"kiln" poems
Don't You Dare Speak,
Your Words Trying To Make Blue Streaks,
On The Monalisa Of My Soul,
Black Graffiti Stains My Wishes,
And Teeth Bare At My Well Being,
Am I Daft?
Or Sane?
My Head Pounding With Lyrics,
About How Cruel Life Can Utterly Be,
Sharpie Crossing Out My Faith,
Paint Vandalizing My Mended Heart,
Rust Dressing The Hinges Of My Heartbeat Itself,
And Golden Irises Reset,
Back To Seaweed Green,
Resting On A Bloodshot Background,
Crayons Scribbling On The Coloring Book,
Of My Dreams,
Making It A Midnight Sky Mask,
Flecked With Miserable Maroon Tears,
Slang Covers My Intellect,
Making It Foggy And Usless,
You Can Thank Society,
For Sculpting My Strength,
From A Slab Of Clay,
Burning It In A Kiln,
To The Foundation Of Life,
I Am Art,
Sculpted From The Earth's Face,
Yet I Sit On A Shelf,
Collecting Dust,
And All Of The Arrogent People,
Doodle On My Shell,
Colors Make An Ugly Mix,
On My Bodies Skeleton,
And What Is Making Me Special,
Is Slowly Drowning,
Underneath A Sea Of Graffiti
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 4:05 PM UTC
Even if I’m alone now, from our yesterdays,
Today is born sparkling,
Like the day when we first met
But what good is a heart if it keeps on aching,
Spirit away in the stream of thoughts, the answer is unclear, always.
Even if I sink even deeper into the embrace of the sea,
I will remember the light of better days,
The whereabouts of the heart have faded,
The kiln has no flame to possess,
Cinder is what is left of this burnt away past.
Mother Purity has been staned by anger,
Sympathizing with fury is a lost cause,
A widdow without a child who cries for help,
But who will answer but the voices from within ?
At least the ghost of the night carried her to sleep,
At least she doesn't have to die in a dream.
The dream which shattered long ago
~ Umi
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 4:18 PM UTC
Ophelia, Ophelia,
voracious daydreamer,
how dare you
upset this delicate orbit.
your hands were the kiln
for my sloppy and misshapen mind,
but that was nothing,
relatively, compared to the way
your eyes reflected lost souls.
my dear, it's a catastrophe.
now when the moon chides me,
and the stars reek of your smile,
I run my hands across
the fronts of empty dresses
that you wore years ago.
Ophelia, Ophelia,
I recall the way your eyes shone
like the peak of madness
and how your shoulder blades
touched in a subtly avian manner.
how simple are the remnants
of your existence, of your melancholia,
I cling to them like a ***** to touch-
and I know they will bring you no closer.
stale shadows haunt my lingering eyes;
where you should be standing
I see only lost time.
Ophelia, Ophelia,
smoldering star in my hindsight,
stone in my chest-
I'm sad to see you go.
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 8:53 PM UTC
See the Rabbi. See him tormented by choice. See his people. See them wracked by hate. See the others. See their anger radiate outward in glowing spokes, exploding firebrand in a tinder city.
On a night like any other, the moon at sixth house, fulcrum of pinwheel zodiac, the Rabbi, awash in lidless starlight, rises somber and makes his choice. And when the sun is furthermost, he and three of his others gather at the murmuring riverbank where the brown clay is most pliable and begin to dig, sifting rock and root from trundled earth. Hours spent exhuming the clay, molding it, kneading its muscles, tracing its veins, baking its skin in the starlight. More hours spent in whispering prayer, the words bent and somersaulting over themselves like tumbling books.
See Truth drawn on its forehead, life etched from clay and word. As the sun rises, so it does, wavering at first, but steadier, lapping at the river, and their faces move slowly across the water. See the Rabbi speak to it, his words winding its mechanism. See it stride past the ghetto, wade through the market, and into the borough, siege unto its own.
