"crematory" poems
Dad didn't want a coffin.
"Cremate my last remains,"
And so we did.
Cool and dry,
His ashes, urned,
Lie beneath the sod
And prairie sky
Waiting some clarion call,
Some trill of hope,
Bright, re-constitutional,
Faith-affirming.
Mother's wishes rise before us:
No crematory,
No embalmer.
Just her blanket,
Just a hole
Dug beside our Dad.
The law would let her wish be true,
But her children won't.
We're searching coffin plans.
Reverently grim,
Lovingly deferential,
Dutifully rebellious,
Solemn this journey be.
Pine boards to honor her thrift
But smooth and tight,
Rope handles, fitted lid,
Perhaps a little trim,
Perhaps a sheaf of wheat carved
For the old farmer she was.
We'll bury her,
Wrapped in her blanket,
Tucked securely in pine
Beside my father's ashes.
Like a grain of wheat she'll lie
Silent in her final say
Inside our final say
Waiting Resurrection Day.
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 6:11 PM UTC
Gnashing of teeth,
Tearing of vestments
Crematory waste
Smeared upon my face.
Angst
God has died,
A wanton suicide
Her ******* children
Now run this place.
Angst
***** stained covers
Adulterous lovers,
Depart smiling,
Not hiding their Faces.
Angst
Wounded skies bleed
On terra infirma indeed
It’s poison leaching
Into bubbling brooks.
Angst
Bonita Muerte
Erasing the pain
Setting the corpses
On the pyres again
Angst
AD
Aug 29, 2010
Aug 29, 2010 at 11:18 AM UTC
There is nothing
worse
than smoking a stoge alone
knowing the white paper wrapped
around leaves is a Hearse.
Dying slowly with a friend
feels almost alright
but when the smoke
billows out at night
a locomotive with no incentive
you get pensive
and wish that cancer would develope
dropping you in an early grave.
The stench of burning bodies
isn't a story
with a life lived next to a crematory
the sizzle of the cigarette
akin to the sound of
bacon cooking in the morning.
No warning signs
from a petered out mind
cracked spine causing
an acid flash back
fluorescent butterflies
peek over the guitar strings
stinging like beautiful bees
while the trees take deep breaths
singing
"Breathe child...breathe"
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 4:52 AM UTC
Naught the mages
Elm yellows plough
feigning eternities
dream of man;
the cradle of time
the realm of night,
Scathing Hekates
piacular restitution
heralded papally
upon Seven Hills
cradling Hades
tau cross-roads;
Eliciting with the iron
seminal sickle,
gifting the servants
of the servants of God
and slaves of slaves alike;
dismembering the boughs
of war- elsewhere,
Building broken bridges
Carving the lullabies
of humanity grafting
a sprig of Yggdrasil.
ELEETE J MUIR
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 7:26 AM UTC
I hired a carpenter
to build my coffin
and last night I lay in it,
braced by a pillow,
sniffing the wood,
letting the old king
breathe on me,
thinking of my poor murdered body,
murdered by time,
waiting to turn stiff as a field marshal,
letting the silence dishonor me,
remembering that I'll never cough again.
Death will be the end of fear
and the fear of dying,
fear like a dog stuffed in my mouth,
feal like dung stuffed up my nose,
fear where water turns into steel,
fear as my breast flies into the Disposall,
fear as flies tremble in my ear,
fear as the sun ignites in my lap,
fear as night can't be shut off,
and the dawn, my habitual dawn,
is locked up forever.
Fear and a coffin to lie in
like a dead potato.
Even then I will dance in my dire clothes,
a crematory flight,
blinding my hair and my fingers,
wounding God with his blue face,
his tyranny, his absolute kingdom,
with my aphrodisiac.
1.5k
The purgatory of a cemetery
The calamity of duality
Mortalities catastrophe
Crematory trajectory
Anatomy of insanity
Assault and battery
The audacity of humanity
The profanity of actuality
And camaraderie with agony
The brutality of tragedy
Finds me at max capacity
Quit handing life back to me
Because frankly,
I'm done
©2024
Oct 13, 2024
Oct 13, 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC
The world is full of fools’ theory
Listening to them I feel weary.
Such egoistic heads tell not to worry
And at our back talk oscillatory
Bad about us, creating a crematory
Where they bury their own glory.
They have a bad attitude of sanatory
Coward, showy, deceitful, predatory.
The world is full of fools’ theory
Listening to them I feel weary.
I too had such a mad hoary
Who was ready with an itinerary,
Where all bad & deceit come corollary
As she had a base habit of obfuscatory.
