The witches and waitresses
of the Appalachians
follow only one
God.
I have seen her on occasion
carving midnight embers
from her spine
illuminating a divine magic
found only
in the season
of the Gemini.
She hunts by moonlight
chasing the sweetest
perfume of the mountains
indulging in the whims
of the lilacs.
In my dreams
she spins
with the moon
dancing circles
‘round my room.
The dirt of which woman
is made
will be sifted
in the hands
of the Appalachian
Woman God.
And in my sleep
I witness
the creation
of Wild Woman -
a divine prophet
setting the countryside
ablaze
in a rebellion
of foxfire.

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

I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the world.
While I don't take much of nature in it is awe inspiring,
to be sure.
I live within the crook of the oldest mountains in our history.
Not the tallest,
nor the proudest,
but for now these ranges are growing senile within their misery.

The riverrun through it and exposes rock perhaps a billion years old.
Our oral histories, passed on legends,
scary stories and mountaineer folklore accounts for
such a small passage of time.
We built a bridge once.
It was at one time the longest single-span arch in the world.
Now it's the fourth.
Top five, and that's something for which I am proud.
The oldest river, in the world.
The oldest mountains, in the world.
The highest fatal overdose rate, in the States.

There is a beauty to be had here. Somewhat backwards, but
growing up our water was clear.
It's now choked from coal slurry.
The brain drain of young adults leaving, in much hurry,
hurts us as the ones that remain become grey and blurry.
We are living in a permanent winter and we have high roads,
that wind and curve. Dangerous when icy. veins filled with
heavy loads and nodding verve.
I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the entire world.
I can't touch Roman ruins with my hands, or
sift through the Dead Sea and float on salt above sand.
I can't touch the hill where Jesus may have died,
I don't know what it feels like to hold history as pride.
But our trees even when green have a dusty coal darkened sheen.
Summer is overgrowth from the Springtime rains.
The highest fatal overdose rate in the entire United States.

Where once we built bridges to close in the gap of travel.
We unzip black bags with rigs and object with obvious cavil.
Our industry is old, the world is moving on from coal.
For better, to be sure, but in the meantime we grow cold.
Not from lack of heat, we can boil our spoons just fine.
But we need a replacement from shaft or the mountaintop mine.
Let us worry about beauty again,
let us treat addiction with correction instead of levying it as sin.
Remove the pantomiming politician speak
of addicts or the sick as being weak.

Let's find ourselves again, West Virginia. You're the only home I've known.
Childhood summertimes sat beneath canopies of caterpillar home,
the happy baby butterflies eating leaves so more sun could shone.
Walking sticks used to play with me in my yard,
and at nighttime I'd still be outside mouth agape at the stars.
Evening meant lightning bugs and I'd capture a few in the cup of my hands.
There was a whimsy to how nature responded to us,
how bees would bumble and land,
on the dandelions whose seeds I'd spread as I blew on their white
polyp heads.
Maybe it's nostalgia and my memories are tinted rosy.
The smell of wood stoves burning in winter,
the crispness of autumn breezes felt cozy.
There was a trust held in communities, or maybe I was naïve.
Some of my friends made a choice and moved.
Others among us took a more permanent leave.
My brother, too. He himself got in a lot of trouble.
Over the cotton swab boiled to a bubble.
He died when I was young so maybe everybody is right.
It's all sentimentality and a lot of lonely nights.
But does the past being ****** up make the worsening now fine?

I live a breath's away from the oldest river and mountain range.
I live with the highest fatal overdose rate in the United States.

To the limits!
And the heaves are harmed, in our lungs
and arms. Tendons flexed on their utmost,
and breath at play in the drowned coast.

To the shores!
And the leaves are left as specks of colour,
from the moors.
and vacations left the hinterlands
of the decayed, breathless holler.

For the greater good we stood as imagined heroes,
Yet for happenstance to lend a chance in our woes,
required a great many motifs
to clamour and climb
In glamourous time
to the raised butte
of a finishing sublime.

Modulate the past and harmonize the future.
Together tapestry'd, akin to patchwork suture.

We weren't raised this way.
To remain forever at play, workhorses neigh.
And sawing brilliance and sawdust eyes,
rapier wit with no equal.
But together a two-parter,
to the shores to see the sea quell.

Wildfire lick like lit flame.
Burn it all down and give me the blame.
It's a carried burden worth the worry.

In mountains some exist as prideful barons.
Barring the loss of their barren,
their smiles turn smirks of heathen carrions.
Which is fine, and the motif licks again.
And the motive is sublime; it's only sin.

Cherish the children and their rue of thresher-born,
Thomas Ligotti and his party of philosophy,
but I'm too caught in histrionics to allow the matter
to matter.
Beyond the kicking feet of the mirthful pitter-patter,
pitted against the coming solstice of time saving;
forward and back and ouroboros we may.
Hold on tight to this singular day.
Ignorant of the causes of our own decay.
Lost during summers covered in spittle and seaspray.
Only to mount a return, a loss,
to the area most unaccepting of the cost.

To the mountaintops!
**** what you see, and reap what you sow.
Push the mountains down into the crow,
and call out for the all the denizens below,
"Here's another landslide." As you call; Heave, and **.
Pile them neat and plant a seed,
of a tree that hasn't belonged or had a chirped song
in a placidity.

the river winding down below
the rushing sounds of rapids flow

while high above the trees I stand
to breathe the wonders of this land

vast pines outstretching toward the sky
give shelter to the fowl that fly

the covered rocks and earth that stay
stuck forever in their place

for years on end this place has been
untouched by man, untouched by sin

to some it may seem boring, though
to be in such a place alone

hidden in hills, surrounded by stone
but, for me,
it's coming home

the roads always take us
back to west virginia.
the hills we climb lead
to impeccable views,
beautiful hidden scenery
only we knew how to find.
highways became one-lane roads
the gravel washing out,
half-a-million potholes
when you drive on a hillside
like that,
the same rush comes
that you get when you look
over the side of a rollercoaster cart.
but when you’re with your best friend,
the rush turns to comfort.
“if we were to fall off the side of this cliff, I’m glad I’m with you.”  

14:23 5/31/2018

i don't want to, but if i did
you would be there, in blue
jean overalls, no shirt, just skin
with your hair pulled back in a
Kentucky Wildcat baseball cap.

on the porch you would reign
with a cigarette between your teeth
& a piece of wood in your palm
whittling & whistling the night
away, the stars twinkling away.

i don't want to, but if i did
you would be there, in the morning
while i make a *** of coffee, black
like the coal dust lingering on
top of our sunrise kisses.

deep in the Appalachian range,
where the starlight becomes our
city lights, our home in a holler
calls to my heart, and i want nothing
more than to be held
in your arms.

Unmoved by your arrival from the west coast,
ten thousand little things are different.

It’s October and the trees are on fire:
a forge that you won't notice, 'til you're gold.

Your Kicks don’t leave footprints on these cobbled streets;
even the children have old, leathery hands.

Try to paddle-board the Eno and the bass go belly-up:
that river’s for scattering ashes and making moonshine.

All they sell at Aldi is ethnic shampoo,
so now your hair twists like the roots you’ve lacked

'til now, because all you’ll ever need is two hands:
for prayer, and work.

Life moves on like a cigarette’s drag,
while somewhere Hope’s fiddle strums;

Take off your headphones and
go put your ear to an oak.