"gravedigger" poems
@--\\-----
She stood in mama's kitchen
at the table by the door.
Blue plastic roses
their vase broken on the floor.
He said he was leavin'
bought a bottle at the store...
Now daddy's gone
won't be commin' back no more.
(chorus)
Blue plastic roses
put together with some glue
Blue plastic roses
my oh my, how time done flew
Blue plastic roses
no longer bright, no longer new
Blue plastic rose
She's still waiting where they grew
She sits at the table
places set with cheap champagne.
He's not coming over
and she's alone again
Blue plastic roses
their petals cracked and stained
Placed on the TV
the memory remains.
(chorus)
The undertaker paid.
The gravedigger gone.
She left this rotten world
She wasn't all that strong.
Can we reverse the clock?
It just ticks on and on
The damage was too great
no way to right the wrong
Blue plastic roses
set down before her stone
Blue plastic roses
haphazard set upon the loam
Blue plastic roses
hear the wind in the pines groan
Blue plastic rose
now she's really all alone
Now shes really all alone.
SoulSurvivor
(C) 12/21/2015
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 3:49 PM UTC
Labor Day still three weekends away,
Why play gravedigger so prematurely?
Do not the long legged teen girls yet parade,
In halter tops and shortest of jeans cutoff?
Bare shoulders, tans, caramel cream, short and
tight,
The dresses and the contents, and your chest too,
right?
True, but the thermometer barely brushes 75,
That evening coolness, not yet a chill, now ever-present.
Soon the acorns in August will appear, but for sure,
I know that summer's end knells loud and clear,
Because tonight, the ladies wore pantyhose.
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 11:43 PM UTC
He sat in a small compartment by
The window, on a train,
The passengers huddled around him
Saying, ‘Tell that one again!’
He spoke in a low and measured voice
As they held their breath, to stare,
Watching his hands, as they described
Vague circles in the air.
There wasn’t a sound outside, except
The carriage, clickety-clack,
A sound that would tend to hypnotise
As the train sped down the track,
In every one of his listeners
Was a picture, in each mind,
That spoke to them of that better life
Which had been too hard to find.
And seagulls circled the skies above
As he primed their minds with ‘If…’
And led them all in a straggly line
To stand at the top of a cliff.
The sea was blue and the clouds were grey
And the rocks below sublime,
As they teetered there for a moment where
They stood, at the edge of time.
For then he’d show them a garden, with
The form of an only child,
Who seemed to be so familiar
That most of them there had smiled,
The scent of a pink wisteria
Had wafted the carriage air,
And then their tears rolled back the years
As they whispered, ‘I was there!’
He showed them a woman in mourning
With a cape, and a darkened veil,
Who knelt alone by a headstone,
Each listeners face was pale.
The bell of the church began to toll
As it sounded someone’s knell,
His face was the face of the gravedigger
As he held them in his spell.
The carriage was filled with waves of fear,
The carriage was filled with joy,
He’d tell of the death of a mountaineer,
Of a child with a much-loved toy,
Their tears they’d dry as the train came in
To the tale of a Scottish Kirk,
And one by one they would rise to leave
And head off the train, to work.
But the Storyteller would stay on board
And close the compartment door,
His restless hands were trembling still
As his eyes stared down at the floor.
The train heads into the future while
The past is deep in his well,
He sits and weeps in the corner for
The tales that he doesn’t tell.
David Lewis Paget
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 8:25 AM UTC
How eloquently and beautifully we hid from each other.
You with your righteous truths, hard and cold like granite.
Marking lost-love’s old bones.
I gripped your proffered broken shovel. Worn blade rusted, and shaft broken.
Aged and useless now, worked and worked on too much cold, hard ground.
And so the old, cold, bones below lay undisturbed.
Deep and all but forgotten
Forever waiting to be found.
Mine? Barbed wire…a measured demarcation simply, efficiently separating a field of dreams from a shell-pocked Somme….taught, unyielding, sharp and unforgiving.
You, a brave soldier hacked and bit and and gnawed at the unforgiving steel wire, tormented by the verdant vision, which lay beyond.
