Poem: Archaeologist

 

Archaeologist

 

grottos within grottos

where neon enticed

like the filament of some underworld fish,

 

places where whirlpools in drowned eyes,

and games inside spun bottles of empty rum,

and sermons

 

of false, loving, doomed prose

could be crumpled and tossed into gutters

of dramatic complexity.

 

i asked myself,

 

how many midnights

spent scraping in sordid places like these,

down on my cuffs,

investigating the ancient shit of human sin,

would it take

 

to earn a PhD in ‘give me another try’?

 

there were so many scraps to scape,

and ill-treated hearts vomiting more

to feed the slime.  there were

 

gutter people whose only purpose

was to hoard filth in the wrinkles of their

lack of expressions, which were, themselves,

 

nothing but tossed wrappers of long-consumed hopes,

wrappers that, if you were an ant,

would crack your thorax when you tried

 

to get to the last bit of juice deep inside them.

 

there was a time when i sat in semi-darkness,

playing expert to such skewed pieces

of the past-present-now.

 

yes, it felt hasty, perverse, anonymous.

but i was obsessed then, myself,

with studying what others had become addicted to

to avoid.

 

 

 

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