"excavated" poems
(Pompeii/Florence, 1997)
Vulcan was real, alive as you were,
you and your language, long dead now.
Your town was prosperous, with its paved streets,
bars, bath-houses, brothels,
mosaics, painted walls, graffiti.
Your domestic gods too were real to you;
they had saved you before,
and when the superhuman hammer blows shook
your houses, you repaired them,
decorated in greater splendour,
erected a temple to your protectors.
But Vulcan was not appeased - years are not long
to the lord of earth and fire.
This time he struck swiftly, sending you death
from his mountain, overwhelming you
as you ran. Your garden
gave you no protection,
hot fumes choked you,
hot ash surrounded you,
sealed in your tomb as you died.
The ones who excavated your town
marvelled at its completeness,
and in the ash that filled your garden
they found hollows.
Filling the hollows with plaster,
they found . . . not you,
but echoes of yourselves,
like statues in a museum.
We came to see you, and after that
to the Academy, standing in awe
at David's perfect marble humanity.
But we were troubled by the others,
the uncompleted ones, the Prisoners,
their twisted limbs, hidden faces,
frozen in the act of emerging
from the stone, recalling too painfully
in their unfinished creation
your own agonised poses
as you died.
*"I had seen birth and death,
but had thought they were different."*
.
Aug 26, 2016
Aug 26, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
When my father was a boy,
in the County of Tyrone,
His father owned a quarry
and he worked the fields of stone.
My Dad grew lean and hard
As he excavated stone
Yielding granite for stone carvers
And gravel aggregate for roads.
His hands grew strong and powerful
He had a muscular physique
He couldn’t read or write
But no one dared to call him weak.
When my Dad was in his twenties
He was working in the mines
Excavating British coal
at Newcastle on Tynes.
Later on in life
He was living in the “States”
Working in landscaping
on large Gold Coast estates.
When my Dad was in his fifties
He was digging graves by hand.
Once again in Fields of stone
a hard working Union man.
Each morning he’d rise early
And walk two miles to work
He never had an office
And he’d never be a clerk.
He rose to be a foreman
Working in that field of stone
And when darkness overtook him
It became his earthly home.
Now when I go visit him
I kneel and pray alone
Beside his Celtic Cross
standing in the field of stones.
Nov 9, 2011
Nov 9, 2011 at 4:11 PM UTC
gently spiced dreams invite me-
come in and take a peek
look within, search for yourself
get lost in this fragrant wonderland
explore the cliffs in your mind
off which the waterfall of your thoughts rush down
in mighty, uncontrollable torrents
full of a refreshing energy-positive, powerful
swirling around, connecting to the inner caves
within which lies the buried treasure of your secrets
some, waiting to be excavated and shared
others wanting to be buried deeper
but overall it’s a happy place, come every night
rediscover yourself, every time.
- Vijayalakshmi Harish
03.10.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Oct 3, 2012
Oct 3, 2012 at 12:03 PM UTC
Plant a Woman
"When a woman plants a tree, she plants herself."
John Muir
See the photo, on a stone walkway in a park on an island, somewhere in New York State
*Years after first encountered,
Returned this day, purposely,
To trod this bricked-path
Where a solitary brick, these special words carved.
This brick, a patient lady-poem in waiting,
Required a search-and-locate mission,
To verify my memorized eyesight,
Freed to release these words,
Years in the forming, from whence first espied.*
**When a woman plants a tree, she plants herself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**
Much less than obvious,
Import of said statement,
Complex, notes, scents, questions...
Perhaps this is the thus, the why,
Why this po-effort, somnolent, yet disquieted,
In recesses, drew lines on the wall, with one line
Slashed across, for every month,
It gestated, unborn, but not offering to die,
It did not come effortlessly.
I am seed of man,
Planted within woman.
I am a tree of iLife ,
My seed planted within
You, iReader.
I am as much woman as man,
Perhaps more so...
Wrote you, told you,
I Speak Woman^
Perhaps more so...
