"miners" poems
mighty mighty miners
mining for a heart of cryptocurrency
mighty mighty houses
might end up empty
for fake fortune
for a drop of wine
for a speck of grain
for fake fortune
nec·ro·man·cers quick with answers
will you be their broke financiers
will you be their paraplegic dancers
you've got nothing to lose
just a shield of children
wielding weapons
no one knows how to use
mighty mighty miners
mine on empty
too much vacancy
in a heart of cryptocurrency
all one person
all one horsemen
all fake fortune
all one horsemen
wish NPC weren't too dumb to understand
mighty mighty houses built upon sand
because every time jeff eats an iguana,
he's got the whole free market in his hands.
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 12:22 AM UTC
the bus poets
we are the modern day chimney sweeps,
the ***** black faced coal miners of the city,
digging up its grit, toasted with its spit,
the gone and forgotten elevator operators,
the anonymous substitutable,
still yet glimpsed occasionally,
grunts of urbanity
provoking a surprised
whaddya know!
once like the bison and the buffalo,
we were thousands,
word workers roaming the cities,
the intercity rural routes and the lithe greyhounds
across the land of the brave,
free in ways the
founders wanted us to be
us, the stubs and stuff,
harder working poor and lower cases
we were the bus poets,
sitting always in the back of the bus,
where the engines growls loudest,
seated in the - the most overheated
in winter time, so much so
we nearly disrobed,
and then come the summer,
we were blasted with a joking
hot reverie from the vents,
but vent, no, we did not!
no - we wrote and wrote of all we heard,
passion overheated by currents within and without,
recording and ordering the
snatches and the soliloquies of the passengers,
into poem swatches;
the goings on passing by,
the overheard histories,
glimpsed in milliseconds, eternity preserved,
inscribed in a cheap blue lined five & dime notebook,
for all eternity what the eyes
sighed and saw
books ever passed
onto the next generation in boxes from the supermarket,
attic labeled, then forgotten beside the outgrown toys
with our names writ indelible with the magic of
black markers
if you stumble upon a breathing scripter,
let them be, just observe,
as they, you,
these movers and bus shakers,
as they, observe you
tell your children,
you knew one in your youth,
then take them to the attic
retrieve your mother's and father's,
teach your children
how to read, how to see,
the ways of their forefathers,
the forsaken,
the bus poets.
Sep 29, 2017
Sep 29, 2017 at 7:53 AM UTC
_1981_
They came in like diseased eagles; mutated
forms of those they wore on their chest and
with the change once again in the weather,
the ZOMO swooped in to quell what was
‘wrong’, what would bring them down. They
run in the streets as well as the miners,
running for different reasons and different
aims. I look down, out my window and see
the army helmets littering the street like rats.
Police. Rats.
I could no longer see a difference. My father
went to work that morning. I clutch my doll
knowing the chance of seeing him again is
Miniscule. Poor.
There is no more cereal in the cupboard;
there is no more cereal in the shop; there is
no more shop. The ZOMO set it on fire when the word
Solidarity
appeared in the window.
“We are closing the border for the safety of the People”
Incorrect. Unjustified.
For the safety of You, the Elite.
“Nine killed in mine shooting”
Which side?
Only the ZOMO carry guns.
Fascism. Communism.
I could no longer see a difference
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 9:40 AM UTC
Lone walker,
In the midst of the crowd his heart was always alone.
Sank into the belly of tribulations,
Unlike the missionary journey of Jonah he was vomited into
more woes.
Like how a beautiful mountain in a wilderness thirst for tourist
So his heart was hungry for love.
If loneliness is synonymous to poverty then he deserved this cross.
Lone walker,
He lonely walked on thorns, struggled with everything, sweated blood.
He lived a life of trapped miners in a cave miles below fresh air.
Lone walker,
Rain of respite barely shower on his path.
Sun bit his skin, dews often united with his tears,
For there was no even a free den for him to rest his head.