She knew less concepts contemporary
And thought herself vital primary.
The world is full of fools’ theory
Listening to them I feel weary.
Would always ask if I hunky-dory?
We knew those emotions were vapory –
Happy, then sad, angry then nugatory!
Her emotions changed as witch’s allegory,
Hate, spurn, prune are her favourite mandatory:
Now singly fights with colleagues hortatory;
Alas! Does not know her faults & category.
Listening to them I feel weary.
Would always ask if hunky-dory?
At first I tried to be a promontory
So that I can save her crematory;
Blind with pride, less corroboratory,
She spurned me having derogatory.
Now also I pity her as she is a hoary
But wish she improves her oratory.
Apr 19, 2018
Apr 19, 2018 at 8:52 PM UTC
Frightening silence
Painted on ragged walls
Wet air stuck in dry lungs
Muddy fingers on the floor,
The scent of pain in every bone,
Tired eyes washed in dusty rain
Drops of memories lost in vain.
I remember all so well...
Those feelings in every bit, every cell
The same hunger
Same emptiness and despair.
We were all hunters
For a piece of calming air,
On tops of mountains of fear;
Voices crawl, the sunrise is near...
"Go to sleep, sleep forever my dear".
Doors were locked, I couldn't hear
Truths of our misery, crystal clear
This was 1998, the damnned year.
And so it came back
Like a cruel memory
My hopes resting in a crematory,
Old wounds wide open -
A life ahead without any track
Of the right way to go,
Weak, restless, shallow
This caged air we've been breathing
Still standing, still believing
It is all a lie.
Sep 16, 2011
Sep 16, 2011 at 4:44 PM UTC
words fall empty silent
pained into the altar fires
life without You
an unbearable cross to bear
ash is smeared across my forehead
but not just for Lent
now I wear the tattered rags and carry the begging bowl of Shiva
even the crematory dust of my bones
shiver in the hereafter
for one blessed whisper from the lips of
my beloved
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 12:51 AM UTC
You're smoking that cigarette
makes me sad
I watch you from the
lobby window of the hotel
framed with crocus plants
breathe in smoke stacks
pillars of poison
puffing into azure ozone
your once pink lungs
crumble like crematory ash
prayers gush from my heart
put out the fire
Sep 13, 2021
Sep 13, 2021 at 9:06 PM UTC
All White
Such a long walk
That took seconds
Down the hall to see
You
White
White is all I saw
Head to toe covered
Except your reddened face
The crematory man
Said you'd be discolored
All I saw was you
In the yard
Sitting in the Star Wars room
Blue electric guitar
And bass lines
With or without you
And I learned
That life is fragile
And you looked it too.
I prayed and prayed
And sent my words
To the heavens
And felt the sky
Open up and swallow
My tears and pleas
Some writings
A Lock of hair
And a visual memory
Is what I left with
And will carry with
Me
Till my day comes
When they all walk in
And all they see white
All white...
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017 at 10:40 PM UTC
Awaking in the dawn
Asking for a new life
As I wipe the tears from my eyes
Our life of youth is now behind us
The real special times of my life
When responsibilities were simple
To cut the grass
Put out the trash
Go to school
Do my home work
Where games were fun
Sleepovers and board games
Hide and seek, your it
Street football
Tackle the man with the ball
A fight because 2 of us got mad
Was only to fight your best friend
A neighborhood brawl with the next block
fist only
When getting in trouble was for
Not being home when the street lights went out
Skipping school and getting caught
Out of mom's screaming voice when she wanted you
punishment
A belt or a paddle
from mom, your teaches or
your friends parents
A go to your room, no TV
Our secrets were kept
Our hidden tree house with a rope swing
Our secret hiding spots
The girls we liked
Adventure were scary
Opening old coffins in the crematory
Catching snakes
Trapping whatever
Camping in the woods
When you got nervous was from
Playing seven minutes in heaven
Kissing your first girl
Friends picking on you
excitement was a trip
Holidays from school
Christmas
Thanksgiving
Easter
New years & the 4th of July, fireworks
And the next dad collecting what didn't go off
Lets not forget the ice cream truck
Some of our mischievous ways
Throwing water balloons at stranger
Making tennis ball grenade launchers
Running in the fog behind the mosquito truck
to make a buck
was to cut grass
get a paper route
sell anything
I could go own but I'm sure you get the point
Our generation is gone and the youth will never know
Now it's high tech and everything is a crime
Kid's stay in the house playing video games
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 9:14 AM UTC
I can't help comparing him to the holocaust
How he starved me from all affection, giving me small portions once in a while just to keep me alive
"You deserve this"
How his anger and hatred burned me like the fire in the crematory. The smoke spelling out all the hope I had
**** you"*
How his vicious words were like poisonous gas seeping into my lungs and killing me slowly.