Striving to reach that goal.
That which lay beyond the muddy battlefield….
Beyond the rigid stinking corpses….
Beyond the ghastly horror.
I know you saw a bright field of soft scented blooms and dreamed of resting, head pillowed on sweet, rainbow petals, scented nectar and soft green grass.
I would have gladly surrendered the wire cutters, but, blunted and useless, dulled by one or two, too many tries… there was no use.
You see my dear, they were long ago worn down. Worn down on many a marbled headstone.
Their once keen edge, ground and blunted on words which said ‘here lies love’
(May it rest in peace).
There they sit and there they lie, the gravedigger and the soldier….
The soldier, torn and tattered upon the ****** barbs……
The gravedigger, frail and worn, broken shovel resting on broken feet…..
These were the culmination of our defences
Our defences…
Mine a spiked barrier,
yours an epitaph in stone.
****** battered love hungry body
and weeping gravedigger by loves tombstone.
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 8:21 AM UTC
Hanging around cemeteries,
carrying shovels.
Work that breaks hearts and hands.
Singing bittersweet songs that
feel like a great cry but sound like a whisper.
There's not many to listen anyway,
only the corpses, spirits, and undertakers.
It's not meant to entertain,
just to keep me moving.
Every day is the same,
unless of course I find something interesting
during a dig.
All sorts of neat stuff.
Keys, coins, bottles.
One time I found an Irish coin.
My work is cheap, but it's important.
Without me, the dead would be haunting you,
attacking you, cursing you.
In a way, I am trained to serve Hades himself.
I pave the passage into the next world.
My work is a necessary chore.
A long and necessary chore,
my family's always asleep by the time I get home,
covered in grey dust and black and brown earth,
smelling like corpses and gasoline,
my face a little more brown.
My work is cheap.
My work is menial.
My work is laborious.
but don't judge me based upon my wages.
If you do, I just might dig your grave next.
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 4:34 PM UTC
I wish to comb the now distant Eden
Adopting Penelope's marble poise
To find her marvelling Polaris' freedom
Not questioning her heart, unlike my words.
Vaulted abaft* her marmoreal* shoulders
Chiliad* tales won, your silhouette
Decorticating* off African suns.
Oil lamp explorer, icy caves your lamp
Cannot warm; There are paths to cross with will,
Verdant* bridges constellated* with time.
Yet you, Inexhaustible human heart,
Beat with love. You gravedigger of the sky,
Estranged Love, brave forevermore the Afar,
Beyond the doubts of your enduring Heart.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 10:57 AM UTC
The first sinking dismay
she had in her humdrum life
was the first bongless time
when she heard herself cry.
The swallow of a muttered moan
following a stricken strife
like a shade hurtling the shadows,
a last dismaying gasp.
Where the zephyr in southerly arms die
where the nymph shrivels on a thirsty desire
where the Wheel crashes on a pallid meadow
where the plucked wings of the Dove fly?
Where the shadow of the bear downed stone
will dim my own umbra, eventide's gravedigger
brooding on a fractured glass? Lights' eyes queller
the lips' ballad subduer, ripper of the flock's strokes.
Your own stonewalling dismay is
double-crosser of a sea of dust chalk,
drowning feeble lying fireflies...
twinkling the sneers of your eclipse.
-Follow, follow her shadow
calling your own void from afar.
Where the wild lilacs the foggy crucify
where the stinging memory stirs dawdling desires
where a stabbing thought make the blurred red rock dance
dance in an **** between the answer and the why.
Oct 17, 2012
Oct 17, 2012 at 1:08 PM UTC
In the quicker sand
deeper than I've ever been
slip sliding away
I still see the gravedigger's *****
6ft deep in the shallows
Apr 27, 2023
Apr 27, 2023 at 4:58 PM UTC
It was a woodcut in our high school history text, Unit 4
Beginnings of the Modern World, that so disturbed,
from the Nuremburg Chronicles depicting the burning of the
Jews, flat perspective,
faces of the victims among flames, in no particular agony, not
especially Jewish,
during the Black Death 1/3 of Europe died 1347-1351 alone.
Although
you die together you die alone.
