught me well,
I am black all the way through,
And water does not quell.
Alcoholic,
Just like you taught,
This life is chaotic
K cider 7.5% store bought.
Why does Dad have to die of cancer
And you continue to breath?
You death dodging dancer,
Every sip is a seethe.
You shouldn't be allowed around children,
You dangerous psychopath,
A hateful haven,
Blood soaked epitaph.
So here is wishing
You a swift death,
Or maybe go missing,
I don't want to hear another breath.
You won't get a funeral.
You are being cremated.
And I won't be there
To bring you back from the crematorium.
Aug 18, 2023
Aug 18, 2023 at 4:20 PM UTC
My mom forgot to tell me
that it would hurt when you set my heart on fire.
She forgot to tell me that love is just as much pain as it is fun
and that sometimes the fire doesn't go out when the other person dies,
sometimes the fire burns you alive.
You forgot to tell me that death was an option
and that sometimes destiny ******* hates you,
or maybe its me who hates Destiny
for drinking and then deciding to drive.
One thing I learned from you is that cold showers don't stop love
they just freeze the desire to live out of you.
I don't know anymore if my heart is on fire
or if I stepped into that crematorium with you
but I am alone right now
and it makes me mad.
Dec 20, 2013
Dec 20, 2013 at 11:04 PM UTC
to-day I attended
my cousin's funeral service
it was a casual
laid back kind of affair
no preacher going on for ages
with vacuous words
a celebrant spoke of my cousin's
love of the young and the elderly
her husband wrote a poem
of dedication to his beloved Tess
throughout the service her favorite songs were featured
the Bon Jovi tune "To Be My Baby" had family and friends
tapping their feet
on our departure from the crematorium
the strains of Tim McGraw's " Please Remember Me" played
the day was as Tess wanted
casual and no fuss
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 1:16 AM UTC
God **** you to hell.
You smolder inside my chest
Crying like an abandoned puppy,
Even my blood wants to get away from you.
You claim everything's yours, yours
To feel for, like a blind man, stumbling,
You are an emotional wreck. You
Brazen bull, I never cease to hear
The screams of agony that you burn.
It's so bad I could even smell the crisp
Of human flesh. It empties me of all hunger.
The air burns wherever I let it, but that
Always beats your burn, that is like the iron
At the center of the Earth. I hate you.
You burn. You burn my love notes,
My apologies, you burn my hatred,
My love, my time. You burn my dreams.
You are their crematorium. And I hate you
For forcing me around you
No matter how much I want you out.
I hate you,
And I hate you even more
For making me forget why,
My rumination seeping out
Replaced by "Fine.
Let's see how you do on your own."
Sep 19, 2025
Sep 19, 2025 at 7:31 PM UTC
Cockroaches in striped pajamas
stained by the scent of snow-melted blood
under a compassionate moon.
No reflection to admire
other than the eyes of a thousand
miserable and sordid puppets
with shaven heads and wooden clogged shoes.
God and their souls
murdered by a vile evolution,
crucibles of Jewish remains.
Rabbis and priests,
scholars and the poor:
moving targets with stars on their sleeves.
Naked souls waited,
listening to the gods of old Germany.
“Zieh dich aus! (Take off your clothes!)”
They shouted, pushing
them further into the chamber.
The doors
closed shut behind them.
A deathly fog clouded
among them,
putting them to drown
under a thick green darkness.
Agonized voices
shredded apart
as their nails clawed
at the concrete walls.
Women and children held each other tight,
whispering Kaddish,
hoping and praying.
Twenty minutes
of shouting and stumbling,
Twenty minutes
of spluttering and gargling.
The little ones witness the eyes
of their guardians writhe and turn white,
as their bodies jolted
as their lives were stolen.
The gods finally entered
to clear the room,
to pile the dead onto the carts,
to visit the crematorium.
To finally shovel the mounds of
striped clothing,
to recycle and burn the rest.
But this end comes
as a sweet release
as their ashes
were sent through the chimneys
and into the air
to rest in their graves.