He had me gasping for air
*"Shut the **** up"*
Gasp
*"You'd be **** if you lost weight"*
Gasp
*"You're such a *****
Gasp
*"You're so ******* worthless"*
Gasp
I have my scars but
Somehow, I made it out alive
Somehow, I'm still breathing
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 30, 2017 at 2:23 AM UTC
Let me reach beyond this pit of seemingly endless darkness, pierce my hand through the roof of this imagined cave and grimace at the pain of the light that burns my skin. Claw to pull the weight atop that feels like a 500 lb. body that I've drug around for the last 3 and a half decades and whisper to myself that I can do this once again.
"Where did she go?"
I ask myself as if I'm literally searching for the girl that I once knew myself to be, as I stare at the blank sunken eyes in the reflection of the mirror. The woman who stood strong and built like an ox on that stage with the blinding lights and glimmer. The woman that carried her mothers ashes down those stairs that day from the crematory, picturing her frail body flung across her arms and once I let those ashes go, I never really let that weight off of me.
Weak.
Is the only word I feel that I have and I've wrapped myself within it and allowed my mistakes, anger, pain and loss engulf me.
"Where are you?"
I whisper again as I run back down the dark alleys of my thoughts in what seems to be a never ending run.
"Break free from this darkness"
I beg my heart to connect with my brain and ignite a fire in my soul once again.
"Mommy, I have to tell you something"
My little boy says in a playful, sweet endearing voice before he slips off to sleep.."I love you Mommy"
And my heart pierces and I pray that this jolt will ignite the fighting strength within me to rise back up and take on tomorrow as if it were my last day alive.
For now, I'll sleep.
I'll pray that I'll open my eyes at sunrise and this heaviness will somehow be lifted and I'll climb my way back through that black hole and I'll finally be able to fully embrace this gift that I've been given.
May 3, 2017
May 3, 2017 at 2:07 AM UTC
I'll leave you
My Bones,
Under all but two
Upturned stones,
I gambled with one bullet
And five empty chambers,
Spun the silver roulette
And click went the hammer,
The thoughts in my head
Melted with the hot lead,
It's all in the red
All that I could have said,
Resting in pieces
My theories, my plans, my thesis,
The unrest in my entrails
Is no longer, like the pins and nails
Behind my eyes
Pointed towards the skies,
At the last flashed my life
Like the sharpest knife,
Seared into my mind
Now all on the wall behind,
If I had chosen the crematory
I would have no story...
© okpoet
Dec 29, 2012
Dec 29, 2012 at 2:53 PM UTC
he remembers when spring meant
that the ground would get wet and soft
and flowers would burst from the crematory ashes
of winter
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 10:17 PM UTC
CUITLAHUAC
It’s said Huitzilopochtli’s temple burns.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
It does so, to the sinking of my gut.
Great rains of sparks dripped on his chapel’s thatch,
Which torched our war god’s crematory pyre,
And lit the flabbergasted rabble’s face,
Their eyes and open mouths like perfect ‘O’s.
Afar, the old, old fire god, aloof,
And chortling at his native element,
Was in his shrine extinguished nonetheless
When shards of lightning from a cloudless sky
Forked up his walls. It seems the gods contend,
And waste their earthly halls as game-board chips.
CUITLAHUAC
Have you beheld the floods?
PRIEST OF TLALOC No. Floods? The floods?
CUITLAHUAC
The boundless lake that rounds our rafty town
Shrugged off her boiling banks, uncorked her wrath,
And, in a breaker to out-swell the sea,
Has drowned our residential waterfront.
House after house bobs in a flotsam fleet-
A drear, domestic archipelago.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
What does the emperor your brother say
Of these most inauspicious auguries?
CUITLAHUAC
It’s in the bag and in the box with him.
He closets up his fear in trumped-up shrugs.
And yet I can not blame his fickleness.
If judgment’s based on past experience,
How to interpret, then, such spectacles,
When what is weighed has never once before
Been seen or rumored in the known-of world?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Lord Tlacaelel claims that Hungry Prince
Tonight held council with the emperor,
To state his gloss on these phenomena.
CUITLAHUAC
He stands on shaky ground. How did he fare?
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Like to a hummingbird trapped in a hive.
Motecuhzoma’s bellows rattled rafters.
He challenged him at dawn to the arena.
The sacred ball-game shall resolve their feud.