Even better than man.
No shame, I rise with the dawn,
To bake the bread,
Alongside her, her secrets, she has, need learning,
Her bread, raisins, cinnamon and secreted inside,
Wisdom of loving kindness.
She scatters seeds with recklessness,
Who can know where wheat will be needed,
Someday, her children exiled?
Forest investor, tree planter,
Futures she sees, where others see but wood,
I follow her lead, for I cannot but fail to
Prosper, when on paths tread,
Formed, excavated by her footfalls.
I give her rubies,
I give her gold,
When I ask where it be,
She laughs and says adorning the tongues
Of the hungry and in need.
So I give her more.
Indeed, I plant my seed inside her daily,
Let her plant trees as she desires,
Her forest, the refuge of my old age,
So she plants trees, as I
Plant a Woman.
Thanks be, that her trees,
Come from her *****
Now I understand Mr.Muir.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 3:02 PM UTC
A song crawls out of the sludge from the bottom of the Indus River, from beneath the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. The burning sun tries in vain to penetrate the thick foliage of the ancient fig tree beneath which she reclines: the thousand-faced mistress of the myriad temples, the dancer, the priestess, the worshiper, the idol, the eternally pregnant singer…
She who alone knows why no human remains were ever recovered from the excavated city, Mother of a thousand abortions, she who gave birth to the beats of the rhythm—and the space between each beat, the unnameable principle of dread… the slow flow of the river at sunset obscured by smoke of human flesh from the smoldering ghats…
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 8:38 PM UTC
-A Psalm Of Johnson Regarding How To Get Saved
Because all have sinned and strayed away from God's path,
We are all deserving of his perfectly just wrath.
But God instead sent his equal to die in our place,
Because he is infinitely full of love and grace.
So in order to escape from your eternal doom,
You must believe God raised Christ from the dead in his tomb!
Dec 25, 2020
Dec 25, 2020 at 1:33 AM UTC
**Profanity is a ******* Tool.**
Profanity is Subjective.
Profanity doesn't necessarily show intellectual or moral paucity.
Profanity is a form of emphasis; a form of ******* catharsis, an aspect of humour.
******* humour:
A goldmine rooted in Shadow,
excavated by Logic
and which seems,
for the most part,
wasted on the irrefutably
illogical, or at least bi-polar
(if not higher-multi-polar)
masses.
*"Anyone who relies on any one given tool is a fool, as
anyone who denounces a given tool for how it has been used by others is outright stupid."*
A carpenter who can only use a hammer is quite restricted,
A musician who can only play alone is no good in a band,
A poet who only writes can't show the world how it's meant to be read (if at all),
A comedian who only swears has little else to offer,
A person who only speaks but doesn't act on it is a liar.
A carpenter who won't use a hammer is self-sabotaging.
A musician who can only play with others has no personal skill.
A poet who refuses to write starves oneself of potential.
A comedian who won't swear better have a good point.
A person who only acts but reuses to speak had better be a monk or mime!
*(The last two were perhaps failed, even vein attempts at humour..
I shall leave that up to you to decide!)*
Profanity is a Tool:
I believe that no matter the profanity, a message can still be well received
by those who care enough to receive it.
Better still are those who can interpret the profanity
as humourous accentuation, emphasis, catharsis
and not necessarily as overly-abrasive and immature.
That said, some people are just totally ******* immature about it.
If you can't stand the profanity, get the **** off the internet. 4srs.
Better yet, shut yourself away from the world
lest you ever deal with that which you find unsettling.
*So ist das Leben.
Telle est la vie.
Así es la vida.
