"furnace" poems
~*for M. both
a living one, and
imagined, too*~
10/5/25
just woke up and began to work;
the muses are cofuse-ed
they think when head hits pillow.
it is there then the~moment to
refill my head
with verses glorious, alas, alack,
into the sub-subconscious furnace they go
to melt, meld or even die
iron of ironies; 90% of these words,
were adrift in my head when I
to bed, "for to be repaired" last night, and
only came to be recalled @ 2:34 am
when them muses and you guru,
woke me to 'get outta bed', and you
who
bids me sleep,
this clashing arousal,
starts engine's cylinders to begin
live~composing, stoking and stroking,
to awake, create, reassemble and uncover
the poetic notions trans~versing my head
one-day, someday they will depart,
for cleaner, greener Champs-Élysées,
where reborn poets speak all languages
with equal fluency, eagerly awaiting
my spouting in Hindi (already ✅), in
Hebrew and any/all dialecticals this
god earth
ever mothered
And there you have it, my FPOTD, dear m.,
SUNday 10/5 & writ in the city where I am alive
in the Den of Writing, where the muses
like to hang out with their old companion,
until such time they will come to inhabit
a younger, well rested, equally restless,
a not-my-mine mind
<nml>
Oct 5, 2025
Oct 5, 2025 at 3:08 AM UTC
As night falls, the air thickens
her pulse races and his pulse quickens
the depths of their thoughts rise to the surface
her body language speaking tongues
their eyes contact and the translation is done
his soul listens
heart beating fast
flesh burning like a furnace
flame lasting longer than they last
lust coursing through her body's viens
like lava melting a porous surface
her window panes with purpose
as their bodies join like cursive
bulging with awareness
his presence is her nearness
their bareness
flipping her world
altering her state of mind
impulse triggerin pulse
a his embrace
tightens
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 4:10 PM UTC
*He sat by a furnace of seven-fold heat,
As He watched by the precious ore.
And closer He bent with a searching gaze,
As He heated it more and more.
He knew He had ore that could stand the test
And He wanted the finest gold,
To mold as a crown, for the king to wear,
Set with gems of price untold.
So He laid our gold in the burning fire,
Tho’ we fain would say Him "nay."
And watched the dross that we had not seen
As it melted and passed away.
And the gold grew brighter and yet more bright,
But our eyes were dim with tears,
We saw but the fire, not the Master’s hand,
And questioned with anxious fears.
Yet our gold shone out with a richer glow
As it mirrored a form above,
That bent o’er the fire, though unseen by us
With a look of ineffable love.
Can we think it pleases His loving heart
To cause us a moment's pain?
Ah, no! But He sees through the present cross
The bliss of eternal gain.
So He waited there with a watchful eye,
With a love that is strong and sure.
And His gold did not suffer a bit more heat
Than was needed to make it pure.
~ A.F. Ingler*
Jul 21, 2016
Jul 21, 2016 at 8:29 AM UTC
lady craighead played the blues
on a stand-up samick
in the ***** room
along side the parsons project
and squabbling dogs
and night moves
stairs creek
up the mezzanine trek
wool sheets slide
on finished floors
little angels
play late into the seventh
(a closing match nearing
the midnight hour)
croaking toads and cicada
sing in the blue moon
musty smells and mothballs
settle deep in the vault
the kettle boils
and cat coils
as the pump house rolls
its heavy drawl
the red phone rings
and bird clock sings
(behind the ruddy stall)
a sleeman variation of the ruy lopez
employed heartily
by the incomparable master jack
marble toast burning
wringer wash churning
chris craft running
near the old carp canoe
rooster calls
and west wind squalls
rustle through the porch screen door
chicken *** pies
and rogue flies linger
a rocker chair placed
near the sepia face
(softened by the intricate frame)
donkey in tow
(with a fastened ***
maggie in her dreams
of green tambourines
the nocturnes
reflections
and whispering gospel bells
tractors pull on
the grinder stone
horses lay still
in the mid-day sun
a trump card is fingered
at the furnace click
(crosswords and puzzles are next!)
while the sparrow
*and that **** rabid fox*
are drowning
deep in castles well
Mar 14, 2017
Mar 14, 2017 at 10:20 PM UTC
Many believe they know the law
Because they were arrested;
Others know how to teach
Because they too were tested.