Earlier that week, I had attended our 6th grade's performance of Fiddler on the Roof, thinking
Coltrane should have recorded Matchmaker as a bookend to
My Favorite Things
but as the play darkened
with the town's absorption into the diaspora, democracy
yet unthought of and rule of law a fig leaf for authority
Jasper, who played Zero Mostel, delivered his line well to
the effect
you're just doing your jobs while wrecking our lives.
Anyway, nothing like that is happening here, is it?
The gardener planting tomatoes, the gravedigger finding skulls,
there is so much life a little death won't matter.
Jasper
was a beautiful ham,
big as Zero.
A friend posed
this question: must all states be melting pots like the United States?
I said yes
not because they should but since
it's inevitable. Let labor flow like capital!
America was the last word of the play and brought a tear of pride
to my eye.
Immigration, exasperating argument re the Other.
How many's more than enough? 9 billion, a rational,
real number that exceeds or we're convinced
is within the carrying capacity of the planet.
Climate change is the new Black Death.
I like the Amerindian body type and face mixed in with the
European, African.
The irrepressible economy rolls out reams of logs, ores of
elements, bags of ice, fields of rice.
Embargo. The moon stares, bare, full of interstellar space.
Better a cold shoulder than a visit from our military.
The crazy Nazis must have felt themselves extraordinarily
compassionate toward the mother, earth, the goddess,
history, or some such abstraction and, thus, acted on a
fraction of all they did not know.
Selfless soldiers just doing their jobs guarding the border or,
on the other hand, collecting ****** for the burning of the Jews.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:58 AM UTC
a clairvoyant sketches a gravedigger
retrieving a dead child
it was midnight inside his heart
and in the drawings
a limo hints at a tale
murmurs in the crevices of night
trying to find a way out of
or onward beyond
the cul-de-sac
Mar 31, 2012
Mar 31, 2012 at 8:41 AM UTC
the hardest lesson i ever learned
was never to dig a shallow grave.
i learned as a boy
young and teary eyed
scrapes on both knees
knee deep in mud,
too weak to lift the shovel.
i dropped your body in
left your corpse
in a shallow pit.
at a tender age
it was all i could do.
i didn't prepare for the flood
didn't see it coming
so when the rains hit
your body turned lazarus.
old haunts and dreams better off dead
drug their familiar names in my skin
and i aged decades in heartbeats.
the hardest lesson i learned
was that corpses stay dead
no matter how many prayers you send.
you are a corpse
of a forgotten promise
reeking of obsolescence.
don't you dare forget
that i buried you
once
twice
three times
that you still rose to
haunt me in the quiet hours
of a morning too heavy with dew to begin
of a sun too weary to start again
of a moon too proud to dip
below my horizons
that i walked away
left my scar
of an unrequited kiss
upon the skin of the earth.
the hardest lesson i ever learned
was how deep to dig a grave
for a memory turned corpse.
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 8:57 PM UTC
*I'm sorry about possible mistakes, this is not my native language.
Thanks, Guilherme*
The son was sad
The daughter went mad
The mom cried, breathed in deeply and fell on the ground
The raven wearing its black elegant suit
Was standing, staring at every moment of that morning
While someone else was moaning
The son still cries
The daughter became angry
The mom was still lying on the grass beside the grave
The raven in a black feather coat
Was standing, staring at everyone
Wearing those pathetic black clothes
The son still cries
The daughter was turning into insanity
The mom was taken away
The raven wearing a perfect black crush hat
Was standing, staring at all those fools
And watching the gravedigger disappear beyond the hills
The son had stopped his cry
The daughter was finally hysterical
The mom was declared really dead
The raven rose from the tree, above the grave
Took a brief flight over everyone at that funeral
And landed on an old rotten log
The mom was really gone
The daughter finally got crazy
The son, the son… yes,
He said to the raven:
‘Let’s go my friend,
Who didn’t notice you
Doesn’t understand life
Doesn’t understand that we’re like grass
Waiting for a reaper,
The Grim Reaper that owns you’
The raven took another brief flight
Till the shoulder of the son
Meanwhile the coffin was buried
And the grave was sealed,
The mom was taken to a morgue
And the daughter sent to Arkham.
