~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More than a poet recording words,
not just rhymes on a page,
nor another verse in the wall of poetry.
We are the demolition crew,
swinging wrecking balls at the mundane,
the expected, the politely applauded.
We are the seekers of nirvana,
not in lotus poses and silent chants,
but in the scream of a dying star,
the whisper of wind through shattered glass.
Decay?
We embrace it.
The rot is fertilizer,
the rust, a pigment for our palette.
Society's leftovers,
the discarded dreams, the broken promises,
these are our archaeological digs.
We are miners sifting through the dust,
separating the divine's sparkle
from the fool's gold of false idols.
The pabulum fed to weary hearts?
We spit it out.
We are alchemists of absence,
builders of cathedrals from ash,
architects of soaring meditations,
born from the embers of what was.
We are more than penmen and penwomen.
we are purveyors of truth.
it was a day
not unlike this one
when an archaeologist
… sore knees
… paint brush
… Friday fingernails
held my earthen skull
in his hands
and spared me a thought
his dirt-stained eyes
filling my empty sockets
and
for a speck
of epochal dirt
neither of us
heard the sun
“Your brown eyes are like candlelight in the dark of the night.....
Inside an archaeological library........
Do you see me looking at them as a historical clock?
And drowning within the gradations of time?...
What’s time? And history?.......
Only inside them.......
As a reader, I love to read the library of your eyes......
So do you see me, turn its pages book by book....
Or memorize the poems of spinning to recite them to your ears....
If the morning light came and candles went out....
Please someone would save me ......from drowning in the sea of their honey….
I feel like coffee that she gave me was an old wine ......
She was the daughter of October...was swinging at the beat of my heart...with her brown hair
And every time I look at your face it makes me wonder how he can carry all those beauty maps.....
And every time I looked at her smile...
I feel like I’m drowning.... someone save me....
please help me.... I forgot how to breathe!!.
“ In that beautiful coffee shop.....A beautiful eyes steal my heart...”
_ Bouchra Himer_
Diggety Duggety
Emiline Richardson
Studied the Etruscans
Classically
Votive bronze objects, all
Archaeological:
What I dug up on her
Posthumously
A bore hole of fantasy once you dig deep in your mind
Ennui converts into Feng Shui
All you need is a dustpan and brush to sift through your pain
Some archaeological DIY tools
Become a geologist and mine your very own thoughts
Explore tedium and lassitude malaise and confusion
Search for gold dust among the ruins of weariness
Forage for contentment meaning and reason
Beware of alchemy and doomed prophets hanging from false ceilings above
Precious ink from your fountain needs time to sink in
Loneliness bears the potential for solitude and completion
Side effects are intended results
Submerge yourself in an ocean of unlimited reflection
Dive carefully but you must take the plunge
Hold your breath when you reach the sediment of your emotions
But decompress your melancholy sorrows
The anchor of hope awaits the mariner draped in sea weed and love
An octopus guides to an eight fold noble path
I am not drowning but waving in private resolve gratitude and peace
At times upside down but buoyant as a kite in the sky
03rd March 2020
We drove all day on dusty roads to Xian
in the Shaanxi province
to see the clay men.
The army is deployed in large archaeological pits.
Our guide, a Chinese beauty, marshals us from the front
like any good general.
Her voice is a dulcet lagoon
in this desiccated place.
We all notice that her silk cheongsam
clings to her embroidered,
peach of a bottom.
The arsenic-poisoned emperor died as mad as a hatter,
believing a metalloid would grant him endless life.
It`s difficult to tell if his megalomania arrived
before his craziness, or after
but they buried him deep where insanity is timeless.
As we file out, I look back.
The clay spear carriers
the foot soldiers, the dusty officers
even the horses,
all of them seem to be stifling smirks -
their eyes latched upon
a heavenly peach, no doubt.
I am here on an archaeological quest,
to satisfy many a curious mind's request
for knowledge on antiques and artifacts
of Egypt's long extinct historical facts,
in treasured sands buried, like gold mines earnestly
sought for in stories shrouded in mythology.
With a large contingent just as curious as I,
hardly daunted by curses, but with shoulders high,
we went to the field, the sun baking us chaps
to a baker's delight. With our rumpled maps,
we searched every clue, and were bitten perhaps
by a million flies. Getting relief from sunless skies
in times of fair weather, whilst hoping something lies
in the depths of the hot sands for our very eyes
to see. With my tools by hard work and search worn out,
I brushed to full view, the tomb, brilliantly carved out
of young blue blooded Tut, regally laid to rest.
To my wearied colleagues, I spoke in real earnest:
'To exhume the past, we are here at last.'
From minute settlements, to towns of trade
Yet without warning, a sudden raid
A venture into foreign lands
The walls and gates of Viking hands
To labour on, as understood
Homes we build, prepare thy wood
Address the strength of near rooftops
For there beneath lay our workshops
Commence the plan, we have devised
Perfect thy craft and specialize
Protect the home, o’ dearest wives
We venture out, to honour lives
I make thy comb, you make thy shoe
With silver weighed, we shall accrue
Of buried towns, forgotten fence
The archaeological evidence
Of generations when time began
Young boy o’ ten, become a man
We send you on, to grasp thy trade
The substance of which life is made
Trade thy pot and wooden chest
Wives will loom and keep the nest
Our homes rest on thy trodden earth
Stones surround thy warming hearth
I write, I read, a leader’s state
O carved letters educate
We shall not settle for any less
Protection called, our high goddess
Written by Geraldine Taylor ©
I am here on an archaeological quest,
to satisfy many a curious mind's request
for knowledge on antiques and artifacts
of Egypt's long extinct historical facts,
in treasured sands buried, like gold mines earnestly
sought for in stories shrouded in mythology.
