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I'm a mineral who thinks it's a miner
even if I can't tell coal from gold
I offer my excavated treasures to the public
only to be told they're rocks
by obsidian hearted pebbles
so I quietly return to my quarry
and get on DraftKings Sportsbook
who pays me for saying the Nuggets will win
pulling validation from the gravelly depths
and showing promising riches to be unearthed
appealing to my **** and wallet
to subvert my brain
but I can't just switch off and call it
considering what could be attained
digging deeper and deeper down
people call down from the ground
but they never cared when I was around
and I'd rather get gems for the **** in my mind
than get **** for the gems in my mind
so I continue my decline
until rock bottom is mined.
Maria Mitea Nov 2022
Nobody knew I am on the road
Except for Ronda,

I had new responsibilities,
The money helped to  survive with food, heat, and electricity,

Every Monday
I go back to the bush, and she takes care of the home,

It was just live,

And it was good,

Because we cared for each other,

We met in a strange way,

The toilet was filled with  ****,

They were living like this, and being taken advantage of,
Nobody has to leave in those conditions,
For food, she was getting money from her father,  a  trapper, and fisherman,

I wanted to take care of her, and Wendy,  her little daughter,

Ronda was looking for love in a relationship,

She knew that would take care of her.

The trailer where she was living, that trailer was on her father's property,
The property was big enough, a refrigerator plant, that kept the hunting food frozen for the winter,
It had other places where he can put a dead hunted body,

I tried my best.

What did she do after you were gone?

She found love,

Ronda,  Wendy, Teresa,

I am not there,

So much shame, so much regret,

I was working up in Ear Falls, a gold mine,  more than a mile deep into the earth,
Working with my  hands, explosives

So much shame,
So much regret,
I lived with the pain of not holding, not even once,  holding my daughter in my arms,

Explosives, made by the Chinese, invented by the  Nobel,
He made all his money by selling gunpowder, blowing out the earth,
And this is where the mining started,  
After each  explosion, we go down into the mine and  take the all rock out with our hands,

All my life I lived with the pain of not holding my daughter in my arms,

Later he invested in Nobel prizes,
but,
She knew
Love will take care of her.
.
Don Bouchard Jan 2022
Eastern Montana Badlands
1930s....

Coal where one found it,
Scoria hills,
Layered lignite
Waiting near the surface.

Burning lignite beds,
Smoldering centuries old,
Scarring and turning clay to scoria,
Crumbling rock,
Testimony to lightning fires
Beneath the hills.

Crude mines backed into cliffs,
Pick and shoveled coal
Free for the risky taking
Heated homes.

Coal caves,
Low and gaping,
Horizontal shafts.
Wagons first, then
Trucks backed in.

Crowbars and picks
Brought lignite ceilings
Crashing in rotten shatters
Mounding, sometimes burying
Trucks below.

My father told me
How he helped
Chris Ginther,
Deaf coal miner,
Hammer holes,
Insert charges,
Long fuses, trailing.

Old Chris packing holes,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Tamping...
Lighting fuses,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Tamping.

My father said he'd yell
"We need to go!"

Old Chris
Seemed never to hear,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Tamping,
Until finally...
Sauntering out
Before the rumbling Thump.

I can see the two,
Chris and my father,
Just a boy,
Lost in lignite clouds,
Coughing.
Funny how even 10 years gone, I can hear my father's voice.... He told us this story many times while we were growing up.
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
The Stake
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Love, the heart bets,
if not without regrets,
will still prove, in the end,
worth the light we expend
mining the dark
for an exquisite heart.

Originally published by The Lyric

Keywords/Tags: love, heart, regret, regrets, stake, prospect, prospecting, mine, mining, motherlode, heart, exquisite, silver, gold, platinum
Elliot Prusi Mar 2019
The crumbling, earthen stones,
over which I clamber entrap the ghosts
of those who left before their time.
The cool, glassy tunnels through which I crawl
threaten to give, and bury my corpse
beneath the boulders and rubble.
The creaking catwalk to which I cling
sways ever slightly in the absence of wind,
teasing my toppling doom.
The mammoth steel drums
loom heads over mine, their rattling
and rumbling ceased decades ago.
The rotting apricot timbers
wedged into the endless darkness,
no longer support the tonnage of slabs
hoisted higher than my eyes will find.
The wrought-iron machinery
long stopped in time,
lies warped by the weight of gravity.
The soaring windows
spider-webbed and shattered,
litter the floor with their fractured bones.
And the walls and floors
and ceilings and doors
that once bustled with the liveliness of labor
lie silent.
Written by a man inspired by the beauty of old, abandoned mines.
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