Probably now she’s having some fun with Joker.
And don't ask about who was dad...
It doesn't matter : now he's buried and...
He's The dead!
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 9:45 PM UTC
I know
a man
with dirt
on his clothes
that
people avoid
wherever
he goes
he carries
a shovel
and everyone
knows
whenever he
digs
an epitaph
grows.
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 2:28 PM UTC
I am the Grave Digger.
Grave-maker.
The end is nigh.
Work the plot
til it's ******
Work the dirt
with my pickax.
This is just another day for me. Another dime. Another dead.
It's important to remember that
when all your tears have been shed
and you've had all the laughs
life gifted you with,
we are just
bone
and
flesh.
I am the Grave Digger.
Grave-maker.
Your end is nigh.
Mar 6, 2013
Mar 6, 2013 at 3:22 PM UTC
When someone works as a gravedigger, He never gets scared anytime Simply because his heart is made of iron Although he is a human being anytime ... Digging graves is not any work ,but It's a work to those who make it as a career To themselves and to their families anytime ... Dead people need gravediggers to bury them,so They get permanent houses for themselves ... Death is inevitable anytime , Then a suitable tomb must be ready For the dead people anytime ............. Without gravediggers,then There will be no tombs for the dead ...
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 8:22 AM UTC
Dark, toned muscles awash in sweat
With beads of liquid maneuvering
Through the collection of dust
Creating paths that were inhuman at a glance
But in depth were signs of immeasurable power
The searching slice of the shovel, feeling for the loose stone
A bone perhaps, in the core of earthen veins
That solidify life, weaving it into the folds of eternity
Slowing the soul until only a small tempo in the symphony of time remains
Harbored forever in the memories of others
The smoke carried particles of dust
Dead skin that had parted from dying shells,
Empty of red and full of black
The pores of all eyes
Infected with the memory of sculpted dirt
He stands sentinel, over the man-made wound in the epidermal layer of green
Watching the sun fall behind a scattered horizon line
Creating calculated contouring by shadows
Between patches of light that illuminated the insignificant descent
Of helpless pebbles
An older, breathing soul stands and reads from a weighted tomb:
“The price of living is to face an end
But the privilege of life is worth the price itself”
Then the parcel is lowered
The dust swarming into places yet untouched
A tirade of platelets rains down
Stemming the flow between this life and the spinning of the Earth
Shrouding the parcel in spattered reds and browns
Protecting it from the wrongs
Sealing it in the stillness of simplicity
With a final look back
The gravedigger turns in the direction of the sun’s masked glow
Forging a path between the peaceful earthen tombs
Making his way towards family and home
Where life continues for the living
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 11:07 PM UTC
I'll be robbed of sleep by the same criminal who only knows of uncertainty
but of what?
my only possessions are cold hands and tired eyes
or should I say wretched cartilage and empty sockets full of writhing maggots?
but it's all self-inclined
I am my own gravedigger
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 12:24 PM UTC
Gross exertion, infatuation
Flagellating the root
Of embellished insecurity
Begging for a meal of ashes
Early morning pain, infatuation
A ****** companion's invective
Reminder of our unworthiness
As we consort with teardrops
Inquisitor's interview, infatuation
Smiling torture chamber
Turning idly in hand the implements
That will extract the truth of our ugliness
Gravedigger's labor, infatuation
Burying our faces in clenching fists
Knowing our hearts have finally done it
And sold us out for a smile
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 7:33 PM UTC
Dear grave keeper if today mine heart is to expire
Telleth mine mi amour'
I haveth a hundred more poems for her in the top drawer,
By the Cologne and incense attire...
Dear grave digger if today mine soul doth leave
Please telleth me amare
I was always there
Tis for her in heaven ill be watching
As tis mine love for her wilt forever be...
Dear midnight caretaker if right now mine skin frails
Telleth mine rose
Mine love was unlike any she's known
For she doth knoweth
It was on a different scale.....
