A City Ceramic

I feel my feelings fade and rust
Along with all I find:
Smoke and ash and swirling dust
From a different shore than mine...

Through a city ceramic
And a castle of clay;
From a malady manic
To a derelict day;
I've painted my panic,
I've poured out my pain;
It's garish and granite,
Repainted with rain.

Caked with mud from head to toe,
A wheel that spins and never slows,
I only wish you'd only know,
This feeling grips and won't let go...

On top of a tower that time has torn,
I watch the water whip.
Every oath I've ever sworn
Just swelters, sways, and slips.

My fingers itch and ache to hold
Another hand, and not my own.
So why this feeling, fleeting flow?
Always errant, and all alone...

Patterns parading,
Answers evading;
Guilt is a guillotine.
Interweave and intervene,
I'll sort things out until they seem
A little more like what I need.

Keep me cornered
In your kiln, to bake until I'm better.
When all's in order,
Fixed and filled, I'll write myself a letter.

Scrawl your name in gilded sand,
Wrap your world in welded bands
Of threadbare bows and ribbon rags,
Crafting castles until they sag,
And wash away at dusk.
I feel my feelings fade and rust,
Diluted into dust;
As soon as I think I've had enough,
Someone takes my hand.

Touches bring tremors,
Involuntary shivers...

Would you cling to my clutter
If you felt how I flutter?
I wave in the winds, forever unfixed,
Unable to finish anything I begin.
They say we're all a potter's pride,
But if anyone made me, I don't know why.

The sun will set, head somewhere west,
Leaving again like all the rest.
And yet...and yet...
The stars and the sun, they always reset.

Everything ends in the end.

But not for a while, and no one knows when.

This feeling grips and won't let go,
Something slips like melted snow,
I wish I knew just how I know,
But I'm made to wave, to ripple and flow.

Through a city ceramic,
I found a new way.