In the museum of my kitchen,
I excavate the strata of days,
coffee rings on the counter like tree rings,
each circle marking a morning survived.
The clock on the wall is a liar,
pretending its hands move forward
when really they spiral inward,
tightening like a fist around memory.
I find artifacts everywhere:
a receipt from three years ago,
a shopping list in handwriting
I recognize but can no longer claim as mine.
Time doesn't pass, it accumulates.
It settles like dust in corners,
builds up like plaque on teeth,
layers itself like sediment in stone.
Yesterday exists in geological time:
compressed, fossilized, permanent.
Tomorrow is still vapor, still forming
in the atmosphere above my head.
But today?
Today is the thin line
where excavation meets deposition,
where what I've been becomes
what I'm busy burying.
I am both archaeologist and artefact,
both the digger and the dug,
slowly revealing myself to myself
one careful brushstroke at a time.
You dig because that's your job.
You sink your hands in the mud and you spend time with the human ribs in the dirt.
That time has washed away.
You dig because you have to
Because the professor told you to look "over there" and to "make yourself useful."
So you do, and you dig.
You sit side by side with the silt.
With the ash and clothing and hair.
You have supper with a skeleton.
You pick your teeth with finger bones you pulled from the clay
You are covered in sand and sloppy wet ground up to your elbows
Because for a few minutes you were down on your knees
Face to face with the past.
Reminiscent of a prayer.
Writing a good poem
Is like creating something exquisite
Out of shards of random rubble.
Inspiration is the mysterious impulse that moves a poet
To articulate them into something wonderful.
In other words,
A poet is like an archaeologist,
His poems are already inside him
Like relics waiting to be dug up,
Dusted off,
And put on display.
the archaeologist stood
on the original floor
above her was laughter
loving and war
the archaeologist stood
at the foot of a pit
beside broken lepers
and gentlemen sit
the archaeologist stood
in the ditch of a moat
where bloodied invaders
and townsfolk would float
the archaeologist stood
to her knees among bones
of all history's people
in all of their homes
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
Walking along a road, diagonally,
through someone's house briefly
and back out where there isn't a door
across their vegetable patch and
eventually over the bones of some buried
unknowns.
Cows are currently grazing in someone's
hallway, while a tree grows in the kitchen.
As I walk, I trample through a Roman bath
where in a different time a rotund, well fed
Roman is relaxing in his water.
My next foot down stamps the hand
of a warrior who has just fallen to the sword
As he, in his battledress and beard,
lays in someone else's hearth
where a herb-filled stew is being cooked.
I tread effortlessly over walls and pits,
rooms and murder scenes, above oceans
and below oceans.
These layers of time leave layers of life
which layer the ground silently screaming
voices and echoes of stories once told.
There will then be a layer to come
where someone will tread their feet
over my life, my house and my bed.
how long have we laid here
side by side
for an epoch's breath
of starlight in a roving universe
enchanted moments
see a night of a million years
until day slowly unearths us
from our play
but clinking and scuffing
distant voices loudening
muffled soon unmuffling
to a crisp and a brightness
the yellow hurts our eyes
how dare they disturb us
you are carefully wrapped
and put into a box
loaded and driven away
they are still digging around me
with their small shiny blades
and tickly brushes
I thought we'd be together always
we were not far from eternity
we had made friends with forever
I can still feel your scales beside me
I wonder how the other dinosaurs fared
in The Great Bang
People today are fat, not swift,
So The Western Wall needs a lift*
But here's the rub
An ancient tub
Saves each tear as temple gift
*(lift="elevator")
Above, a few feet,
From the gallery
Archaeologists spotted the empty space
Larger than the cross off M-68 by about 3 times
But they aren't the only ones exploring a void
Ancient like the pyramids is empty in the chest of the boys
Digging up the artifacts of time
Hidden in your lines
That I write
And when we collide
It's like a land mine
Hid in the jungle near a pyramid where
Built between rivers
2 shrines to weary livers and lovers
Whether its desert or monsoon weather,
When it's winter
You will be there
Somewhere in the hardware store
Picking out the tools you need
To dig more deeply
In the spaces left between
Or to mend that stupid leak
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.'
ARCHAEOLOGY FIELD-TRIP JANUARY 29 TH 3011 - PART I
In this windy coastal location the interesting thing is that
1000 years ago this unlikely spot was a huge city.
Where we see the forests and swamps now -
Was a large city which we’ve called simply Bayville.
Nature has reclaimed it, as it has all ancient civilizations.
Last month we looked at the Aztec and Mayan cities.
This month we have come further north
And we are examining the Euro-latin civilization
Which came to an abrupt end
About 1000 years ago, for unknown reasons;
Although evidence suggests that there was
A climatic change which gradually
Turned fertile farmlands hereabouts into deserts,
And there was a series of devastating earthquakes
Which hit the city each year for several years.
(NOTE: Part II of this poem follows immediately in the list of poems)
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.