Such is life.*
Feb 2, 2013
Feb 2, 2013 at 4:56 PM UTC
she posts her credentials
privately, to just you,
in the din of a currently popular
university barroom
and you dressed in your
pick up best,
plumes of all male grinning,
reeking in thinking -
oh yeah!
va va voom,
lucky
laughs and liquor,
cheap 3.2 Ohio beers on tap,
come super highway fast via
as my finger flick be wagging
to an attentive bartender
who recognizes,
a new venture worth
his investing in a newly forming
gene pool of the
collegial world of what you children
can google as
The Sixities
you see, she says,
she is minor famous,
had two minutes in a movie
called Woodstock,
instantly recalled distinctively,
which you honor with
a dozen roses rising of
very cool
and a few daisies of
wow
so young,
she's hitch hiking thru life,
karma, ying and yang, Sagittarius and
Hesse's Siddharta,
a little ****** break out back,
our lives have intersected in
Cleveland in 1969,
and there is no question unanswered,
your bed, is her bed,
this night
you puzzle yourself,
memory recycler,
why in 2015,
you celebrate a one stand,
a single strand
excavated from
the meta data of your brain
tonight,
from among a hundred lifetimes previous
*Why Woodstock Woman Wonder
and you do,
why, wonder,
have you stayed with me so long,
that your face is indelible tattooed,
easy extracted from ancient cells
risen by this
dawn's early light?*
are you pining old man,
are you dying old man,
trying to write it all down
before the insurance company
grumpily has to pay up?
this carefree woman, no,
young forever girl,
looking up to you
asking where can she crash tonight,
answered in a single guttural
exclamation sensation,
with me babe,
with me baby
fifty years later,
crashing you,
crashing with you,
with roses and daisies that never died
wonder where she is today,
a grandmother multiple,
or sleeping gone from an overdose
of stuff you occasionally fooled around with,
or are you spending another night
in your tripping life,
with another
one night man*
no answers given,
but it is, it was,
a single dot on the trail of dots and dashes,
the existential Camus moments of
of two ordinaries that intersected,
however briefly,
and you wonder,
not why, but if,
*Woodstock Woman,
do you remember me?
I need you to,
I want you to,
explain better
why we are crashing together
one more time*
~~~
August 20, 2015
5:32am
nyc
Aug 29, 2015
Aug 29, 2015 at 1:05 PM UTC
You sit on the beach and pick at fish bone
after maggots and flies have had their way,
poke it with a stick, listen to the tide,
wonder what it sounds like underwater.
Whale songs, shark bites, seal birth, and coral
in a circus of clown fish, puffers, and lions.
I dig a hole to bury the carcass,
the bone, no flesh, you name him Sergio.
As the dolphin tide rolls in sand erodes
exposes the burial bone by bone
until it washes to sea like drift wood.
When we were young we captured frogs out back
in the creek in the woods behind your house,
and once I tripped into a small ravine.
We found door sized slabs of concrete or rock
engraved with names and nineteenth century dates.
Civil War gravestones, some professor said,
and they were moved somewhere to some museum.
Later on the news they interviewed us,
and in the background bulldozers dug holes
that exposed some two hundred year old bones,
skeletons and skulls, excavated from burial,
as we smiled to the channel two reporter.
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 9:05 PM UTC
My greatest fear is
that my mind will become languid
all these nerves that buzz and fill
will someday become a vegetable
somnolent times will set upon me
a spell from which I cannot recover
lazily and languorously I shall dwell
an intellect without vigour
too much comfort too much praise too much ease
shall push me off the cliff of complacency
and I shall fall without cognizance
a mental suicide, awareness in deep freeze
a hardened blank consciousness
that needs to be broken through
excavated from a grave of self-righteousness
pushed beyond self-set limits
melted until the core is seen
I need to feel the pain and hurt
cry briny tears and experience grief
need to feel unsure undecided
obscure myself in anxiety
make sure the inner ocean stays unfrozen
- Vijayalakshmi Harish
12.09.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Sep 12, 2012
Sep 12, 2012 at 4:35 AM UTC
I heard a whisper of your
voice
in the empathy of
another
I excavated her
soul
for a thread of your
spirit
to hem the frayed
edges
of our torn
fabric
only to recover
lint
in the corner of my
eye
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 2:54 PM UTC
Colors of love, I've never seen was painted on my heart by her,
lust sublimated,was the primer she preferred as the base to start,
music of love, she conducted, played in the background day and night
caressed me softly, made the colors dry, made it remain there ever
my wounded heart, demanded only love, nothing more from her
but she made it her piece of interest, for her million desires to adore
Her alchemy transformed it to gold, that never would lose it's sheen,
used all her riches excavated, from the valley of her placid mind,
to embellish and make it an invaluable dowry chest for her, ever
the skies cloudless,I was tranquil,her love made me feel elated,
on her, the wave-less lake I perfectly reflected, even at dark nights,
What else would make one dedicate, all mind commands,to her
and all flights of soul to higher echelons were inspired by her,
isn't that state, one knows as bliss, we are bound together by that .