His days were worse than the trials of Job,
For he had not even a wife to encourage him to curse God and give up the ghost.
Like an eaglet without a falcon, he was accustomed to crying for his dying talents that was hidden too deep for any scout to discover.
To him the world was empty and void of helpers
Until a moment came when he decided to abort his worries, fears and his ugly past.
In a flash he recalled the parable of the talents,
In a speed of lightning he stood and put his hidden gift into use.
I key my mind into the eyes of the reader of his biography,
As I stood in the midst of his children offspring in his burial ceremony fit for kings,
With the assurance that he is not walking alone to heaven or hell indeed
And surely his once lonely heart would be filled with merriment and peace.
Dec 21, 2013
Dec 21, 2013 at 6:47 PM UTC
It was hard in the Moonta Mines that year
For the miners, down in the pit,
It wasn’t a place for a weak man, but
The Cornish Miners had grit,
They burrowed deeper with every day
Extracting the copper ore,
And the skimps grew high in the heaps that piled
Not far from the Moonta shore.
They wore their helmets deep in the mine
With a candle fixed to the brim,
And worked in the glow of the candlelight
While the pumps pumped out and in,
They pumped for water, they pumped for air
For the air in the mine was rank,
And water seeped at the lowest lode
Where the atmosphere was dank.
They built their cottages out of lime
And mud, with a building board,
On Sundays, that was the only time
Once they had prayed to the Lord,
The Cornish Miners were Methodists
Built numerous churches there,
And Cap’n Hancock had said, ‘Attend!
Or your job is gone – Beware!’
Those men of flint had hearts of gold
And they raised their children fine,
Sons would follow their fathers then
And go to work in the mine,
One Christmas Eve they were gathered there
By their hundreds, on the green,
A candle lit on their helmets each
Like a glittering starlit scene.
The wives and children were there as well
With their voices raised in praise,
The swelling sound of an angel choir
With their humble miners ways,
They called it Carols by Candlelight
And the movement grew apace,
It spread all over the world from this
The Moonta Miners grace.
David Lewis Paget
Jan 1, 2014
Jan 1, 2014 at 3:33 AM UTC
Like sentinels of days gone by
They're silhouettes against the sky
A headstone for those still below
A monument we proudly show
Of times when our tin was the very best
when quality counted not paying less
When the work was hard and the day was long
And the mines were filled by the miners song
Their hymns tell tales of life in the deeps
where darkness surrounds and dampness creeps
where disaster can be just a minute away
and you thanked the lord for every day
For generations all our menfolk
proudly joined the line
never once imagining
that we'd outlast the mine
Aug 5, 2010
Aug 5, 2010 at 3:12 PM UTC
for Alyssa Underwood
~~~
my poems do not trend, go viral,
Fast and Furious!
yet, they do not die
they lay in plain sight pebbles scattered,
smoothed by time,
upon the surface of the
green earth waiting patient, virtuous,
purposed for itinerants bards
to trip over one
one some someday
somehow they accrete a readership,
slow stepping and steady from,
|the seekers and the stumblers,
the droplet drinkers,
meanderers of the tomes and tombs of prior years,
miners for nuggets in the poem pools that form
beneath the alluvial streaming
of the waterfall crescendo
of words
I like this
when another traveler sends me a like,
a petite amuse-bouche bite of appreciation,
for a long ago, barely recalled, writ,
allowing them to carve their initials upon the
external, visible roots of my tree trunk,
invading me, by darkening a prior tree internal ring,
forcing me to look down,
look back,
take measure of myself,
accepting myself as not wanting,
nor lacking in other's acceptance
these statements are neither boastful or illusory,
*yet still joyous, like caramel pleasures,
slow to chew, fast to the taste,*
reminding me of old friendships,
well valued,
though no longer fully employed,
their uncovering is my own refreshed exposure,
their discovery is my own re-discovery,
exposing flaws and fallacies,
even fallow,
mostly shallow facts
about me
all of them,
a sundae of truths and lies, sharing a happy laugh
with and at
me,
when I think to myself,
Holy Crap! did I write that?
