Best Salt Mines Poems
She has eyes like a magnet, that pulls one in
To a steel web where there is no escape
Then she licks her lips as she watches you
Tease and taunt you, tell you where you have been
And her evil smile, that is her type of rape
Telling you what will happen to you
A Black Widow Spider's heart and cold to the bone
A forked tongue of a snake and she will hiss
The Devil's child, you are her toy
The Queen of Evil sits on her throne
The kiss of death is her kiss
It is you she wants to destroy
You search for a way out, you beg to be free
Desperate, as if there is no hope
Crawling you are at your wit's end
She begs you to flee
To hang yourself, she gives you more rope
Then hugs you like a long lost friend
Freedom is something in a long lost dream
To the salt mines, ball and chain
Her poison, is your water to drink
All the time she is thinking of another evil scheme
So her pleasure will be your pain
Escape, is all you can think
For every tunnel has some light
After a fog lifts, there will be sunshine
Following every storm, it will be calmer
Sometimes it takes a lot of wrong to be right
And goodness will not die on the vine
Even the snake will bite the snake charmer
birth, creation, dark, death, earth, history, metaphor
OUTSIDE-IN---INSIDE OUT! © TANKA
Very green flushed carpets
Sky blue azure topped ceilings
Tree branched sofa chairs
Mirror sea rippling four walls
Windows and doors shut!
REBIRTH! © TANKA
Infant birthing new
Into mankind-likened modes
Start fresh from homed sights
Cultured to suckle blind
On natures ‘tested’ recollected notes
Left ‘one on one’ in thought sense!
Earth’s Time Shares © TANKA
Earth imploding ‘noted’
Fished from science scales to date
Attention everyone
Demise for man’s brutal act
Shrinks to pin-head size!
MARKED SPACES! © TANKA
Caterwauling winds
Float the once settled landfills
Forming 'blocks' of sand
Balanced on set place-mats
Dwindle down to nothings.
A LITTLE SALT PLEASE! © TANKA
Salt beds remain ‘still’
Air-dried salt mines reap
Sea tides, air-dried onto land
Leave the needed salt shares
Flavour 'salted' dressings over time
Enhance life’s food plate!
FORMIDABLE THOUGHT! © TANKA
Too many thoughts stockpile
Hanging words staged 'left'
Rehashed until spent
Sending 'mood-eating’ topics
To announce ‘inner’ moon ‘tides’!
work
SHARED AIMS! © TANKA
Unity bids man
Into work managed mindsets
Oiling the forces ‘toil’
Producing metal and brawn
Empires bleed open!
SET STRIDES © TANKA
Brain building 'strides' learnt
Leg and body builds in time
All in a heady breath count
Balanced events mate
Affecting lifespan!
Sarah earned her salt in the Carolina hills
The year was 1800, they mined to pay the bills
The ground was hard and rocky, the winters were bone chilling
The Cherokee were a mixed lot, some friendly some still killing
And there in Appalachia, the life was hard on mountain folk
And salt was badly needed for preserving meat in smoke
But the salt mines were some days away right through the Indians land
But getting salt was paramount and so a trip was planned
A group of men caught traveling just might provoke a fight
A lone girl might pass safely two days and a night
So Sarah Green of 15 years when the salt ran low
Packed rations on an old plough horse and said she’d gladly go
She followed paths worn down by time and Cherokee and deer
She drank from many creeks she crossed, the water cold and clear
At night she tethered up her horse and built a little fire
To ward off all the wildlife and then she would retire
And once she got to Kingsport where the salt was mined
She purchased all the salt she could then left the town behind
Back through the woods along the path with danger all around
This little girl of 15 years was finally homeward bound
The paths she rode are now long gone, the Indians are too
Homesteaded or paved over as settlers moved on through
But the story of young Sarah and her young bravery
Lives in the Appalachia folk in her family’s memory
I read the story in a magazine and decided it was worth the effort of a poem.
I blow my Saxophone strictly for the pleasure...Its my gift from God one of my many Treasures.
Took care of all eight of my children; Some have college degrees.....I take things
like they come,never hard to please. Took care of my dear ole dad tho he neglected me.
Used to steal moonshine,to help my ole granny. Long ago I did that stuff, myself still a
boy. No small stuff do I sweat ,No strangers have I met. Work hard,hard play,moving
obstacles out of my way.I love my wife, I love my life "Hey what did you dream last night!
God I love my music:My music I love by God! Seventy years old I am,still working in the
mines. "Hey what did you dream last night" When he hits the number he's doing what God ask...doing what God loves,sharing and caring; Blow David ...Blow Your Horn,against all odds,against all adversaries. What a good brother! Hey that's my husband! Hey that's my dad!..Hey that's my uncle Dave,loving his own and others. Passion is his saxophone. He said to write a poem,especially for him..I call him uncle Dave, you see,but he's really a GOOD FRIEND!
End poem
Dave ask me to write this Poem
..he's amazing! And he is still working in the salt mines,playing his saxophone,playing
numbers,and house painting on the side..And asking what you dreamed.