Feb 22, 2015
Feb 22, 2015 at 2:01 PM UTC
The floodgates
have opened
and the tide is high
the dam has burst
in explosion
of tear-bombed third eye
saltwater rushes
culling dark demons
from the deep
the most buried
of creatures
awoken from sleep
viperfish and tube worms
vampire squid
twirling their tentacles
to summon the id
squelching up
impulse
from sinkholes of mud
primal instincts excavated
from tombs
of slick crud
Deep-seated fears
have been beckoned to play
to disregard tears
take resistance away
and while blown over
by this twisted abyss
she remembers a flicker
of the shadow of bliss
and like a mermaid rising
up towards surface
blue heights
she grasps at the cirrus
leaking tendrils of light
pulling up hand by hand,
in sea-tangled vine
a vague sense of sweetness
flushes out brine
and when she breaks through
the surface,
her heart like a sieve
she finally owns it-
the power
to
breathe
Jul 4, 2017
Jul 4, 2017 at 7:22 PM UTC
I put on mascara today so you would find my corpse perfect
(all that existence is, looking beautiful for earthworms)
then realized that you could not open the tomb –
yes, the worst part of distance, the last person I see will not be you
(and the mortician will not know which dress is my favorite).
Only you, only you know about the burgundy lace
that we said makes me seem like a dwarf princess or psychic –
in it, I could call you from the past even when I am gone
you would be the king of every maggot delivering my messages.
I would eventually ask to be excavated (and if anyone says no,
please do not have mercy upon them, sweetheart –
wish that they catch the measles or chickenpox or insomnia)
so you could see the sallow skin I blanched even more just for you
the palace in my grave did not matter when you weren’t there.
May 6, 2013
May 6, 2013 at 5:14 PM UTC
I.
i was fourteen when i learned that columbus brought
guns and shackles to the new world instead of turkey.
last weekend, when you told me what happened to you
the night of october fourteenth, i had to check both of
your wrists to make sure they weren’t bound together.
i had to grow sea legs in the backseat of a parked car.
II.
sometimes hands are not kind.
sometimes hands explore people like diseases invade towns,
choking the distance between breath and body in seconds.
when he touched you that night, you must have confused
the cobweb of lines across his palm for transatlantic cables.
you must have forgotten that each year, the ocean spits out the
skeletons of ships who rattle the tides without her permission.
III.
when christopher columbus hit land, he wanted gold so badly that
he excavated it from the hearts of natives, took a midas hammer
to their spines until they bled pools of light around his ankles.
that autumn night, it happened to you too, didn’t it, golden girl?
except afterward, the stain you left on the white sheets was red.
IV.
in 1491, no one thought that the earth was flat.
sometimes history tries to rewrite things that make no sense,
that should never have happened to cities carved from trees
or girls whose bodies sing electricity into the midnight air.
if you listen, you can still hear the hiss of sparks on cold flesh.
you won’t forget the smell. they can’t remember anything else.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 12:22 AM UTC
When I was just a child, they were just a married couple;
Older, middle-aged, nothing distinguishing about them at all.
I loved swimming in their swimming pool,
Until they upsized, to a glitzy neighborhood of rambling,
Ranch-style houses.