See the others scream for mercy from the kiln of its stare, from their flaming tenements, their crumpling rooftops.
See it wade back through the market, past the ghetto, back to the riverbank to kneel in the underbrush. See it tilt its head to the lilt of a stranded daisy caught in a vagrant gust. See it caught, too, and see it see. It sees the colors of Eden in the ferns. It hears the river churning sediment, fossils, gravel, whirling over driftwood. It touches moss on a rock; gently rotates its hand to let a grub complete an oblivious circumference. See it sit in silence.
See the Rabbi meet with the others, then his others. And on a day like any other, when the sun is at its apogee, they slip down the riverbank where it still sits, still. It ignores their autonomous logic, their homunculus rationale. They are perversions of variety cloaked in righteous intention. So it remains.
See the Rabbi and his others gather at the murmuring riverbank, shadow conclave in shifting sunlight, then rise somber and decided. They pin it to the earth as the Rabbi chants, invoking the void in which forbidden knowledge spirals. It squirms under the power of the Word, mind-forged manacle as incantation. See the Rabbi draw to a close. His hand is arbiter, swooping down to smudge Truth from its forehead. What is left but Death.
See its hand crumble in its passage as it reaches for the stranded daisy. See the colors of Eden darken in its eyes, its own body the dust that denies it light. See it collapse into itself, the clay that was once animate spilling onto the riverbank. See the Rabbi and his others shimmer then fade into city grey.
The daisy stands still.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM UTC
Lightning striking through a nervous system,
Blood pumping facetious fire.
Whispers through my home, hauntings of trauma and dreams of the crucifix stand.
The flaming star of the avatar.
The predator and the prey, predetermined and praying.
Just another eternity until the monsoon departs, the season ended. From there the calm waves will carry me to shore.
The dark, restful, kiln, I am your dough, as I am your clay, a grateful panettone.
Mold me, endow me the drug, the decree, the great recipe of relinquishment.
I rejected asylum, I denounced Gehenna,
Cold blooded sunbathing in the radiant rays of the great bird's wings.
The boiling embrace of his soft feathered fire.
The brutal, unrelenting, chaotic, climactic, pull into the hot murky depths.
Scald me, lash me, revive me in death.
For I can wait no longer.
Living in fear of the Reaper is worse than The Harvest itself.
So come unto me my lord, my peace,
And engulf me in the ******** rest.
Sep 28, 2019
Sep 28, 2019 at 3:14 PM UTC
She walked out of the watercolor storm of a fresco
Like a cowl-bound form in a light drizzle of rain,
Her mosaic tiles of ancient lovers’ eyes, ceramic-borne,
Just as her hips held the curves of the urn, kiln-fired,
The coiled heat of Greece still stinging through her flesh.
For her, the treetops had been the summoners of storm,
In kind, she poured down the wet grove of her hair, electral,
Pantheress of humid breath and fanged flair of lightning,
Tamed once in the cloudy cage of Pentelic marble of the Parthenon.
But the world piled dust before her, baiting with its groveled roads,
For her black mullings, much-tasted rain, and heaven’s leaves to fall.
If only the Michelango-to-come had carved the clouds of her
For the light to remain, shining its centuries,
Then maybe the thunder would have been left undone.
Sep 5, 2019
Sep 5, 2019 at 2:17 PM UTC
It won't stop,
It can't stop, the fire that is rushing through it,
Burning it's content until nothing but ash might be left,
An inferno, a firestorm maybe a rain of embers fueling the misery,
When did it start, that conflagration which consumes my being,
When will it end, this purgatory inside my chest, producing misery,
Without realising it I already gave up all my remaining hope,
After all, there is not much left this fire can feast on in laughter,
Will I be hollow, will I fade to ash and blown away into a soft breze ?