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 3:16 PM UTC
there are holes in my body where i was pinned to the stars
my voice cries out to eternity
begging for silence
don't tell me i'm overreacting
when my eyes are bloodshot and blackened
when i'm clutching my knees as i shake
screaming profanities and nonsense and numbers
and how dearly my soul misses the galaxies it's travelled
when i'm begging for peace
whilst waging a war against the dissonance of my thoughts
don't tell me i'm overreacting
when fever dreams are my only escape
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin straddling an atomic bomb,
I dreamed of grace and annihilation weightless and atmospheric
I dreamed of gravity as the tyranny of man
I dreamed of a view of this world from the sun, ashes in a cosmic crematorium
I dreamed of ice and fire, winter and war
I dreamed of mutually assured destruction, eyes watching the sky
I dreamed of watching from on high, all glory hallelujah and twinkling giants
I dreamed of falling back down, arms spread in unbreakable faith
I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin, alone among the stars, saint of that great abyss, smiling as he met God, and asking him in a calm and reassuring tone, where he's been all this time
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 3:35 AM UTC
there is no GOD, and I am his prophet.
don't shove your religion down my
throat.
there is no GOD.
to believe in GOD is wishful thinking.
i don't need a boss man
breathing down my neck,
but you must.
you better harden up.
i believe
that you shouldn't believe
in anything, and I believe you
ought to harden up.
face facts.
get real.
it's a raw, dog eat dog world out there
and it's us against them.
you have to be able to
face the cold truth of it all.
life's just what happens
between the maternity ward
and the crematorium.
hear me brother,
this is my sermon:
there is no GOD
and I am his prophet.
Sep 24, 2012
Sep 24, 2012 at 5:11 AM UTC
I watched a body burn yesterday,
with eyes closed shut
and brown hair parted so perfectly
that it couldn’t possibly have been you.
But it was wearing your shoes
the faded blue Converse
that I tried to throw away when you weren’t looking.
Your mom must have salvaged them.
I’ve been looking for you
in the places I thought would remember you.
I have found
that you don’t exist anywhere:
not in the urn
resting in your mother’s living room
not in the shower
where I try to freeze the love out of me.
You have left me smoldering.
Your mom told me they burned you
with a pack of cigarettes
in your jacket pocket.
The faint smell of burning tobacco
would follow you to death.
I think I might hate you.
You told me it was your trademark
to leave people wondering
about where you were going.
I thought you were just mysterious
not intentionally cruel.
But you have left me here
left me not knowing
if my heart is on fire
or if I stepped into the crematorium with you.
I can’t breathe right now.
Completely burnt out.
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 1:40 AM UTC
The experiment is maliciously cold, dangerously cunning-
A wrong sort of rapture
An invitation made in amusement
People surround you like the frigid flames in a hyena’s eyes just before it pounces
The experiment is brutality, a completely psychological Auschwitz-
A nightmare down memory lane-
But whose memories are they?
The experiment (seems) to work by gas lighting and technology-
That’s all it needs- cigarettes and soup
But who’s at the watchtower?
I have no delusions of reprieve- despite what people tell me
They- the illusions, delusions, holograms of people reaching out in “love”
Your love is a weight, just like mine is to you
Yes, I bring sorrow to you, but out of this sorrow something was created
Something you can never know because it can’t be possessed-
Too many ideas and too much time…
Still searching for one thing- not love, but truth
Have a roast, lay it on me
Don’t hold back because you don’t want my blood on your hands
It’s already been spilled
You live with my faults and my dilemmas and my neurosis,
But I must live everyday in the body that houses these faults, dilemmas, neurosis.
Still they turn on their Piscean baths, expecting a scorpion not to drown-
A crematorium with no weapons-
Inanimate objects speak, but humans gurgle out white noise,
A poison formed first in the brain then saturated by the tongue
And all the demonic children….
I am that demonic child. I am that vat of toxic waste.
I am a liar, a sinner, a drunk, a madman, a beggar, a freak, a thief
My pain fascinates others as they tap on the fishbowl glass,
Making me shudder
Are these the people of God?
Am I a person of God?
Most likely neither
But how did it come to this?
And really, what would Jesus do?
