2022.12 Excavation

Do you ever set out to write one thing and then it twists out from under you in a wild knight’s move and you’re suddenly somewhere completely different? Yeah, me too…

She takes a deep breath, leans forward, says: “It’s not as if–”
then stops. She has that frown, a glyph of sweet concern, “You see, we–”
stops again. It’s not that I don’t understand, we want
the same things, it’s impossible not to gather every effort to the
fight, but while we’re deliberating ethics, other are reaping the rewards
of being more ruthless, scattering tactics like caltrops; fragments of
rage at being bereft of significance, of vigilance missed, of being
suddenly unhitched from what they considered their destiny. No longer loved
just for their existence, they’re scrambling to make sense, jealous of what we
are gathering, finally: the birthright of humankind. “But do you have
the right?” she asks, “Really?” My turn to frown and she points to
one side, where something pants, ready, waiting to submit–
No: subject us to division, derision for peace each line of its manifesto.
And I go cold at the sight of its manic rage, the writhe and seethe
of it, and I am struck, utterly, way too late, by the mortifying
realisation that all of us are in this for a longer haul, an ordeal
we never needed to bleed through. But some folk lost their proof
of our humanity and we must hunker down for the sake of being
safe harbour for those who come after us, but for how long? That’s unknown.

Image taken from a Hard Times piece about Scrooge McDuck and bitcoin

I think I’ve been hanging out with too many Young Folk, who talk in demi-memes culled from Tumblr (and sometimes TikTok), so I’ve only known the quote I’ve used for this Golden Shovel form in fragments (often misquoted to boot). Luckily, Google found me what I needed from my partial phrase, and I spent an unconscionable amount of time testing it on a new tab of the Concrete and Repeating Forms Spreadsheet, which is expanding massively this year, for some reason!

Quite why I went from “I will write a Golden Shovel poem, and it will be a light and possibly mildly flippant take on love and affection.” to Somewhat Political from Line 4 to Practically Apocalyptic from Line 12 is beyond me! Such interesting times we’ve living in…