With a large contingent just as curious as I,
hardly daunted by curses, but with shoulders high,
went to the field, with the sun baking us perhaps
to a baker's delight. With our rumpled maps,
we yonder searched, bitten as we went by perhaps
a million flies, getting relief from sunless skies
in times of fair weather, while hoping something lies
in the depths of the hot sands for our very eyes
to see. With my tools by hard work and search worn out,
I brushed to full view, the tomb, brilliantly carved out
of young blue blooded Tut, regally laid to rest.
To my wearied colleagues, I spoke in real earnest:
"To exhume the past, we are here at last."
My dream holiday on an Island so far away
I’ve wanted to go there for many a day
‘Kon-Tiki’ film by Thor Heyerdahl caught my eye
Now Easter Island is a destination I dearly want to try
A journey, which would take me over land and sea
But to reach my destination would be a dream for me
Easter Island is located in the Pacific Ocean
I’d need to fly to Santiago de Chile then to Hanga Roa
The Rapa Nui tribe used to inhabit there
No trees are on the Island – isn’t that rare!
At one stage the Island suffered deforestation
This could explain the total devastation
The Island is famed for its archaeological sites
Its monumental statues cause many delights
‘Moai’ are the famous statues with oversized heads
They rest on rock altars ‘Ahu’ their own comfy beds
These incredible stone carvings are heavy and some are very tall
The largest at 86 tonnes would have been a nightmare to haul
To view all the statues I would stay for a day or two
I do hope one day my wish will finally come true
Contest Take a Vacation
Sponsor Lin Lane
02~03~16
Put your fingers into kalihi*,
Kalihta.
There is nothing there.
But it is so beautiful.
Your fingers – kalihi…
A fresco.
It remained of ???ss??**
in a boundless sea.
And my eyes.
*a kind of an oblong goblet of
Late Minoan epoch
** Knossos – a great archaeological site in Greece
He ceaselessly wandered across the vast desert,
with only a bottle of water. According to his archaeological
knowledge, it was claimed that gods, with fiery chariots,
roamed across the world, six thousand years ago; a period
that people read the stars, and knew where gods hailed.
Legend has it that a magical papyrus scroll, illustrating a map to gods' abode,
was hidden in an Obsidian Pyramid, that glowed in the day. As the Egyptian
Kingdom collapsed, an evil sorcerer threatened to steal it, but Isis hid it in a vault,
in the Obsidian Pyramid. "It's not the sorcerer who's a threat now, but the Nazis!", the
English archaeologist speaks in his heart.....
Name: Teddy Kimathi
Contest title: IN THE WIND
Date: 15/09/2014
Look at yourself in the mirror
the fading years
your hair changing to a dull grey
it was not the time nor the season
to try and piece it all together
the memories came like
fragments from some great
archaeological dig,
finding the spaces in between moments
to surface from the depths of your own insights
they leave you in a state of disbelief
wondering where the time goes
what strange visions they make of now
you crawl through the wreckage of your future
like some battered husband waiting for his bride
to finally come to her senses and leave you
but there is no one. so what is in an answer?
He saw it in my eye's,
a little sprinkle
from the pines-
little crinkles in the vines,
what a pencil
drawing up signs,
nobody else could see have seen me at that time.
It was time for revolution,
people acting so fine,
but they are only here for their crimes,
so what is all this?
A loop hole,
or an archaeological find?
In the trees-
there is terror of the season of the mind,
makes me prideful
to the resistant,
and the christened,
...but not to my sisters and brothers alike!
Jesus was right,
always-
just like your anger is fright,
always, its all fright,
spring loaded contraptions angled real sly,
shooting rocks and bribes,
squaring off the moon-
magnifying the sky...
Add two meteorites,
and a generation of the blind,
and you will have my mind,
flippant and fly,
you will carry the eye's,
welcome and kind,
dragging a bag full of wine,
wearing your check near your heart,
and walking with chime,
such a scene to be drawn by musical lines,
to refine that little unwind.
Scattering spellbound in search of this utopia
Minds-eye in shortfall dissects one's monopoly
Through no choice of own approach it sloppily,
Exude to a position such promised, Ethiopia-
As the diminishing dream on landscapes ensemble
The probate illusion of Queen of Egypt's daughter
Who proceeds through this escapade of slaughter
And who am I forgiving one or either? I tremble.
Having reached two thousand years without absorb
Of having travelled miles, indeed was bronze;
Such ghastly size these statues, long lost sons
With indications seen through my crystal orb.
Precious filling educated, siphoning the syllable
Retracted.., words of larger scale were of faith
Those who muttered sounding, Queen Merneith,
-Alluring dynasties as Anedjib's was, as a fable-
Engulfed over as subsidiary benefactors cannibal
Over some archaeological find, for at the centre,
No godly size can interpret that this magenta,
Haze of gross sufficient was the alluring spectacle.
Expedient gauge eclipse this as the inferno;
And making this voyage with the help of a globule,
Whose crystal awareness has forgotten the rule,
That language hosts devise quoted, 'quid pro quo'.
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