If you have a religious question,
They attended church;
Mention you've an ache or pain,
They diagnose your hurt.
Should you bring up politics,
Republican or worse,
They'll explain Democracy
Cause they've been free since birth.
Admit your car is pinging,
Your faucets aren't behaving,
The oven isn't cooking right,
Your fridge is warm and shaking,
The air conditioner's out of whack,
Your furnace has turned blue,
They'll tell you what to do:
Change the thermo-coupler.
It's always their one answer.
Say you like this stock or bond,
An investment that's appealing,
They'll discourse that all agents
Are cunning conniving stealing.
On Monday mention the big game,
They'll re-play, play by play,
As if you slept right through it.
If you hear a rousing band,
Attend a movie or a play,
Know-its are informed critics,
Once they were stagehands.
They pose as friends and family,
Waiting for an opening,
To disrupt with diatribe,
To display how much they know.
I know what I'm on about,
So let me advise you,
I'm a Know-It-All poet,
All I write is true.
So,
*Never miss the opportunity
To keep your mouth shut too*.
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 10:54 AM UTC
the ***** ghost
comes to those who have suffered long
the agony of torrid loves hunger
he is a savior that needs to be saved
a glittering pageant of ****** despair
his color sapphire
a weeping shell
a dark cloud of smoldering ash
that never burns out
he is heat and light
he can smell the musk between your legs
taste tears of want
as if they are his own
his ****
bursting like trees
bludgeon hard, substanceless
no you can't put your finger on it
your heart
a weeping furnace
your parched mouth dire
is his
the emptiness between your legs
is his
he comes to you a vacant smudge
then,
white attendant with black eyed gems
be not afraid
he was lost in life
a moralist
who could not find Jacobs ladder
nor free him self of false boundaries
set upon him by the good people
their minds spider bites and corpses
who imagined a god
who loved them by decrees
of thou shalt not not not
and did not know
that flesh needs flesh
and only human love could save him
then to the grave,
just a ***** ghost theory
to the living
Dec 6, 2016
Dec 6, 2016 at 10:01 AM UTC
Here are two pupils
whose moons of black
transform to cripples
all who look:
each lovely lady
who peers inside
take on the body
of a toad.
Within these mirrors
the world inverts:
the fond admirer's
burning darts
turn back to injure
the thrusting hand
and inflame to danger
the scarlet wound.
I sought my image
in the scorching glass,
for what fire could damage
a witch's face?
So I stared in that furnace
where beauties char
but found radiant Venus
reflected there.
15k
Doom train hurtling along
Through the fog in my mind
Towing freight, rectangular and oblong
Dim headlights, you're travelling blind
Five carriages long, excluding engine and caboose
Metal against metal, spitting sparks on steel
Undetermined path, rails will choose
Chugging along on dirt covered wheels
In the cabin, I see the light
Emanating from your furnace
Swallowing up coals in your gaping bite
Tongues of flames licking the surface
Fire breathing, spewing thick black smoke
Almost unseen, against the dark of night
A long plumy arm as if extending to choke
And plug the remaining sources of light
Meandering precariously on tracks that weave
Over uncharted, unfathomable terrain
Your store, so reliably you heave
Worming your way through my brain
What's in that cargo of yours?
What lies within those boxcars?
What drives you to diligently run your course?
What fuels you to travel near and far?
Loads of self pity, self loathing and self reproach
Snaking your way to an unknown destination
Screeching brakes as if a stop you approach
Herald the train of dubious intentions
Light is upon you, dark will dissipate
Your plumes starting to lessen from your stack
The dawn breaking horizon you didn't anticipate
To see another charging towards you on this very same track...
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 4:16 AM UTC
Flowers in the window
Seek sunlight, but the glass
Lets little through and the wind blows
Mighty out of their reach.
The furnace burns without
I'm hearing spring again,
But flowers in the window
Stay dying every season.
Winter
Summer
And the others
Make no difference
To a flower in the window.
To a petal left to wilt.
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 10:57 AM UTC
Heat beats down upon the street
Birds too hot to fly,
Blistered sand you cannot stand
Drenched with sweat am I.
Cows collect in shadow deep
Panting sheep hang head,
Goshawk flies in cobalt skies
Hills of grass stand dead.