Jesus probably wouldn’t live in America
And love isn’t enough
They crave conformity, obedience-
What a sick, twisted practice
The sacrifice of one for all
Don’t make any waves, but here’s an ocean
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 1:50 PM UTC
There once was a boy who loved fire,
He kept matches in hand and sang in choir,
The church burned days after that,
Only matches they found inside a dead rat,
The boy went missing a few days later,
But no one cared, other worries were greater,
So the boy got away with less matches in hand,
Singing dogmatic songs of a fiery land.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum
The next town he settled in was quite small,
But it had an orphanage where he could stall,
Living as an orphan was less than fun,
He dreamed of fires, up walls they’d run,
Nuns gave him chores like scrubbing floors,
But living this life was an absolute bore,
Weeks in he again found his little box of fire,
And snuck away at night as his heart desired.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum
He started anew in a town called Old Haven,
Teenaged he was and very well-behaven,
He worked for a grocer, handling cash,
But one day, the store’s walls turned to ash,
No one suspected the teen and his matches,
Until he disappeared in a bat of your lashes,
He continued on, without a worry for the world,
Knowing eventually in fire it’d be hurled.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum
Eventually he settled in a place with no fire,
Except in the first job where he was no liar,
A crematorium he settled to live,
Bodies he burns, then ashes he gives,
A match started every body-fueled flame,
A box in hand singing the devil finally came.
Then, one summer, the now-man threw himself in,
Mad with laughter, hell accepted him.
One day in black sun a demon will come,
He’ll save us in the blaze hoheehohum
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 10:52 PM UTC
You looked at me
As if I were a broken muse
Jagged instead of smooth
A cracked carapace
A bag no longer containing God
And in this moment of your breath
I was a face for the morgue
The crematorium,
With the sifting of ash
To be your repentance-
The discovery of the shelf of a cheekbone
To be the only thing that held
The disappointment in alignment
Up to your rueful eyes
Apr 18, 2013
Apr 18, 2013 at 3:52 PM UTC
“i set my deadfall hands on fire —
swallow the ashes,” i wrote and laughed
as these words turned black with rot
in two months,
i am no longer inside the skin
burning away vividly at the feet of the sun god.
i am not a body at the crematorium
with matchstick-fingers and gasoline;
my bones are whole, pure, pearly, quiet white.
i have been holding my breath, waiting
for the smoke to clear without choking.
i no longer want to write about the flames and the embers and live-coal hearts;
i put my poems down, my cigarettes and pitchfork
and step into a gentler flare,
and stick my tongue out to lick the sunbeams —
they’re warm against my taste buds,
like honeyed milk and hibiscus stews.
i am four years old once more,
sleeping soundly on my mother’s lap.
Jul 8, 2022
Jul 8, 2022 at 2:58 AM UTC
Reverberation hit's the auditorium
Wailing notes and key's, guitar, piano
Chord's splash sound to the crowd
Leaving traces of burnt trails
Like the neighborhood crematorium.
Girdle, gurgled amplified effect's
Some do it for the love, other's for a check,
Fifty musician's. One stage to be the attention
Microphone's and xylophone tones rock out
To jam overtaking, to rock and blues ripping.
Sep 30, 2015
Sep 30, 2015 at 7:50 AM UTC
Sometimes I write nights, in the séance of the city
to the thrum of the sidewalk, the fume of the smokestack;
I scribble the madcap of it all, I furrow my nails in vinyl and dance
in memoriam,
my face blackened by storms in the crematorium;
there are those that watch the world through a window,
and those that are watched;
and if they have no voice in their manic stumblings; and if instead they
mutter
to the shadows for traction, to the swirl in the gutter, the outer rim of
silence
they will find a friction
to descend upon cement with an electric lunacy;
and though they will be outliers, they put out the candles
and write nights too;
within the funneled starlight, and the wheel of the sky,
we string our bodies astral,
in procession and out, similar in divergence, until similarity diverges
into steam and carbon
and time surges backwards to rejuvenate nights
and our visions are left clotted in their seams by
the dark.
Aug 19, 2010
Aug 19, 2010 at 9:01 AM UTC
At the Crematorium
white smoke curls
and coils
and drifts
- a wisp
of your hair.
Blood-red rich roses
thrive in bone rich soil
velvety smooth
and secret-scented
- the inside skin
of your wrists.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 10:43 AM UTC
a patch
of flaming red tulips
burns away winter's body
in the crematorium of spring.
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 7:45 PM UTC
That short wispy haired lady
Fighting her way against the wind
Up the London Road
Is my Mother.
Lips pursed she is returning
From the hairdressers, the post office
And has yet to pick up steak and kidney
For the pie she will make
For the boy who is coming home
For her son who will soon be there
For the man who loves the pie
For her child who loves her.
Her lips are pursed in determination
Against all the obstacles
Real and imagined that stalk her.
Lately that climb past the church
Made her puff.
Tiredness, her weakened heart
Struggling to keep up.
