The Buried Museums

Holy Grail, hollowed bone, half buried in the dirt. Above the 
Brow God is moving his furniture, wardrobes of thunderclouds, 
heavy     driving migraines into your skull

Within these hills there are buried museums. Gleaners, 
looters, archaeologists scrape the dust, sift for clues. When 
the rain comes flashfloods will turn this dirt to mud, 
exposing doll’s prams, tin bathtubs, a mangled accordion wheezing

Boy on a stolen moped dragging it uphill towards the church    
               cowboy swagger

I sit by the shrine of plastic flowers rolling a joint with 
shaking fingers. A cracked Now That’s What I Call Music CD 
hangs from a tree, a fetish token for the homeless woman 
                winter-death, grief-moon

Dig into the dirt with the heel of my boot remembering the Dog 
King. Somewhere down there in an old tin can are his tethering 
ropes, latch keys, can-opener, flick knife      cassettes of mad 
muttering, dog-howl

In buried museums beneath these hills, your memories, earth-
weighted mad saint’s bone relics, nightmare archive.

Jeff Young is a Liverpool based writer for radio, theatre
& screen. His memoir ‘Ghost Town’ was shortlisted for the Costa
Prize and his second memoir, ‘Wild Twin’, tells of his years
hitching around Europe & living in Amsterdam squats.
Poet, performer, visual artist & broadcaster, collaborator
with artists & musicians, he is currently writing ‘Lucid Dreamer’,
an alternative history of Liverpool counterculture.
Bluesky http://@wildtwin.bsky.social