Slap the clay so hard your hand leaves
imprints and your palm is stinging,
Bake in a kiln, a fiery crucible, until you forget what winter is,
Until your lips are cracked like city concrete and your throat is so dry it’s sandy,
Glaze yourself untouchable, be the dazzling pinnacle upon your haughty zenith,
Then smash your vessel upon the ground,
Embrace the sudden pull of gravity and
meet with open arms
Your raw and formless destruction,
Fill the world with that deafening silence, the painful stillness,
As you’re scattered in pieces across
the earth,
And then, my dear, pick up each fragment with naked fingers,
Never mind the cuts on your ungloved hands,
Baptize with blood your shattered vessel before overcoming each inch of space,
To reassemble your self-destructed remnants
So that now pure gold will course through your veins,
Beauty is not beautiful, nor does
“successful” ring with success,
So construct your eternal temple upon
your own cadaveric waste,
Re-break each bone to set it straight and bulldoze a path through all in your way,
Stand alone, my savage beauty, upon
your lonely pedestal,
Below you and all around, you may
shudder at what you see,
But strain your neck toward the sky,
where you’ll have earned the right to be,
The path will not be pretty, love, but
follow it with utmost care,
For then, and only then, little one, will
you shine gold eternally.