And they upscaled, to exotic, foreign vacations.
Brought me back a Hawaiian volcanic stone, with emerald flecks,
A salt and pepper shaker set from Israel.
She was a clothes horse, always kept her figure,
Dressed slinky but classy, for an old babe;
Visibly stood taller, if another woman
Ever complimented her clothing or style-
And they invariably did.
My dad said that when alone with her husband,
That man would brag about daily ********
From his office receptionist, at the end of the workday
Before going home. I was older then, tried to imagine
How the shared exchange could have furthered
Some ancient, nightly excavated ambition?
Alone with her once, my dad said he made an innuendo,
Some playful joke which he had since forgotten the point of,
Probably due to the more stunning reaction it caused.
He had always loved teasing with words,
But he said that she had dropped all suggestion of pretense,
And she had told him then, You couldn't handle it..
He still chuckled about it, long after the fact.
Funny how for all those years, what I remembered seeing
Was a mostly colorless couple
Who always drove large Cadillacs.
And how in the later years, he could only move
While tethered to his oxygen tank,
Though it never hindered his smoking.
Aug 23, 2010
Aug 23, 2010 at 12:11 PM UTC
I love
You
Don’t care
In-diff-er-ent
Isn't paid
Much attention
In my apartment
We’ll
End-if-her-rent
Isn’t paid
In our
Department
But who cares?
Separation
Doesn't
Always cause pain
And pain
Isn't always
The cause
Of separation
We just
Happened
To drift away
Like
Messages in a bottle
Off the coast
With no intent
Of being found
Our lonely islands
Are crowded
With shadows
Of friends
We forget the darkness
Because at least
We no longer
Burn each other
With our angst
And anger
We remember
Everything
Except rations
Of ourselves
We left
Like t-shirts
And underwear
Tangled
In each others
Laundry
Then throw
Them away
Find them
Another day
in the exact same place
We excavated them
The returnment
Of our undesirables
Show fate’s
Sense of humor
But
Only a stubbornness
Such as ours
Could devour fate
And disavow
The vows
It set out
To make...
We
Will
Never
Be
Again
Never
Again
Will
We
Be
Sums
Up the sum
Of each halves
And the total
Is something
The totaled
Hearts
Can live with...
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 11:02 PM UTC
Once filled with a writhing mollusk
Now excavated and empty
Enter at the mouth of a continually twisting cave
To the left
Curling deeper into the heart of the shell
Shining and polished from years
Of water lapping at the coating
And brushing gently against the sand
Iridescent green and blue fade into purple
Suddenly
The shell’s twisting cavity
Ends
Jun 4, 2012
Jun 4, 2012 at 1:31 PM UTC
I'm a mineral who thinks it's a miner
even if I can't tell coal from gold
I offer my excavated treasures to the public
only to be told they're rocks
by obsidian hearted pebbles
so I quietly return to my quarry
and get on DraftKings Sportsbook
who pays me for saying the Nuggets will win
pulling validation from the gravelly depths
and showing promising riches to be unearthed
appealing to my **** and wallet
to subvert my brain
but I can't just switch off and call it
considering what could be attained
digging deeper and deeper down
people call down from the ground
but they never cared when I was around
and I'd rather get gems for the **** in my mind
than get **** for the gems in my mind
so I continue my decline
until rock bottom is mined.
Feb 4, 2024
Feb 4, 2024 at 9:23 PM UTC
In the beginning, we bartered hearts like merchants at a bazaar,
each of us donning silver smiles and guarded eyes,
holding a currency of whispers and half-truths,
our souls up for auction, a tangled web of worth.
I've always been a collector of broken things,
an archivist of fractured dreams,
a believer in the beauty of the mended,
but this time, I am the jagged porcelain,
cradled in your hands, asking to be whole.