In the end it does not matter, in the end I will not be able to remember, in the end there is nothing for me left to worry about,
My central has been turned into a kiln, fostering this flame,
It may sting, but I can move on, even if I sink to the bottom,
The light in me will finally be able to carry me out one day
All I need to do for that event to be triggered,
Is to hold on,
And hope.
~ Umi
[M i d w a y - H i m e]
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 8:30 PM UTC
In a golden glow,
while you slept,
I strung together
a few haiku
for you
and sang them
to a sad tune,
the only one I knew.
Your words are like clay
before the kiln,
I try to mold them
into thousands of different shapes,
and it's never right.
But I don't
like to complain
and I'd have to say,
I think I handle pain
pretty well,
wouldn't you agree?
Your explanations
need explanations now.
You speak to me
in worlds,
I only know the smallest words.
Your mouth races my heart,
I always give you a head start.
I will chase you all the way home.
Mar 26, 2012
Mar 26, 2012 at 9:45 PM UTC
captain kirk ate kittens. the azaleas
marched in the dark
and no moon wept snow.
it was that
dark.
all quiet rot, healing now...
we clay inside but dis-urn
we have no kiln. no kin.
we move
like a dreaming fetus
in the womb of all prisms.
like lightning on
a pin.
we have ever been
the king's
vassal.
star chattel in the manger .
happy mad
hatters.
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 9:50 AM UTC
We loved them because
they loved to create.
A tailor and a builder.
made art from nothing.
Left a legacy.
Constructed beauty
from seemingly nothing.
Oh boys,
Our tailors and our builders,
Without you, we’d be sleeping just fine.
He blew her mind
Made her consult
With her old dear friend
Jack
(Daniels)
At hours unmentionable to civilized people.
Who indeed made her feel better
but also made her feel
Worse in the end.
He could talk real pretty things around my head
And I was hooked like a fish
It’s been 4 years and I’m still not free.
I’ve never met anyone so broken
And yet so comfortable with his millions of pieces.
He taught me to take the lenses off
And embrace this life, this love, this way.
Everything that happened before
Is over.
Tomorrow is just what we’re calling 12 hours from now
And oh, won’t those 12 hours until then
Be ******* glorious.
He molded her
Into a volcano.
The kind you see in middle school art class
That the kiln hardens
and it becomes supposedly unbreakable
Until one day, you find it has been chipped all along
[You did that to her, you know.
Broke a piece off her without even knowing it.]
Now that we’re older
they suddenly saw us
When before we were just the backing cast.
Made things that belong in the deep
Accessible to us without fishing lines
Now that’s just a cruel game to play.
It’s funny that it was
a tailor and a builder
who gave us the courage
to not need
to be built or tailored
anymore.
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 3:03 PM UTC
Lived on one's back,
In the long hours of repose,
Life is a practical nightmare--
Hideous asleep or awake.
Shoulders and *****
Ache----!
Ache, and the mattress,
Run into boulders and hummocks,
Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes--
Tumbling, importunate, daft--
Ramble and roll, and the gas,
******* to its lowermost,
An inevitable atom of light,
Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper
Snores me to hate and despair.
All the old time
Surges malignant before me;
Old voices, old kisses, old songs
Blossom derisive about me;
While the new days
Pass me in endless procession:
A pageant of shadows
Silently, leeringly wending
On . . . and still on . . . still on!
Far in the stillness a cat
Languishes loudly. A cinder
Falls, and the shadows
Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me
Turns with a moan; and the snorer,
The drug like a rope at his throat,
Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse,
Noiseless and strange,
Her bull's eye half-lanterned in apron,
(Whispering me, 'Are ye no sleepin' yet?'),
Passes, list-slippered and peering,
Round . . . and is gone.
Sleep comes at last--
Sleep full of dreams and misgivings--
Broken with brutal and sordid
Voices and sounds that impose on me,
Ere I can wake to it,
The unnatural, intolerable day.
2.2k
my hands are on automatic, pressing down on clay for three hours
then pinching plastic through wire for another three …creating and creating.
