Poetry of Pottery

I used to think
poetry was just pretty words,
strung together like beads on a string.
Likewise, I thought life,
would be the most beautiful
if it were composed of only
the prettiest, cleanest, most perfect things.
I thought my lot,
all I could hope for,
was a little perfect suburban life.
Until the paint began to peel
and I saw what it really was.
Nothing short of horrid
and full of contempt.
I turned halfway around
and drowned myself in feeling
thinking that surely poetry must be
all grit and real raw emotion.
It must be dark as the future I saw
for everyone around me.
I thought for life to be beautiful
it must be filled with filth, dirt, broken things.
The only way I could bare it would be
to full it with things as dark
as the depths in me, and tunnel in front;
But the light found me in the end.
I was so wrong, I admit.
Poetry is not just pretty words,
nor is it profanities
smeared on the bathroom wall.
Neigh, it is something richer, deeper
it tells something prose cannot.
Molds the words like clay,
and then fires them into something solid
paints them with details,
sometimes intricate and dazzling
sometimes functional.
Likewise, with my eyes wide open now,
I see that life is most beautiful
when we see ourselves like clay.
Brown, plain, miry clay.
Nothing special, and unable of changing itself
unless it's put in the right hands,
then hardened and tested through the furnace
painted and glazed with care and intimacy
then filled with the right substance.
For a vase meant for flowers,
will never be content with ashes
likewise a jar made for oil
will not welcome flowers.
And like poetry things that are forced
to be beautiful, never seem to turn out
just so,
but when the right purpose, circumstance, reasons
are behind it, it will be so very wonderful.