copyright 2015 by Nat Lipstadt
Oct 8, 2015
Oct 8, 2015 at 3:35 PM UTC
Beat-Up Old Car
Vastly under-appreciated possession
In dull blue, a MK1, no less, with original rust
Inside lingering scents of Exchange and Mart
top-notes of WD-40 and miscellaneous mix tapes
A car like this gets into your life
in lumpy knuckle-barking unsubtle ways,
stays there in subtle ones
That long drive back to Yorkshire
in the quintessential exemplar
Clutch cable snaps.
****** and Crap.
Hardly helpful but can be accommodated
with enough thought
rough though it is
on starter motor
and nerves whenever
anticipatory powers inadequate
and we are forced
to a complete red-light stop
Brakes dodgier, exhaust noisier
than ideal or legal
Gender-ambiguous
elderly tyres flirt outrageously with slick tarmac
Showing their canvas underwear
and male-pattern baldness
Keeping this unstable, unsafe, unreliable
ultimately essential lump of metal
moving and on the road
is a fine art
Engaging, fluid and intense art;
The Clash and The Specials
Costello and The Cure in support
A distraction then
getting hauled over by plod
somewhere near Bury St. Edmunds
Thatcher's boys.
Tax? MoT? Insurance? ID?
No real interest shown
Any passengers in the back?
Clearly no. Pickets?
Pickets? What?
Please open the boot sir... Oh.
On your way lad. Drive carefully
I was, officer, I was
More than you will ever know
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 9:52 AM UTC
The Miner, Absolom
(a haibun)
green hill where sheep graze
white bones and coal, buried, held
seasons all the same
My grandfather worked in the mines from age thirteen to seventy. His life was closed in by mountains, the green one at the back, the dark looming one at the front and the pit head along the valley., winding the men in and out of the shaft, day after day, dawn until dusk when they came home singing
boots ring on the road
deep valley voices echo
backyard starlit smoke
.
They worked on their bellies or crouched, often in water for days, water that undermines rock. Shaft collapses where frequent. Life was cheap. He came home covered in coal dust to his wife and two sons, sons he was determined to keep out of the mines. Yet he loved that coal - coal that he always polished with care before lighting a fire, brushing dust off black diamond surfaces.
water breaks through rock
with wood and straining shoulders
man becomes the beam
He saved twenty lives that day, men he had known from boyhood. When his lungs were affected they laid him off, no pay, no pension, no life. He bought an insurance book with the money he had and every day he trudged over the mountains and valleys gathering pennies that would help to secure some livelihood to the widows who lost their men in the mines. He never told his wife that when a family couldn't pay he put the pennies in for them rather than leave them unprotected.
winter, summer, fall
the mountain hangs over all
tired to the backbone
When the mines were nationalised my grandfather went straight back to the coal face despite his age. He wasn't going to miss those days of glory. Safety was suddenly the watchword and changes were made very fast. Hot showers were installed at the pit head and the miners came home clean at last.
men stripped to the skin
hot water, steam, baptised
brothers singing hymns
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 9:25 PM UTC
© 2009 (Jim Sularz)
Quiet mounds of yellowed tailings and dead weeds whisper low.
And proud rusting relics telling tales of striking gold.
The rush from East, from North and South, by wagon, train or foot.
Days not all that long ago, in tall ships made of wood.
“A gold rush struck in’49, all quite by accident.
A burning fever that cut men to bone, in a sea of dingy tents.
Day and night, they toiled and tolled, many headed home without a cent.
But some packed out bags of glistening gold, and made a stop at "Buzzard’s Breath."
"The town’s mud logged street, deep with horse manure, bubbled like a shallow grave.