Dear mortician if mine eye's do close
Tell her I wanted to marry her
And us to be adorned
In angel form
And black and white robes
Dear undertaker if this is the last time I writeth
Please telleth mine Spanish queen
She was mine dream,
Reality,
Amare
Amour
Mine only girl
Please telleth her sir.....
To meet me again
In that same cloud
The one around her moon...
On cloud number nine
In ourn special room.. .
Canst thou telleth for me sir. ???
Thanks...
Brandon cory nagley .....
© Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 1:25 PM UTC
Run like a crazy for your coffin
Run in fever for finding a bus..
That will carry people,pain,team..
Run to refuge,residence cemetery
But and for going there you need a friend...
Friend for a grave,gravedigger friend...
To seems like you and not somebody ellse
Friend for marble,friend for...
Run,run in this funeral
Funeral of lives..
Run,like in my funeral.
Leon Qafzezi poetry 2013
Feb 27, 2013
Feb 27, 2013 at 1:37 PM UTC
tonight,
you emerge from tinged strings;
my heart aches
my eyes,
leaden from lost hours,
sing along
your hands-
'maginary brushes,
paint tears, smiles
Dec 17, 2013
Dec 17, 2013 at 5:53 AM UTC
bring your shovel, for
you are buried;
alive you lay in a coffin well-made
the dimensions fit tight
to your angles and planes,
cut deft by switchblade fingertips...
she presses kisses to your lips as
her sharp hands press you shut
and she is everything you love
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 1:08 AM UTC
Or earthquake shake, or civil war;
When tidal wave wash far in from the shore,
The gravedigger's wife takes comfort on earth:
There'll be food on the table,
There'll be fire in the hearth.
Feb 20, 2017
Feb 20, 2017 at 10:53 AM UTC
it is to the crossroad i bid you
that forbidding place
where i have come to await the coming day
where i take food and wine
ease my weariness
rest my bones
there at the crossroad
the drumbeat of war once shook the earth
and the choirs of the chosen
made dizzying heights from
stone that inspired the soul
and a dry wasteland of fertile field
there in the lightly falling snow
in the passing of good and true
in the final breaths of brave and kind
good men have passed to shadow
that others should rise to take
up their swords
i linger here
i know not why
the light snow has given way to driving storm
and while warm shelter lay near at hand
i only draw thin veil of cloth to my shoulder to fend off
the bitter wind
why linger at this cold unforgiving place
at this unbound and and unblessed
crows haunt
where the cold country priest
counts his handful of silver
and it is the gravedigger who
ponders the true song of the soul
for the true saints
are the ones who knew the
path leads not to riches
but to peace
that brotherhood and love
are far more precious than jewels
i have waited for such men
i have hoped to be a student of such nobility
i think i have not have had the privilege
and will not till i enter the gates of the kingdom
but i linger here at the crossroads
suffer the price to pay
suffer the crucible of soul
for to pass the gates
you must be of known mettle
for once he comes
i shall be there to paint the swirls of smoke
and the banners and flags
i shall be at the hill
waiting to meet him
with my pen
i echo that question
i have sat that waiting
have buried that treasure
and seen the handiwork
of artisans and seekers
know the presence
but i as yet do not understand
i think perhaps
that a master of tongues
or a scribe of the sky
could not decipher the simplest word
after even a thousand thousand years
i shall wait here
at my crossroads
content with my food and wine
content with this light snow
and the company of the gravediggers song
of the soul
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
Dear God,
These songs make me
Remember Everything
About all those
Careless Whispers
You spoke to me,
So Far Away.
Like you would
Never Think
To just
Let It Be
And let us go our
Separate Ways, Worlds Apart.
So, here I am, stuck in
The Space Between
Where all my
Grace is Gone.
I just don't know
Why I Love You
And all I can hear is
"Don't Stop Believin'."
It's just one
Bad Day
After another for this
Southern Girl.
Eventually I won't be
Tangled Up In You
Anymore. I'll just be one of those
Misguided Ghosts.
But until then, you can
Call Me
Anytime, and just
Maybe,
I won't need to find a
Gravedigger.
Feb 27, 2012
Feb 27, 2012 at 2:01 AM UTC