Coiling around the hurt & hiding it in a mount of clay "the kiln will burn it” I say to myself
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 10:46 AM UTC
You’re your own idea
written in blood and electricity.
You’re Pulcinella. You’re judy.
You’re someone else’s description
of light
imagined alive.
You’re temporary.
You’re the dream in a Jivaro head.
There’s the ceiling of a skull
just above your clouds
and even further out
there's another.
You’re pock-marked, wood-wormed
with thoughts,
words,
that you’ve been taught
on you, like tattoos
and shared birthmarks.
You’re picture-framed
in my eye sockets
flipped and made
understandable
and only some of you
oozes
through
like the sun
below the surface of the sea.
You’re me
and i’m you
swirling in each other’s boundaries
like the Tao and oily water
and the point between the colours in rainbows.
You’re infinite to mayflies.
You’re an explosion’s leftovers.
You died last time I saw you
and reformed in the doorframe
when I came around again.
You’re the world’s re-used love letter
from ****** to organised organism
incubated in original sin
the kiln
making Russian dolls from living things.
You’re the seed of a ghost.
You only existed since this morning
and yesterday’s you woke up
and is now out haunting.
You’re both here, and there, and here
a string vibrating
a seismograph
a tree ring
Earth’s music
playing
and playing
and playing.
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC
There’s a cloak I keep around
A fine, invisible one
One cannot feel its texture,
Or play with it for fun.
I can’t hear its many sounds
And neither can I see
The object of my leisure
A worker’s company.
How do I know it exists?
Perhaps I fool my brain
It’s a phantom wisp of air
That somehow hides my pain
That helps calm when one persists
In hurting what’s inside
The worn bubble worse for wear
When all weak tears are dried.
When internal demons wake
The cloth begins to fray
When the heart is torn apart
The stitches do not stay
The joints start to tear and break
Grow weak with weeping thread,
The engine now cannot start
One that was always dead.
Through the holes they find the *****
Some fellows in my land
Working their way through the fold
Turning stone to mere sand.
Why do they not stop to think
‘What is this good fabric?
Looking so when once so bold
Despicable magic!’
Therein lies the bitter truth
The folly of our time
They cannot see the poor cloak
As it is in this rhyme!
Only the wearer can sleuth
Which holes made when, are where
Through dumbness, anger it soaks
Each cruel word, each harsh stare.
Pull it closer, guard within
The fragile soul and smile
Hide well, know with clarity
That it is worth your while
Each mistake you call a sin
Throw it outside the cloth
With faithful integrity
Forgiven, not forgot.
Then build inside nerves of steel
Strength of iron so great
In the kiln of your own brick
Control what you create
Take the helm, but do not seal
The course of actions done
Know the plan, but do not trick
Make hay under the sun.
Make points clear, do not mask
With some thoughts said aloud
Keep a hat large for your head
I mean- do not be proud.
Perform with love each tough task
In your own, unique way
Care and earn, and share your bread
With every passing day.
Mend the cloak as you move on
With the good gift of life
Show it off well when you can
Fighting undeserved strife.
You don’t know why you were born
You do not have to wait
The brave roar of a lion sang
From stories of your fate.
Sep 26, 2016
Sep 26, 2016 at 3:20 PM UTC
times like this, the plenary moon
tonight wearing many faces,
the white-washed truant at bay
white-hulled still, the brim of the sky
to a full, on such a bright night leaving a trace
of say, prongs of fire on the kiln
the skin the soft breeze molests with a chill
flung from pinecone – the blackened spires of the
very heart of flame and the mullioned wood that understands
what the heat of placeness mints underneath
our skin – what silence remains a translation when the smoldering
remains are bitten repeatedly, aureoled in the moment of vital meaning.
we hear its threat, retained in clock-whirs
like a primordial word or the fluting of light’s bendable
rondure harnessing a truth we let in.