With a Sheriff’s office, a livery stable, and a church for souls to save.
And a fancy house, on a grassy knoll – sign read, “Madam Lil la ****
With soft, curvaceous ladies who mined for hearts – and gold of a different sort.
Didn’t take long before easy gold, was extremely hard to find.
And burly miners, tough as steel, moved in to hard rock mine.
With bloodied knuckles, dented hats, they blasted at a furious pace.
To find the gold, called the Mother Lode, yellow blood coursing through their veins!
The mine they worked was called “Long Shot”, the men thought that name a curse.
But the miners hankered for the handle, "Buzzard’s Breath”, and the mine’s name was reversed.
As luck would say, they held a royal flush, when they hit that horse-wide vein.
Of the purest gold, yet to be found, this side of the Pearly Gates.
Eyes wide as saucers, they were all in awe, everyone was filthy rich.
The miners should have all retired and should have cashed in all their chips.
But a man’s hard to figure, when his blood is yellow, and he’s stricken with a gold fever.
“Eureka! Boys, *** the dynamite and a whole lot more mining timbers!”
They mined that vein to the bowels of the Earth, and the heat increased by day.
"Buzzard’s Breath" became the hottest place, to Hell – the shortest way.
And then one day, the men never came back. – Hell must have jumped that claim.
Of the purest gold, yet to be found – that’s where the Devil mines today!”
Quiet mounds of yellowed tailings and dead weeds whisper low.
And proud rusting relics telling tales of striking gold.
The rush from East, from North and South, died a slow and quiet death.
Along with days of tall wooden ships, and the ghosts of Buzzard’s Breath.
Jul 8, 2012
Jul 8, 2012 at 5:46 PM UTC
Last night I woke up
to the light of 1000
dead children from other
places where faces have
forgotten how to smile
in ***** white shirts
and smudged skirts
holding up lanterns
like lost miners looking
for answers in a dark hole.
Mar 20, 2016
Mar 20, 2016 at 10:41 AM UTC
Press your ear close.
Sometimes you can hear the breath
rattling in my chest like a bone shrugged
its moorings and ought to be tied back down.
It’s the sound of a canyon
trying to expel a marsh:
hear the stones tumble down,
clatter and splash,
the stiff reeds scouring the walls.
Stuck bristles. Sticks.
The marsh is dauntless.
It can’t be pushed out through
the canyon’s narrow mouth.
It’s the sound of a cave-in.
Press your ear close and
listen to picks and shovels
plinking on the rock.
Soon the oxygen gives out
and all the miners go to sleep,
or they punch a hole through
to the sky and breathe,
mouths pressed to the breach,
gasping a little at a time.
It’s the sound of a brier patch
growing in your lungs.
It’s the sound of a brier patch
set on fire.
Oct 18, 2011
Oct 18, 2011 at 10:26 PM UTC
Australia takes her pen in hand
To write a line to you,
To let you fellows understand
How proud we are of you.
From shearing shed and cattle run,
From Broome to Hobson's Bay,
Each native-born Australian son
Stands straighter up today.
The man who used to **** his drum",
On far-out Queensland runs
Is fighting side by side with some
Tasmanian farmer's sons.
The fisher-boys dropped sail and oar
To grimly stand the test,
Along that storm-swept Turkish shore,
With miners from the west.
The old state jealousies of yore
Are dead as Pharaoh's sow,
We're not State children any more —
We're all Australians now!
Our six-starred flag that used to fly
Half-shyly to the breeze,
Unknown where older nations ply
Their trade on foreign seas,
Flies out to meet the morning blue
With Vict'ry at the prow;
For that's the flag the Sydney flew,
The wide seas know it now!
The mettle that a race can show
Is proved with shot and steel,
And now we know what nations know
And feel what nations feel.
The honoured graves beneath the crest
Of Gaba Tepe hill
May hold our bravest and our best,
But we have brave men still.