CUITLAHUAC
The stakes?
PRIEST OF TLALOC Unknown, but speculated high.
CUITLAHUAC
We’ll meet then in the morning at the court.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Let’s get inside, lest Tlaloc should suspect
We dare the tempest-tosser to his worst. They exit.
Oct 11, 2016
Oct 11, 2016 at 12:38 PM UTC
*Everyone knows
That if LOVE isn't there
All of us won't be here
LOVE defined in a broader term
Like - AGAPE
Between any two human beings
Related or unrelated
No bar to age, *** caste, wealth
Religion, region, race
The fires of LOVE
Won't light if it wasn't natural
Like the volcanic fire under
The belly of the earth
Or the crematory & graveyard
That won't exist without death
No, as the earth revolving
Around the sun won't stop
The LOVE won't stop
Flickering its flames
From extinction.*
Jul 28, 2015
Jul 28, 2015 at 11:50 PM UTC
unlike man with a petition: i prefer to hunch myself to craft a shadow like a crow: rather than kneel... because my "prayer" constitutes a ? rather than an question... i rather stand tall and hunch to inquire, as any inquisitor might... kneeling? worthy of a nation of eagle-worshiping and peasants; bogus-deity-scaffolders; typically with the genesis ex: egypt. i craft a shadow from a strong frame, bowing... i bow before god, rather than kneel, rather than takbir, al-qiyyam, ruku, sujud, julus: is there anyone actually listening to learn? called the "lesser" hand-shake.
make a cameo of me on
the part:
where i don't have
to film it; mmm'kay?
i'm a cyclops,
but i have a third eye that's
missing...
i'm looking,
and i'm looking:
but there's the persistent
third party:
sources.
if only modern technology
didn't give birth
to man's artificial third eye...
people are spotted all around
with their third eyes..
who the **** is going
to blink twice when
the person having blinked...
has blinked?!
i'm happy with two...
keep the third;
i can only be so bothered
to enter the cyclops dimension.
seriously? seriously?!
the ******* sirens singing
chopped your 'ed off or
something?
******* tea-bag worth
of intellect... munchkin
Barabbas.
these days it ought to be
called mathias vs. polyphemus
rather than david vs. goliath...
and to think: the drunk me sees
more clearly than my sober
contemporaries...
that's ******* sad...
sad as sad can be:
without an urn worth of sand
to call crematory ash.
this world is not worth being
attached to, even with the remains of
Roo-m'é.
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 8:32 PM UTC
where once I had a choice to shine
long ago the desire
I find I now have this need
to rhyme
once upon the day
where memories
reside now
in close distance, a cemetary,
a crematory shall be awaiting
my body soon,
a part of life
I've seen flowers bloom
in glory then the next day be gone,
friends aqcuaintances
smile
then their faces done.
life is temporal,
and so speculating on the end,
I find peace somehow,
recommend it to you all!
Feb 7, 2017
Feb 7, 2017 at 3:02 PM UTC
l.
sacrum bone,
crematory pyramid--
shramming orange.
passion's seat jumped on--
the ground giving
way, the world
disrobed.
donned at the overlook...
a most humble service
gathers.
ll.
examining upside down
the base of a table--
while blindfolded with
a shroud.
whose two right legs
offer an incomplete
rocker.
radial urgency.
there shall be no succor,
the cup shall not
be passed.
lll.
the musculature of
survival, taking the
form of wilderness.
standing on, and in
place of an animal hide rug--
whose dead hair's rising
in response to a voiced
agony.
it is finished.
Jun 12, 2018
Jun 12, 2018 at 1:46 PM UTC
****** into the desert sky
from sage leaves
and pine needles
from lizards sunning
themselves on rocks
and raptors preying on them
from above
and from us
walking by the river
and all the people
on the sidewalks
and city streets
sweating and breathing
from the last exhalations
of dying grandparents
in hospital beds
and later
from the crematory chimney
it rises
once part of us, and
what is left of them
and mingles
enfolding dust
in its crystalline embrace
and falling softly white
over mountains shivering
in howling winter winds
they cannot hear
the laughter of children
resurrecting them as snowmen
with cold red fingers
later abandoning them
in the meadow
under the merciless sun
soaking muddy green fields
of springtime
they percolate through soil
into channels
small and large
and finally down the canyon
roaring grey green
and foaming white
over rapids
through eddies
swirling into a pool
cupped in a grey granite palm
ancient yet smooth
as newborn skin
where I dip my hands
shatter that harsh yellow eye
into a thousand fireflies
and splash cool water
on my face
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 12:08 AM UTC