I fail behind the walled-up lip of laughter
because the weight of passing
is heavy on my back – like a bough dragged
by rainwater, or sound elected to drown:
the smell of poinsettia assaults,
lifting its slaughter against Kiltepan and Ambuklao,
past mountains lulled to sleep: the moon sleuthing
like a well-oiled machine. what do you hear?
we are aware of its full absence,
like that of our undulation after a fall,
or the wild sibilance of breath trying to utter something,
going back home with a song in between teeth,
without words.
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 6:56 AM UTC
Two clay vases sit by my fireplace
recently discovered in their post move-in places
and relocated there.
One is small,
easily fitting into the palm,
and is covered with smokey brown lines
left by hair, lost during chemo,
placed on the vase while still hot from the kiln.
The other, large
filled with artificial roses
where once real ones burst from it's rim
and watched as people sat in wooden rows
remembering.
Both remind me of a lost one
someone who is no longer around
and yet, through fired pottery
is.
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 8:20 PM UTC
I found you
lone brick, of a million, one part of a mortared whole
your brothers now buried by time, without benediction
progeny of clay, shale, you were born in a kiln as hot as all creation
dragged to this plain by spoked wheel and mule--sweat of the honest illiterate
long before the dusters blew the crops to hell, and Tom Joad's kin to the promised land
the mason who laid you in a proud straight row is now in the ground too
not a mile from you, where the county put him the hot Friday a man set foot on the moon
the bricklayer’s days with the trowel long past, his memories of you, your place in all weathers interred with him
I found you , and you are the man’s legacy, he yours
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 4:09 PM UTC
I am forged in a ceramic kiln,
and the sweltering heat embrittles me.
their withering stares set the kiln ablaze,
expecting me to stay rigid and brittle.
I attempted to constrict and be good,
but the fire slowly cracked me.
the heat still scorches my pieces,
but each piece inches closer
to the outskirts of the kiln
so I can find the sticky glue
and put myself back together.
Apr 20, 2022
Apr 20, 2022 at 11:59 PM UTC
Trick tricky on a radiant platform
Jezebel, arms full of gnashing curs
She loves everybody, that girl
She always meant well
The most dangerous thing in the world
Riding the dragon straight into the apocalypse
Nine heads slavering, always hungry
Swollen with decades of wasted debauchery
Brimstone falling from the rafters, pillars of melting wax, melting faces
Tongue to the iron, proving my lie
A deception of self, it’s a ******* masterpiece
The garden lush that falls to rot,
Lunatic blight, land that salts itself
Spending what was spent until it is finally dry like wither.
I,
I run hot and cold, a cheap parlor trick gone bad
Changing phase to phase and back again, losing a little more each time
Tiamat to fire the kiln, I wait
Too polluted by far to continue this way any longer
Wrapping myself up small for you, so helpless and inevitable
Hell-bent on teaching you how to better abuse me
Help me to recreate myself, oh yes please
I am, you will find
More pliable even, in the heat of your hands
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 1:10 AM UTC
No kiln yet fired
could ever bake
a ceramic as elegant,
as (yes) beautiful,
as (I can only guess) pleasant to hold
as yourself.
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 12:05 PM UTC
a letter came from Ukraine
tailing the newspapers' grey accounts
faster than the cloud of fallout
there were three smudges
from a child's digits, between the stamp
and my address
prints of proof you were there,
eating the Hershey’s I sent, though
your mother scrawled my name
and safe, numbered place I live,
a planet away
the letter yet sits
on my desk, quiet, perhaps
waiting to be opened
I planned to surprise you
in your sluggish summer, with a visit,
and American Girl dolls
but April lasted forever
for you, who happened to be walking
close to the melting kiln, looking
for spring’s first buds
on a Saturday morn
Oct 16, 2015
Oct 16, 2015 at 9:02 PM UTC
You, the sculptor,
shaped our lives, molded
us, your offsprings, into the model
of your desired likeness.