Whisp of smoke, a puff of breeze
Sirens scream in air,
Running men in squads of ten
Emerge from everywhere.
Now the rising wind takes charge
Runs with leaping flame
Into crown of eucalypts
To rage across the plain.
Too late the tenders hoses pour,
Too late the fireman’s shout
Inferno hot has run amok
And all control a rout.
Generating mighty winds
The fire charges forth
Spiralling in furnace air
To incinerate for sport.
Vanquished men exhausted stand
Watch with useless eyes,
As raging flames consume their truck,
Inside a good mate dies.
A live thing in the burnished night
It writhes and spirals high
Across the flaring treetops
Hot, red smoke fills the sky.
As sudden as it starts, it stops
A wind change in the air.
Ravaged forest stark and black
Hot ashes everywhere.
Hills of cinders smoking now
Stock in death’s repair,
Homesteads rendered charcoal like
Farmers in despair.
A silence in the ravaged hills
Birdless in the sky,
Bushfire horror, death and smoke
Enough to make you cry.
Marshalg
In support of my Australian brethren and their torched nation.
30 January 2013
Jan 29, 2013
Jan 29, 2013 at 8:16 PM UTC
Where we shoveled coal into the furnace was an inconsiderable door. Behind it held ***** chubby cherubs with cherry tomato noses, whose job it was to keep the fires of our parent's liquor cabinets full. This they did to keep them from constantly beating us, but the happy distraction did not always work. So, we would pluckily go. Go to the scuzzy pond at dusk with kerosine lanterns and listen for croaks. We tied forks to the ends of canes or stakes and would gig bullfrogs for dinner. It became only momentarily mortifying, but was always a choice way of ridding our sisters and other clingy girls of our company. We'd fry the legs in cornstarch and pepper flakes and be allowed to share with the adults their beer if it was a good catch. Usually, it was. Most of forever we waited for teaberry season, always the best time of the year. Though it was hotter than Beelzebub's bath water we'd go swimming in that **** pond to reach our favorite teaberry patches. This ensured our riches and fame throughout our Appalachian village. Everyone would eat teaberry ice cream and sing our names and no one beat us on those days.
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 3:08 PM UTC
The deepest understanding between lovers
stands majestically above the deepest abyss
as if, unbreakable and pure in its unreachable,
unbreakable bond.
Whatever melts this emotion together
was forged in a hotter furnace than ever found
that only two people can understand.
Rising above the highest tide
soaring above tornadoes and typhoons
and cruising along points of paradise
available only to the two of them.
How serene it feels to know
that your own reflection mirrors
in the other person and their every nuance
is written into your own poems
adding the rhyme and rhythm
for your own journey together.
Author Notes
Feel like this at times?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 4:26 PM UTC
Ye who enter here, beware
Of wolves and mine shaft pits, take care
Or ye shall taste the bitter death
That comes upon the creeper's breath
Thy survival, on the good
Of other players rests
Upon thy house a naming sign
Each person must *****
And when night falls, take care that ye
Who stalk the halls at dark
Set up a light for ev'ry turn
A stick lit with a spark
A bone to catch a wolfie with
Some cookies fresh to eat
And in a furnace, toasty warm,
We have to roast our meat
To mine the caves and tunnels deep
To delve into the mountains
And when the water gushes forth
We then create the fountains
Sell your wares, o Cobbler man
I've melons many to spare;
An axe, a sword, a shovel stone
Oh? You like my hair?
Here we go, see yon moon rise
The world in the starry twilight
I have not seen the whole world yet
Would you take me there by starlight?
Unspoken fear; the creeper hiss
Blew up my trusty door
And now all manner of verminous things
Have crawled across the floor
If only I had a wolf to my name
Three bones to win his love;
Then he could save me from--I shudder--
The Enderman above.
No armor have I, nor sword of iron
Stone and wood are mine
The wooden stairs that lead up high
Tell me, who had all this time?
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 5:47 PM UTC
If you could feel
Certain thing I've done
The rush in my desires...
I assure you most
Would cut and run
From the lake
That burns like fire
Dancing to a primal beat
Where life is trampled
Under feet
To feed the furnace
Of evermore
No time for love
Or even war
If you could see
Through shell shocked eyes
You'd know just why
I live a lie
...
