Digging up humans

Digging up humans (20th May 2008, 8.26am)

My back is killing me softly and sweetly
Complaining, aching with every clod of dirt
But the pain is an accompaniment appreciated,
As my sinews twist and shriek, it helps me work.

I use my pen as a shovel, rusted and eroded,
Which, through all the years of writing, has corroded
Into a masterpiece of twisted metal, worn and smooth;
My honest implement, my diviner of the truth.

I am trying to dig down through the layers of shit
To the root system of what makes us tick, the core of it;
I want to study, in minute detail, a hundred skeletons
To see if humanness exists without hearts, muscles, lungs;

I’m digging up humans, challenging the gods
Of the underworld to offer up these poor dead sods,
Resting, if not peacefully, at least undisturbed
By modern life, intimately asleep, under the earth.

My arms are strained, my energy drained with each
Lid I break with my spade for the treasure beneath;
My fingernails are rimmed with dirt, blackened
And, with filth, the creases of my fingers are now fattened;

You said it would be dirty work, but my mind was set;
At that elusive little bitch the truth, I had to get;
I study the grime, the slime, the grinning mouths;
I ask their empty eyes whether they feel emotion now:

Does heartbreak waste away with bodily fluids,
Draining and seeping into the ground like sewage?
Is this still life still life? What decomposes with the mind?
Beside these crumbling bones and tendons, what is left behind?

They cannot say, they lie, unmoved and do not speak;
I shake, demand, I yell and harm, but they’re still meek;
No answers, no secrets spilled, no truths allowed to pass
The gates of death; I am no wiser for my desperate task.