You created masterpieces
with the elder and younger;
they so like the perfect David,
but you are no Michelangelo,
and i, the nucleus of this family,
am not a piece of clay.
i defy your wheel, knife,
the kiln that fires your bloodline.
i take to the kiln my own David,
misshappen like a Picasso,
surreal to you.
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 29, 2011 at 6:43 PM UTC
A new pilgrimage takes place
A new solid rock
I'm not very prolific
But my friend's a clock
I tried to let you down
I was magnificent
Nothing tastes like satin or silk cause
All I have is lace
Now my apples are sour
And I'm missing a flower
But at least I've got the stem
It's fire in the kiln
Liquor store of alcohol
Lead me to die on the wall
Another unimportant speck of carbon
All he is
Is sobbin'
Let the fruit of the garden
Polish your life
Won't you just trust the warning
Please, please pardon
If I'm a little boring
My friend Dave
And My brother Davey
Both went to Navy
Both died trying to save me
If you think you know me then
Listen to the birds
They will tell you everything
That I can't with words
Dec 17, 2014
Dec 17, 2014 at 3:14 PM UTC
1. Reverse psychology.
You are a word weaver, use this power to bind people to what they say.
Tighten the ropes every so often so that they know there is no escape.
2. Knead and mould your patients like playdoh, mixing the colours together to create a condensed grey mass of matter.
3. Make your patients believe that they are crazy.
The more issues they have, the more you get paid.
4. Shove biased thoughts and opinions into their ears as if PUTTING IN EAR PLUGS MAKES THEM HEAR BETTER.
5. Smile and nod when they pour themselves out to you like you actually give a ****
6. Scold them for not telling you their deepest thoughts.
Then, make them your personal mine and take as much gold as you desire.
7. Prescribe pills. All of them.
Your patients will become more beautiful with necklaces made of these colourful beads.
8. Most importantly, make sure none of your patients know each other.
The world need not know that the milk man has schizophrenia and the librarian is bipolar, because everything looks more beautiful when it's glazed and then fired in a kiln.
Apr 11, 2014
Apr 11, 2014 at 5:21 PM UTC
The song on the radio when you took
Your last suitcase out of my life
Was not poetically fitting
But still hurts all the same
You didn't give one last look back
But that doesn't mean I forgot your eyes
The last conversation didn't end well
But I remember your smile
You didn't leave on Valentine's Day
Your birthday, my birthday,
Or our anniversary
But that doesn't mean I won't cry next year
We never said forever
But I didn't mean so soon
I didn't change the locks
When I gave you space
I still draw your scars in my sleep
And wipe your tears from your cheeks during day dreams
But don't come back
I couldn't handle that
Don't text me at three in the morning
With whatever he won't do for you
I don't care how much tequila you've had
My heart is off limits
Your self esteem
Is no longer my responsibility
Civility not obligatory
I don't have quarters for your meter
And I am not happy for you
So don't come back
I couldn't handle disappointing you twice
We never had a song to dance to
Never lit a candle during ***
You weren't a long walks kind of girl
I'm not a mosh pit kind of guy
Poetry did not float your boat
And sailing is most definitely not the motion in my ocean
But none of that made sense until just now
We were a twister through a trailer park
A fire in the City of Bridges
Bullets in a slaughter house
Made lovers jealous
And parents regret
Built our foundation on sand
And said **** you to the ocean
Surfed tsunamis
And skied avalanches
And none of that seemed dangerous
Until just now
We complimented each other with insults
Threw stones in glass houses
Sang praises off key
Called it love
Smiled through an earthquake
Called it an ******
Talked through the silence
And called it fate
Which made sense until just now
When I said 'us' out loud
Held 'we' in my hands
And made what we were out of clay
Fired it in the kiln and had nothing come out
Which all makes sense, now
Jan 19, 2010
Jan 19, 2010 at 9:25 PM UTC