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 9:56 PM UTC
In the absence of everything,
I felt a sheer yet painful bliss.
I longed for stimulation.
A soft breeze from a drafty window,
the whizzing of a broken furnace,
the shriek of the floor as it was pranced upon.
But all of these things would not be enough.
I am lonely because the hour is lonely.
But maybe we're not so lonely, because we're both here together.
The hour and I are not alone
because we both are lonely.
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 3:29 AM UTC
The eternal tango of the maestro manifests itself in nigh infinite ways.
With the flick of the artist's brush, the stroke of the novelist’s pen or the chicken scratch of the scholar’s nib, legacies are etched, history is written and the world is shaped.
The astronomer, the craftsman and the physician all have one thing in common: Mastery.
Such pinnacles of skill have decades of their lives consumed, nay devoured in the pursuit of perfection, of greatness. Like grains of sand slowly falling into a furnace are the seconds of our lives, trickling, melting into puddles. But as sand melts, it forms shapes; therein lies the potential. Moldable puddles, colourless, devoid of naught but a clear medium.
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 12:43 AM UTC
Skin blushed peach on snow white cheeks
Luster and grandeur not seen by the meek
Intrinsically dominant furnace of femininity
Dither and hither be stricken for insincerity
If you try to speak to her expect less then levity
To your advances she implies depravity
Blatantly ignorant vacuous blond *****
Tell me again how I hate you and want ***
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 10:05 AM UTC
Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile His work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
7.6k
Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?
It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The **** of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!
Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off
In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm ***** and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.
It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.
The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.
The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,
Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.
The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'
Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!
7.8k
Your advice
Is my vice
And you continue to add vices
And you swim like mad pisces
Through my stream of thoughts
With all the lessons you taught
From all the advice you brought
So I avoid your glance
To not give you the chance
To see the results of our fishdance
Or how much my life has been enhanced
Until I begin to flounder
As those pisces become piranha
Feeding on other considerations
And growing colossal
Until your kraken is in my mind
Cracking up my mind
Stacking up the time
It takes to get out of bed
As I trust the tentacles that tie me down
To a life floating on the surface
Of an ocean
Where the fish burn like a furnace
And I watch the water evaporate
Like the advice on which you elaborate
As the advice that was once there
Is currently water vapor in the air
As I start to think of us as a pair
From inside my secret underwater lair
That is the cavern of my mind
Where a school of fish
Teach me how to live and die
Aug 4, 2017
Aug 4, 2017 at 7:49 AM UTC
A fueling, flashing fulgent, furnace, fulgurous, frothy, fumes and feathery flakes,
I do not speak of waves of snow, hoary frost, or ice, a cold gelare or even frozen lakes!
Formidable, furrows, fructifying, functioning fruition to foremost fondly found a flaming,
I revel not in such destruction but choices for my naming!
For flowers flow fields forever, forswearing funneling fjords finitely, fire fray’s forests furthermost,
Instructing in the arts of language, for I am your gracious host!
Fakir formulates factious forms fading flummoxed into fury, a fugacious fusible and furtive fleeting feigning furiosity,
A deep ditch dug, tight as pug, wrapped blanket snub though not a flub, all perspicacity!
Finds frosty frore a frozen freezing faction for fusty flaming feasance,
Fomorian fantasy of formidable faggoting, facient up to fancying, fancying, furnaced flesh fluidity finds itself factitivity, facets for fabulists from the faint familiarity,
Relating cold to heat as such, requires but a human touch, apologize I do you see for all my clueless severity!
Fans of all the falconry, who fallow fields of family, falter for a fallacy, falling into infamy as forgone flame frontogenesis, fatigues a Faustian felony, for which fate finds is fastigiated foolery, febrile features featly and yet furiously, favonian fear of fellowship fiendishly, figures foal to fatherly, finally fiddle flinchingly, although not so too furtively;
I finagle in my filigree!
