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JR Rhine Dec 2016
you make me want to listen to Alkaline Trio
ironically,
for their morosity
is no longer my own. and maybe

they'd be happy for me. happily
singing their songs
with a different
lung.
Sarah Oct 2016
We are but a breath
in the lungs of the universe,
a beat in the heart of life,
a blink in the eyes of our ancestors,
a shooting star in the darkness of night.
Robert C Howard Aug 2013
In memoriam Asher and Franklin

Farmers flocked to Blossburg's mines
    willing their abandoned plows
    to perpetual dust and rain.

Burrowing into the Tioga hills
    with Keagle picks and sledges,
    they filled their trams with rough cut coal.

Black diamonds - carved for waiting boilers
    of New England mills and trains
    and Pennsylvania's winter stoves.

Brothers, Frank and Asher swung their picks
    in tunnels deep beneath the hills
    and brushed away the clouds of soot.

Their coughs at first seemed harmless
    enough as from nagging colds or flus -
    but deepened as their lungs turned black.

Pain and choking drove them to their beds
    where no medic's art could aid them.
    Then the coroner came to seal their eyes.

A stonecutter's chisel marks their brevity
    on an marble graveyard obelisk
    that pays no homage to their sacrifice.

September, 2007
Asher and Franklin Howard were my great grandfather Sam's brothers. Both died of black lung disease working the coal mines in Blossburg PA.  Ironically Sam was a railroad engineer who mainly delivered coal from the Blossburg mines to Elmira NY.
AM Aug 2015
Prove me
every love song
you’ve sung
make them all
hear the scream
from your lungs
cause my world
is in complete mist
covered by the amount
of the feeling I miss
so for once
—just for me
just be here
be here
with me
Rockie Apr 2015
Blood, Lungs and Alcohol
Addiction, Hell and Help
How much more
Can Aidan take
Before he decides to die?
Aidan is the main character of something I am currently writing with an alcohol/drug addiction. I've written it here as a poem :)
Hunter K Jan 2015
Mouse,
You were the new addition to the house,
Over the past year I watched you grow,
Oh how I love you so,
You were my pride,
You still are even after you died,
You were my joy,
My sweet little boy,
Why did you have to go?

So frail you were,
Just a dot of black fur,
Little did we know,
In your lungs grew a great foe.

You ran so strangely,
Like a tottering baby,
But we didn't know,
About the pain you refused to show.

Your eyes,
Flutter closed,
Not knowing what was going on,
Not knowing you were gone,
I hope you hold on tight,
To the clouds above me tonight.

Mouse I love you,
After all you been through,
I hope you rest in peace,
And let your soul release,
To the sweet above,
Followed by my ever lasting love.
R.I.P MOUSE 12/24/13 - 1/19/15 died from a lung toomer he was born with, but we didn't catch it soon enough. Rest in Peace, my sweet kitten.
cynosure Aug 2014
Your words crawled through my auditory cortex like caterpillars, preventing me from hearing anything other than the inflection in your deep voice. As your body inched closer to mine, they took residence in my chest cavity, building chrysali that hung off of my ribs making it more and more difficult to inflate my heavy lungs. They cocooned themselves as I too wrapped myself up in you. Suddenly, your lips were on mine and your hands were counting the vertebrae down my back, scaring the insects from their resting place, resulting in chills up my spine. The newly emerged butterflies flew out of my sternum and up into my throat, longing to be closer to you. But then you pulled away and they instantly died, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
Conor Letham May 2014
Could you hold me up-
right, left to sit and stare
though your sifting smoke
columns like a spinal wisp,
wasting away time in your

beautiful lungs. I like to in-
hale the cast-away smiles
you hang over me, into me,
my mind lost in taste to how
your chest is as mild as May.
"Philip Morris launched the Marlboro brand in 1924 as a woman's cigarette, based on the slogan "Mild As May". In the 1920s, advertising for the cigarette was primarily based around how ladylike the filter cigarette was, in an attempt to appeal to the mass market. To this end, the filter had a printed red band around it to hide lipstick stains, calling it "Beauty Tips to Keep the Paper from Your Lips"." - Wikipedia, Marlboro_cigarette

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