Ashes Poems

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common
clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the
larger day.
...

Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the streets, among
Objects:
Nothing mattered or had a name:
...

HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?)
Outside fair costume--within ashes and filth,
No more a flashing eye--no more a sonorous voice or springy step;
...

Anna who was mad,
I have a knife in my armpit.
When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages.
Am I some sort of infection?
...

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.
...

HERE, O my heart, let us burn the dear dreams that are dead,
Here in this wood let us fashion a funeral pyre
Of fallen white petals and leaves that are mellow and red,
Here let us burn them in noon's flaming torches of fire.
...

We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory---like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
...

When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
...

I had my dinner and
Slept around 10 of night
After a couple hour or so
I found myself dead
...

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.
...

For standing by me all the way..........
For helping me through the awful day..............
For being always there for me...........
...

If down here I chance to die,
Solemnly I beg you take
All that is left of "I"
To the Hills for old sake's sake,
...

This, no song of an ingénue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
...

Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
...

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look for the sunset over the box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
...

'Tis said that when
The hands of men
Tamed this primeval wood,
And hoary trees with groans of woe,
...

Come and see the old poet
Laying in his bed of ashes and dust,
His love in ruins
His mentality frozen by restless rust,
...

Burning and melting,
Lightning but no thunder,
Tears dropping drown like icicles,
Freezing but not cool,
...

Through many countries and over many seas
I have come, Brother, to these melancholy rites,
to show this final honour to the dead,
and speak (to what purpose?) to your silent ashes,
since now fate takes you, even you, from me.
...

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
...

Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
here goes my goldfish, with one flush.
...

Thou knowest ashes!
Surely beaming and human beauty Crashes,
When none shall commend it virtue,
It gain dark spots and diminished value,
...

Sign me with ashes
Like the ash from the ovens of Treblinka or Dachau
Ash from the burning shelters of Dresden or Tokyo
Ash from a napalmed hamlet
...

We all go through fire.
We experience
burning in our lives.
We all have ashes,
...

A handful,
Handful of ashes
To be immersed in,
Swept into
...

A handful,
Handful of ashes
To be immersed in,
Swept into
...

Asthi-kalasha,
Whose asthi-kalasha is this,
Whose asthi-kalasha?
...

Though in ashes lies peril
Yet in ashes we are beloved
Unto ashes we belong
And to ashes shall we return
...