john Shelton

john Shelton May 2019

Anytime I go out for breakfast it makes me homesick,
nowhere I have lived, though,
Something that runs in my veins,
Tennessee just isn't wild enough for me.

We don't make gravy with Sausage,
My grandma didn't make it that way,
My mom didn't make it that way,
And me and brother don't either.

So when someone makes me biscuits and gravy,
I often don't like it,
It isn't anything wrong with the flour or fat or meat they put in,
oh wait, there is

Often times I get homesick, all it takes is 3 cups of milk to make that happen

#appalachia

john Shelton May 2019

Black Lung

Our blood has always ran black,
some say it's the coal,
or the gunpowder,
I know it's both

Fierce men,
loving women,
passion, helmets, caves,
helicopters, tanks, graves

I was born to set flowers at the graves of people who tried to be good men.
to plant flowers at the aging yards or clearcuts,
to set seed in the hearts of a lost appalachia,
to lay in empty creeks and cry for the sedge grasses that once covered me.

— The End —