With all our petty quarrels done,
Dissensions overthrown,
We have, through what you boys have done,
A history of our own.
Our old world diff'rences are dead,
Like weeds beneath the plough,
For English, Scotch, and Irish-bred,
They're all Australians now!
So now we'll toast the Third Brigade
That led Australia's van,
For never shall their glory fade
In minds Australian.
Fight on, fight on, unflinchingly,
Till right and justice reign.
Fight on, fight on, till Victory
Shall send you home again.
And with Australia's flag shall fly
A spray of wattle-bough
To symbolise our unity —
We're all Australians now.
3.5k
Come up north to see the great outdoors
Rolling hills
Scenes leaving you wanting more
Never mind the weather
Whether its rain or shine
Grab a pint
Sit down
And enjoy our way of life
Born and bred northern boy
But no flat cap or corduroys
Yorkshire til the day I die
I'll represent that West Yorks sign
Faithful to my northern life
Faithful to my northern rhyme
Brought up well with northern vibes
Through hard times, miners strike
Times when maggie thatcher tried
to stir up **** with lies designed
Got miners and police to fight
But don't believe that southern hype...
Those brutal battles gave us life
It redefined our future times
Redefined our future lines
Redefined the northern kind
Redefined our northern humour
Redefined our northern style
Tourists come from far and wide
to find out what the North is like
Expecting lack of cultured life
Surprised we're not uncultured swines
Rewarded with our northern minds
Our northern ways
Our northern lives
Come up north to see the great outdoors
Rolling hills
Scenes leaving you wanting more
Never mind the weather
Whether its rain or shine
Grab a pint
Sit down
Enjoy our way of life
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 3:50 PM UTC
There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal,
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall.
I listened for a tale of leaves
And smothered ferns,
Frond-forests, and the low sly lives
Before the fawns.
My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer
From Time's old cauldron,
Before the birds made nests in summer,
Or men had children.
But the coals were murmuring of their mine,
And moans down there
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men
Writhing for air.
I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,
Bones without number.
For many hearts with coal are charred,
And few remember.
I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed:
Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,
In rooms of amber,
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our life's ember;
The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned;
But they will not dream of us poor lads
Lost in the ground.
2.9k
Mining we do
for survival and art..
repeating processes
both ancient and modern..
beginnings are quiet
seeded by necessity..
badgers dig holes
earthen tunnels and paths
powerful digging discoveries
sustaining of life..
coal miners diggings
dark labor below
planting cities above..
data mining
a technology
new in our time
computer's patterns emerging
never before seen..
startling creation
of many new
wholes...
Dec 30, 2011
Dec 30, 2011 at 5:13 PM UTC
The thrush fly from up north
locomotives leave at 05.20 precisely,
they follow weeping miners
with ballletic dreams
sipping Burton ale.
Sep 22, 2013
Sep 22, 2013 at 2:00 PM UTC
HE lived on the wings of storm.
The ashes are in Chihuahua.
Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado
Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks.
Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy
With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain.
They killed swearing to remember
The shot and charred wives and children
In the burnt camp of Ludlow,
And Louis Tikas, the laughing Greek,
Plugged with a bullet, clubbed with a gun ****
As a home war
It held the nation a week
And one or two million men stood together
And swore by the retribution of steel.
It was all accidental.
He lived flecking lint off coat lapels
Of men he talked with.
He kissed the miners' babies
And wrote a Denver paper
Of picket silhouettes on a mountain line.
He had no mother but Mother Jones
Crying from a jail window of Trinidad:
"All I want is room enough to stand
And shake my fist at the enemies of the human race."
Named by a grand jury as a murderer
He went to Chihuahua, forgot his old Scotch name,
Smoked cheroots with Pancho Villa
And wrote letters of Villa as a rock of the people.
How can I tell how Don Magregor went?
Three riders emptied lead into him.
He lay on the main street of an inland town.
