I came up in Pittsburgh,
the Rust Belt of hard labor
with a deep love of community.
As children, we collected railroad spikes
from the tracks and we cut our shins
on random iron shards in **** hills.
Some of us were union middle-class
and others breathed the gray air of poverty.
That hardly mattered. As we stood atop
foothills that overlooked the city skyline,
soot embedded under our fingernails,
we lived as kings and queens
that oversaw the future.

-Ron Gavalik

I feel something in my heart,
It goes deeper and deeper
They hammer my heart with rusty nails
I always pull the nails out

I won’t let the rusty nails rust my heart
Because that little damaged heart wants to Protect you from the rust.

I lived with my grandparents
as a boy before kindergarten.
My grandfather, a union boilermaker,
always left for the job early in the morning before I woke.
In the evenings, pap would stumble through
the back door, covered in soot, exhausted.
Sometimes I'd run up to him and hug his leg,
a sign of appreciation, true love.
Pap always laughed in delight at the affection
and then he’d pat my back in approval.

As I clung to pap’s ***** work pants,
the sharp smell of burnt metal filled my world.
It was the scent of the Rust Belt
that often hung in the air around the steel mills
and so many manufacturing centers.
That familiar smell reflected the gritty region,
its culture of hard day labor and heavy Sunday dinners,
the only way of life we understood.

Fifteen years later, sitting together
on pap’s back porch next to his stack of books,
his retirement library, the metallic scent was gone,
along with the steel mills and the rail yards.
‘I miss that smell,’ I said.
Pap kind of frowned and rolled his eyes
in that way when we hear the young and naive
speak without wisdom or experience.
‘I don’t,’ he said.

Iron which has been exposed to the rain, is likely to become rusty.
Weakening, brcoming fragile along the way, changing colours.
Because it couldn't resist the cruel, cold, pungent, sharp rain,
which has been brought by onimous, dark, clouds.
Those have come to claim the heavens, in malice, for themselves as they spread their offspring, letting it fall to the earth, fertilising it.
Once standing proud, the iron faced the weather carelessly, brave,
in such sense that it might have looked intimidating, impressive and
of course noble to some degree.
But for now it has aged, has become frail, feeble and slender.
Distorting its structure until suddenly it is not capable of holding
itself together, falling back down to the earth from which it came.
With enough care and treatment, such a fate would be avoidable,
But it is overlooked, chosen to be replaced instead of getting enough attention and so the metal decays in its oxidation, through time.
Until all of it has become a soft, crumbling powder.
Ruined by the simple raindrops, coming from a stormy day.

~ Umi

Thin metal man
     arms  opened to the
sky
wet clothes
       rust his feet.

floating smoke in the summer air
drifting along then dissipates.
the pounding in a head,
vessels pulsing and constant movement.
fingers dancing across a keyboard, to
incorporate a checklist of knowings and
to-be-knowns -
the insecurities of new scenery
mile marker after mile marker
and you’re happy, but irresolute.

someone tripped over the cord again,
yanked it out and dragged it away

a moment, and a guarantee
let’s look and see, to be sure there’s something more
than a simple crank of a machine, grown
rusted and unmanageable over years
I’m tracing back,
looking for something
I think I missed it.
these fingers that hold my wrist
and suggest
“please, let me assist”
you know what’s best.