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 1:13 PM UTC
~explaining light to the blind~
~for Suzy~
the insanity of even attempting
who among us, the sighted,
has the capability to clarify
an animate inanimate,
an untouchable invisible,
that can be folded, bent,
travel universes unseen
at its own chosen speed,
even to another sighted
and to the blind...
imagine then light
as something that
be recognized from the inside only with
in- sight
~***think of the continuum from
warmth to steel furnaced heat,
that is an element of what is light,
the sun cheek kissing, the furnace of chests
when you grasp another’s body first time
think of light as water,
the faucet spigot a measured pouring,
that can overshoot, the stream behind the house,
a toe tickling masseuse caress,
a dam’s waterfall endless crashing,
a sea, wave licking sudden raging dangerous
blend these sensations that belong to all,
and you’ll know light better than most,
indeed, light is for those who cannot vision
except from the inside with a sight that can be
touched, felt, imagined, and which the sightless
command better than us ordinary thoughtless
indeed light is as simple to understand as
abc,
which you have never seen, but creates the words
that we all
use
even share***~
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 6:34 AM UTC
Breakfast
The morning spins lazily
out of the Universe’s black eye
like a surveillance camera
************ my paranoia.
I eat a small breakfast
of toads and do my coughing
exercises.
In the cellar the flesh
incinerator purrs for dinner
and is only satisfied with
one species of rare mammal.
My exotic summer guests,
strewn on the floor
like pickup sticks,
are becoming a burden,
so I toss one in the furnace
and hazily return to bed.
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 9:03 PM UTC
She is the Devil
Standing in the Doorway
Constantly reminding me
of the Debt I've yet to pay
She looks like Heaven
Divine and Catastrophic
Hellcat and Rogue Apostate
Tells me,
"There's Hell to Pay."
Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
I'm in deep too and there's Hell to Pay
She is Satan in a Red Dress
and Six-Inch Stilletto Heels
Crimson-Colored Lipstick
With matching Sharpened Nails
Her Clawmarks in my Skin
Remind me every day
That my soul belongs to Her,
and there's still Hell to Pay
Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
I'm in too deep and there's Hell to Pay
She is the One Unholy
She is the Queen of Time
Her Love Burns on Eternal in the Furnace
of my Mind
My Spirit is her Claim
From now until the End of Daze
Ours are the Hearts of Evil
And still there's Hell to Pay
Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
Running outta days until there's Hell to Pay
Leviathan Cross
Forever in Her Flesh
Her Eyes, Ablaze with Hellfire
Gaze into the Abyss
No Matter how Savagely
I Ravage Her and Damage Her
She always Returns
for yet another Massacre.
Gotta find a way
Gotta get away
Running outta days until there's Hell to Pay
Oct 23, 2014
Oct 23, 2014 at 3:10 PM UTC
- by Ashley Capps
Ophelia, when she died,
lay in the water like the river’s bride, all pale
and stark and beautiful against the somber rocks,
her hair an endless golden ceremony.
She made the water sing for her; it flowed
over her folded arms.
Not so my father’s sister Karen,
swollen in a day-old tub of water
when they found her,
needle tucked into the fold of her arm,
her last thing: a wing.
So everything went as nameless as the men
who lifted her naked from the tub,
or those who rolled her
into the mouth of the furnace,
which is what you get
when you don’t get a service,
when your mother’s years of grief turn
last to rage: I won’t pay for it.
Leave me out of it.
And even though they finally said
it wasn’t suicide; a mistake—
no one knew what to do
with all of that anger,
or in the end how not to blame her.
Even now, in her unmarked container.
*
People once believed a deeper reason, some dark secret
motivation to the way the lemmings threw themselves
en masse into the sea. Were they weary
of their lives; could they, too, despair?
Or like those second-vessel swine
when Jesus exorcised two babbling men of their demons,
driving the demons through a pack of bewildered hogs—
the way they plunged?
The truth we know now: they leave when food is scarce,
when they’ve grown too many;
believe the roads they follow
lead to new meadows, a place to start over.
I think of Karen, feeding
and feeding her veins, how it is possible
she saw us all suddenly there—miraculous
and festive on some bright and other shore,
like the life she had been swimming toward
all along, trying to get right.
Like those sailors long ago,
that tropical disease, calenture—
when, far from everything they knew,
men grew sometimes delirious
and mistook the waving sea for green fields.
Rejoicing, they leapt overboard,
and so were lost forever,
even though they thought it was real, though
they thought they were going home.
—by Ashley Capps
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 11:49 PM UTC