A boy sat near all day throwing stones
To keep pigs away.
The Villa men buried him in a pit
With twenty Carranzistas.
There is drama in that point...
...the boy and the pigs.
Griffith would make a movie of it to fetch sobs.
Victor Herbert would have the drums whirr
In a weave with a high fiddle-string's single clamor.
"And the muchacho sat there all day throwing stones
To keep the pigs away," wrote Gibbons to the Tribune.
Somewhere in Chihuahua or Colorado
Is a leather bag of poems and short stories.
2.8k
Somewhere deep in the skies of Montana
a lonely street corner flickers
casting coded light
upon the distant albino hillside
It was once a great lake
of snow and ice and melt and
unseen by life
It drained and died
and its beautiful lakebed sands
became the hillside
again
to tumble and fall
into valley and time
again
there we built an impermanent road
we pave and pave
maintain
with trucks and slabs of dirt and grain
roaming those Roman roads
again
Somewhere deep in that heartland
the strings that pumped the musculature
of a dying nation
slowly giving way to a violent attack
from within
oxidize and pool
into great tides
to one day see the coast
I am in California
but I see it clearly as a dream
where the great plains meet the mountain face
and the Cheyenne carved their heels into the dirt
for a bit
spirit
eroded into the winds
today the miners spit
at a coffee-town bar
into copper cans
licker than split
Owning the land that shakes
and shifts
redrawing god's lines
with a paper pad and a pen
for a bit
And the dresses the ladies wear shine
lacquered wood and the horses cry
and beside the interstate
the trucks steam and chuff
and their drivers gaze starry-eyed
onward, beyond into the night
beyond those flanking hillsides
to the flat ocean land sponged anew
that left the oil fields in Texas and the tar sands in
Athabasca
set ablaze in the fervor
of a death rattle
American heart
pumping to feed these hillsides
again
for tomorrow we begin.
Jun 13, 2018
Jun 13, 2018 at 2:18 PM UTC
They carved a monument out of stone
Made it stand so proud,
Down by the coast,
Fishermen drowned.
They erected a monolith,
In the heart of town.
For local fallen lads,
In bitter conflicts.
They laid a stone flat,
At pit entrance where,
Miners had gone one morn.
Never to return.
A brother worked that boat.
An uncle fell in that war.
A father left down the pit.
A family’s history drawn
By sorrow and tragedy.
© Nick Strong 2014
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 2:30 PM UTC
Come see black night. Black night proposes
more
Than madness in a prophet's dream, sets free
A lean uncertainty, sweet taste of all
We dare not see.
My sweet Kathryn, you were older than me,
Knew all the black mountains--Olson, Creely, Duncan, Morley, Dorn... While I
was learning
Levertov. Your dark, unshaven armpits
Drove me wild. I understood the honor
Of that crazy night--how could feather leave you--
our dance at the outlaw bar,
Your sapphic gaze bemused by coal miners,
In cowboy boots, as the band played Haggard,
Coe, Willie, Waylon, Johnny Cash, Kristofferson
& Emmy Lou. I wouldn't trade it for a date
With Miss Brazil, or Russia as it were--
Some people say you made that up,
Changed heritage and grew the hair to seem more European. I couldn't care
Less. A great dark mystery I loved
Now thirty-seven years ago with me
Just old enough to drink and you come down
From Bingington, I loved the way you said
That frozen town, where your husband lingered,
Teaching English to native speakers.
I know you still loved him. I think you loved
Me, but needed a woman's touch the same
As I. Strange how a night can be recalled
More than years, one drunken naked sunrise,
Pillow talk instead of class. I ditched the speech
At PBK, can't remember what they
Fed us, coming for you in a straight shift
Chevy pickup, red as the night was black.
