Sunday, June 3, 2012

GRAVEDIGGER

You may or may not know that aside from blogging, I also use poetry as a creative outlet. This post will be the first (possibly of many) Life in a Snowglobe post that fuses blog drawing and poetry. I feel it is best read aloud with a backwoods Georgia drawl, for those who are reading out loud at home. Enjoy, you kooky lovin' bastards!

GRAVEDIGGER

I spent an April hacking away at this stump
Swinging an ax handle like prayer
Shoveling out rotten roots
An obsession on destruction
Gave all my strength to excavation
Wanting to  know what was underneath
Hoping I’d find faeries amongst the fungi
Little by little I exposed roaches
Scooping away dirt revealed rocks
And dirt
And I dug

My shovel sinking into wood like grave sites
Pulling up chunks
Roots like limbs, heavy

Ash to hollow ashes
A corpse is full of life
I never saw myself as an ax murderer
More like a liberator
Freeing this long dead thing
Uncovering what it never showed in life
Chopping methodically
Aim, raise, swing
Using my knees
A moment tastes like sweat and mushrooms
Spring feels like summer
When the human machine overheats
Mechanical energy hot enough to start forest fires
Raw labor can be so centering
Too much for one session
Spread it out over days
Over hours
Savoring blunt force trauma
Like a worn out wood chipper
Making mulch of the underworld
One time I got so hot I had to get naked and hug a frozen turkey
It sounds crazy until you’re doing it
A dead bird embrace may be the only thing that can comfort you one day
I recommend putting a towel under it
It’s bad for the tissue to be exposed directly to something so icy and fowl
I drank at least two or three gallons of water
Sweated out to soften the hardest parts
Wood splitting like fault lines
Splinter showers like lumberjack wet dreams
Back building swings hoisting sharp tools
Like scalpels jacked up on steroids
Exacting revenge for the origin of paper cuts
Obsession worth syncopal episodes
Sloppy determination clouded with yellow spots
Finishing the job with my bare hands
Grizzly and growling polarity in brown and black
Wrenching the last chance at life from the earth
I stare into emptiness and soil
And curl up to let my Mother hold me




THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY POETRY






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