Perhaps the thought of another winter
Another wet and windy struggle
Up and down the village
Up and down the London Road.
Discretely her body decided
To give up.
No more struggling
No more tiredness
No more puffing and halting
For my shy timid Mother.
No more making tea
No more cleaning
No more washing
No more worrying
For my Mum.
Her three sons
Middle aged and modern
Stand miserably with their Father
Standing in suits in the municipal crematorium.
Rain and wind, my Mothers enemies
Howl and lash outside
Lost without their old victim
Inside aging relatives
Exchange scared glances
Wondering who is next.
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 9:21 PM UTC
In sleep I dream, illusions of being awake
From the first moment to the last, of their plot.
Of it being perfect to it becoming perfection;
Eden in its own serenity- chaos,
Eden in its own confusion- bliss.
Anger clouded by love,
Passion pervaded with bitterness;
The fruitfulness of creation, their desire to destroy.
Pandemonium throughout millenniums,
The reckoning of reason throughout the centuries.
Sifting through thoughts, riding the zephyr of forgotten memories.
The taste of oceanic air, induces thee
The scent of roses upon thy skin reduces me!
The autylosis of flesh in the wilderness,
An arbituar, a crematorium- my garden.
Eden all decaying; seen, smelt and felt
Yet I still recall
Remembering fields of Asphodels
And a dream of a flower that too long ago was our ancient emblem,
Somewhere inside I am touched by this flower
And my relentless dream to feel again, what was
Before the death of Heaven.
Heaven before the conflagration; Heaven before the stench,
A Heaven of basking in fields.
Yet I am null and void of what is,
Null and void of emotion and what was
As that Heaven still subsides in me.
Elysium, the beautiful abode of the after world
Elysium with fields of sepulchre,
A Heaven of sceptre carrying angels
A recollection of a deadly nightmare
A recollection of a Heaven with Asphodel's;
The Heaven that once existed
A Heaven of which I do dream;
The Heaven of which I originally inhabited,
The Elysium in which Heaven and Hell co-existed
Harmoniously.
Eleete J Muir 1998
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 5:56 AM UTC
I’d swear a monster lived in the hall
Of the house when I was young,
Just like the tiger under the bed
I could see when they were gone,
For I could hear him climbing the stair
When the house was fast asleep,
I knew he roamed around and about
When the stairs began to creak.
And then he’d enter my bedroom and
He’d re-arrange my toys,
That’s how I knew he disliked me, he
Kept all his tricks for boys.
He never bothered my sister, or
Disturbed her dolls and things,
Her bedroom was like a sanctuary
For her necklaces and rings.
He’d hide in all of the daylight hours
So he’d not be seen by them,
The others, who would make fun of me
When I warned them all again:
‘You wait, he’s going to take you out
He will catch you unawares,
You won’t be able to scream or shout
When he comes, and climbs the stairs.’
The winter months were both damp and cold
And the woodwork creaked and groaned,
It shrunk and stretched, it was getting old
And it hid the monster’s moans.
So I hid down by the bannister
And I tied a string across,
To trip him when he would climb the stairs,
I would teach the monster loss!
A storm was raging outside that night
And the wind howled through the trees,
The back door opened and flapped a lot
And let in a winter breeze,
I heard my father run down the stairs
And an awful cry and crash,
Then silence settled and fed my fears
Where the bannister was smashed.
I thought the monster was gone for good
With the service come and gone,
I thought he couldn’t survive that crash
And the crematorium,
But barely a week had passed us by
And the stairs began to creak,
So I placed a candle under the stair
And the place burned for a week.
David Lewis Paget
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 8:40 PM UTC
Fear lurks in the dark corners of my wretched soul
Brewing poison - a concoction to inject in delirium.
Strength is shattered; weak in the cold.
Shots of pain burning straight for the crematorium.
Painless, I burn
My ashes, Glory they will earn.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 11:35 AM UTC
It bathes in a crematorium of illumination,
it's cries are swallowed by slate lullabies
lingering in the horizon of purest beauty.
Obscure in it's effects, It ingratiates all quivering
flickers that do not concede to this disheartening
funeral pyre of onyx flames seeding it to oblivion.
Where light diminished eclipsed in obliteration,
substance was all and void. Bathing in its consumed
form, it opened its eclipsing sight and two stars shone.
"For when all is nothing, light always finds a way to shine,
May 23, 2016
May 23, 2016 at 5:25 PM UTC