You wove love into me like a tapestry,
threaded through my aching seams,
you took my tattered edges, stitched them tenderly,
and I could almost believe I am deserving,
though I wear this love like borrowed garments,
a thrift store treasure, waiting to be claimed.
Oh, how we danced in the shadows of our doubts,
with the moon as our witness, we pirouetted,
brushed fingertips like shooting stars,
my heart a hummingbird, in the cage of my chest.
I have held shame like a secret lover,
nestled in the crook of my neck, a serpent's breath,
it whispered in my ear, "you're not enough,
you're a counterfeit soul, a fool's gold,
a price too steep, a debt too deep."
I've chased oblivion, doused in liquid fire,
a self-destructive waltz, a frenzied masquerade,
but you, you held me close, a lighthouse in the storm,
your love, a compass guiding me to shores unseen.
Together, we excavated the depths of my despair,
traveled through the catacombs of my heart,
our love a language, a dialect of healing,
a lexicon of scars and whispered apologies.
I have been a doubter, a skeptic of my worth,
but you taught me to seek the gold within my veins,
to peel back the layers of rust and fear,
to find the precious, the hidden, the unseen.
And now, we stand at the edge of a precipice,
our love a fragile bridge, swaying in the breeze,
I tremble, unsure, a hesitant traveler,
but you, you hold my hand, and together, we leap.
In this uncharted landscape, we forge our destiny,
a mosaic of laughter and tears, a tapestry of dreams,
our love, a currency worth more than silver or gold,
for we are the treasure, the priceless, the untold.
Apr 8, 2023
Apr 8, 2023 at 11:15 PM UTC
The Last Doughboy
went marching home
mustered up to heaven
to rest in perfect peace
never went over the top
when he was over there
drove an ambulance to save
the last dying bits of humanity
excavated from the craters
reeking with mud and blood
the turgid stench
of blessed death
wafts through the
muddled labyrinth
a ghastly kingdom
of rats and men
intractable mazes
of hate, hope and waste
led by inept generals
vainglorious politicians
promising triumphant victory
while begging disastrous defeat
bold shouts of advance
lead to routed retreats
global trench warfare
the sweet earthen coffins
empathy's last gasp
compassion's last stand
gurgling lungs
gagging on gas
imploding on
clotting blood
liquid ammonia
sears sensitive retinas
wafting flash of fire
burns eyes forever shut
concussive bursts
bludgeon eardrums
ripped bodies of friends
splayed onto comrades
the macabre rouge
a terrible war paint
liberally applied
with stunning result
by the industrial rattle
of cantankerous Gatlings
better minds thought it
the war to end all wars
the horrific scenes of waste
the pleading lips of starved children
the last Doughboy saw it all
a lucky Johnny who marched home
he thought the horror of WWI
would be enough to end all wars
yet all is not quiet
on the western front
Johnny's still got lots
of gruesome guns
distressed humanity
remains very busy
carting away human rubble
from our apocalyptic trenches
go to your reward
valiant Doughboy
*"leave us citizens
of death's gray land,
drawing no dividend
from time's tomorrows."
Siegfried Sassoon*
Dedicated to
Frank Buckles
(February 1, 1901 – February 27, 2011)
Godspeed Beloved
Oakland
3/1/11
jbm
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 9:11 AM UTC
Let us sleep
like the staircase
that once led up to the Temple Mount
no longer able to carry pious feet to prayer,
but the well experienced cracks
over which they once walked
expose the heavy burden
of well worn memories
under which we now slumber.
Sunrise from Masada.
The view from the casemate wall
of Silva's camp below.
Shadowy ghosts
are cast and scattered
and given voice as the wind
shouts through the buildings ruins
L'-he-rut Zi-yon
and there is no reply.
Only the songs of the Tristramit
who mimic the voices
of every child martyred here, singing:
*Shalom al Ziyon, Shalom al Ziyon"
and there is no reply,
only the dreams of the interrupted
and the disturbed peace
of excavated ruins.
Sep 22, 2016
Sep 22, 2016 at 9:38 PM UTC