Oct 13, 2018
Oct 13, 2018 at 8:38 PM UTC
.ah here comes england with its eccentricities, ah hier kommt polen mit seine christentum: where anyone can be a messiah, as stressed by the byzantines.
my first love was the love of the english grey,
(in honesty mentioned it was
the double-decker first, since
i fancied myself the great bus-driver of
the no. 5 bus back home)
earl grey came and said: ‘i can’t look
at these skies without sunglasses!’
and so it was, mid-autumn with sunglasses
at loss the sun-worshiper
enter the moon idiot,
looking for accents, looking for anything.
in england they called him das deutsche -
for reasons believable enough;
the luftwaffe eagerly anticipating the tunnelling
centipede that is the euro-star train-tunnel:
the panzers are rolling in!
the panzers are rolling in!
strange he never minded the coal-miners as useful
as minded by edvard gierek von silesia -
to the dispute of silesians not ex-patriated to saxony
(oh wait... texan boy doesn't sound as
nationalistic as minnesota boy?).
ooh pokey poo... writing about germany
became so **** so recently, i forget that i started it:
here’s to the english language’s chirality of s and z,
actually being superimposable:
from words in the socratic sense as encoded by plato
i don't get a bunch of ideas... virtue
does not make me ponder it with meaning or definition,
i only see the kabbalistic sensibility
of anti-alphabetical sequencing as v
i r t u e...
otherwise e i u r t v;
almost sounds like s.t.d.
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 6:33 AM UTC
i loved you, right
a love unreturned,
unrequited
but alas, still
stoked by little miners with
hearts of brass their
iron faces grimacing at the task,
little beads of lots of sweat
dripping down their
taut frowns.
so what i meant to say is that
i love you, right,
and it’s a love that still
burns, bright, enough
to bring the boys home but
let’s be honest
it wouldn’t best the sun, but
**** it’s a terrible light,
it throws everything into a soft relief
where pretty, soft voiced sheep say
pretty, soft voiced things like
‘it’s okay to feel this way’
‘i want you to be happy’
‘she sounds amazing’
and other things that normal people
tell me mean that either
i don’t love you
or i’m moving on.
they don’t understand though,
i mean,
i love you, right,
though all that sheep **** makes it
sound as if
i’m waving you off,
smashing the celebratory champagne on your bow,
waving you off into the distance with a lacy hanky,
joyful tears cascading down my powdered cheekbones,
i’m greedy
maybe even,
needy,
a disgusting word and
even if i make pacts with myself
to the order of
‘he can do so much better’
‘i am damaged goods’
and other associated half truths
i’d be a liar if i said that
i would kick you out of bed
or even rebuke the slightest of
advances, no i’d take my chances
and i cannot bear it, really
i’d touch you and whatever wholeness
whatever someone else would
parse as clean or pure or holy
wouldn’t disintegrate, no
wouldn’t tarnish, no
would most probably just implode
under the combined pressure
of emotionally-mentally-fucked-in-the-head-doe
(where the **** do you think the miners got all that coal)
so, yes… wait. no?
i love you, right
but just ignore it
enjoy the lights
please remember them
tell your friends and
cherish them until
they are taken by
death, drink, dementia
but i’m sure your mum,
teacher,
or television
long ago informed you that
bright lights are detrimental to vision
so think of your future and
forget now
if you’re tempted by how i look at you
remember how
sunburn seems innocuous
until you see your skin
and sunscreen pretty useless
‘til you learn the sun will win
and the best way to avoid
dainty melanoma
is
to
go
inside
and
lock
your
door
and act like you don’t know her.
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 11:51 PM UTC
I am a miners daughter. I am a gold panners' wife.
He is busy gold panning while I run around the forest enjoying nature.
Left alone, of no interest, no comparison to the prospect of gold.
As I sit here naked, I wish that I was an interesting as the prospect of gold.
I wish my gold were being sifted from the sands, with his hands.
I am pure gold, why can't he see.
He bought the claim, he has the deed.
But my gold goes unnoticed, as does my needs.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 2:30 AM UTC