Razor on the bathroom sink and the smell of pine and aftershave
Calloused hands
Dirt fingernails
You packed and formed the soil like clay
Like paint
You were an artist, silent in the morning
Coffee before work
One beer after
One beer after and a warm dinner she made
Pine and aftershave
on the stairs
on the carpet
on the carpet on the stairs
Lean in
Lean in, kids
Lean in and I’ll tell you about them
You said,
You are an artist,
Silent and coffee in the morning
Loud and beer on the stairs,
on the carpet in the afternoon
Leather seat
Newspaper dogear
Brewers turned on
In the leather seat,
‘Turn it up,
They’re winning!’
They’re winning
They’re winning
Screen porch
Wooden door
Screen porch through the wooden door
Sitting
Bumblebee Boompa
Bumblee Boomps
In the garden
On the sink
In the kitchen
On the stairs
In the living room
On the porch
You are an artist
Silent in the morning
Loud
Loud
Loud in the afternoon
and winning

Hey you
My heart is not clay
And still isn't, whatever you say
You can leave or stay
My heart won't care, not even on the onehundredandone day

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

I'm malleable
I have years of experience
In moulding myself
To suit their needs and wants
Except mine
Cause i like everyone's smile
Except mine
I have boundless endurance
You dont need to test me for that
Just tell me who you want me to be
And i'm doubtlessly sure
That i wouldn't require
Any scrap of assistance
To pulverise myself
And then remodel my being
According to your precise specifications
Till you're completely happy
Take my guarantee

You don't know me
The places I wanna see
The things I want to know
What I want to be told
No, you don't know me

You can't hold me
Or tell me everything's alright
When I know you hold her
Like you used to hold me

You tell her she's made of gold
You know her favorite food, her favorite dress
And all the other things
That you don't know about me

I know you've memorized
Her face, Her voice
Yet when you turn around
Can you even remember my name?

I guess it's too much to ask
For redamancy these days
As loyalty has gone out the window
A word of the past

But you used to tell me
That I was made of gold
And that in your arms
I was only yours to hold
But your hands have roamed
So far away from me

And it's not fair
To make me watch
As you do with her
All you did with me

We used to talk about the future
But in a single heartbeat
You have changed our destiny

All those words of yours
Come back and haunt me
Everytime you called me beautiful,
Was it just practice for telling her?

Well you were right about one thing
I am made of gold
And that girl of yours
No matter how much you try
To mold her into me
She will only ever be pyrite
Just a cheap imitation
Of the treasure you will never hold

Dreaming and drafting.
Sketching and scribbling.
Wedging and working with clay.
Throwing and thinning.
Molding and making.
Drying and drizzling for play.
Firing and filming.
Showing and sharing.

My chest is a clay ***,
The kind with the round body and small mouth that your abuela hangs on the porch
And some obscure thing grows from it,
Brown in the winter,
Green in the spring…
My chest is a clay ***.
It holds in everything it needs to,
And it seems perfectly sturdy,
But when the insides get to be too much,
Or the weather gets to be too bad,
It shatters.

My chest is a clay ***,
And inside it is a growing thing.
I don’t know when it’ll become too much to contain,
Or when I’ll have to reach inside and take some out
In order to survive,
But I pray each day that its chalky exterior doesn’t become brittle
And crack.

My chest is a clay ***.

A thousand dreams woven
beneath the feet of hard working
                                         reflections.
But nothing ventured forth,
       like a corpse of bricked virtues
the land didn't give birth to life.

Only bricks of contemplation were
        built, and they were vacant
of any substance. For what is built
     had nothing to fill it only ideals.

For earth that shelter one,
       will endeavour to show no yield.
And only vacant ideals stand where
                   crops have faulted on brick..