When I Think About
This world my life those lives of every living thing,
I sometimes disdain those commas and mostly those periods.
Something being so final in their brief little dot endings,
I mean why should I stop when my mind keeps running on?
It doesn't pay one damn bit of attention to silly rules,
Flying free within a skull with actually very little room.
So does this mean that paradise might truly be small also?
Now I don't mind tolerating question marks so much.
For me personally they've always opened up new thoughts,
Creating fresh flashes of contemplation never dreamed of.
Only difference between every living thing is quite nothing,
All struggling to survive just long enough to die quickly.
Those explanations always seeming to be there in poems,
Yet they always never appear in any to make their points!
So profound these tiny creatures that words laugh at,
I've lately looked at them as periods with an ********.
Excitement pointed out at the end of just so many words,
Now that is classic expression in a critic's show and tell.
Why can't quotes dance around superlative poetic thoughts?
Just explanation points with hands up in two flying fingers.
Funny how two of these can express such visions of peace,
While just one by itself may well possibly start a war.
Or at least maybe a smaller one between commuting workers,
Raging at those delays that block highways to salt mines.
You may ask if this poet's brain travels many directions,
All at once and at the same time on more than one track?
Yes and the beauty of it is I can and change without injury,
Derailed only by a ringing phone or a knock on my door.
Copyright 2019 Robert William Gruhn A.R.R.
Today I took some photos of yellow flowers
in a field that used to be a battle ground
The locals know little about it, but I think it had
to do with access to the salt mines, and to think
today we try to avoid salt, but back them salt was
a way of preserving food. But naturally the war was
not for commerce, soldiers fought to defend freedom
and they were given the spiel how brutal foes were.
Today it is about oil and we are given many accounts
yet we have many people like the “Sniper” whose
murderous conduct was made in the name of freedom,
when it was fought in the filthy black mass of horror, but
the photos I took showed a field of yellow flowers and
where the word coward is a compliment to those who have s
seen the amalgamation of dreams and the possible
I like hallween
because we can't stop pretending
an outfit on some slinky, hot momma
is reason to act unchained
and we're not unchained enough
people are entwined within their own worlds
too often
to a level
that the rigmarole
of keeping one's head afloat
is tedious and boring
we need a escape clause...
I like seeing extemperaneous happen
it makes me feel alive
because
this holiday is planned out by too many
too many weeks in advance
lacking true spontaneity
and that is why
you can always tell when someone
has busted out an outfit
just to fit in for the night-
home style material that is glued, painted, stretched or hung
from the body
these minds are the heros of the evening
their candy bags are filled with leprechans
but, I only enjoy this once in a while
too much make believe,
and nothing gets done
with massive hangovers
compounded with angel wings
caught in the house plants
so, in the morning, it becomes
obvious
that, once again,
people are bounded
by the "real world"
they've created
and now must return
which are the salt mines
of their ancestors
as whore'o ween
rages on
it's always some type of mental persuasion
we seek
to distract ourselves with
the masks
are what we wear daily
the time to put on a real face paint
and war with the status quo
is now
This isn’t make believe
Where you get to act in movie scenes
It’s real life to me
Seems like you’re programmed to leave
You’ve been nothing but a struggle
You make it hard for me purposely
Stand back and let me float away
Let go of me so you can flea
I miss being loved endlessly
By the kind of man who needs me
You just play games
And dangle the key
Disconnected team alliance
Our flags wave different ways
Sets fire to her defiance
Nods your right, but her heart is a blaze
Suffocating from swallowing fights
Kill the noise that fills her head
Jumping safety to fall from new heights
Burning from things you said
Wounded from wondering
You’re different in the wrong ways
Storm made it’s way thundering
Maybe after all, you are just a phase
Dig deep for the soul you stole
She was broken before
But you had to keep poking holes
Now she’s no more than a chore
Needed to lose a little sanity
To find that the salt mines don’t sting that bad
Curse that damn chemistry
Now drink the gasoline like a nomad
Her tears are real, clearly champagne and crystal,
delicately micro frozen upon her quiescent face;
transparent and invisible, deceives the naked eye,
there for fleeting instants, gone without a trace.
Although their authenticity may well provoke debate
it does not mean they are not truly there;
and though her circuits may be closed in insulating snow
it does not mean she cannot truly care.
What stands between her frailty and the fierce Siberian winds
that prowl perimeters of her heart and freeze
with the coldest chill of salt mines and the emptiest terrain
that brings armies of the hardest to their knees?
The promised blast from a slaughterhouse door upon her naked back
congeals the blood within her veins until it will not run;
emotions thus solidify to guard against the hurt
whilst she begs the thaw of body heat, the passion of the sun.
Yet all the fear and wonder of Winter's destitute domain,
wraps her up in solitude and sets her soul apart;
and she prays for someone with the patient, warmest scalpel kiss
to shear away the frost from her aching, ice-cream heart.
The litter of chatter
On air pitter patter
Like the Galean on water:
The other one without the power
There is a desolateness here
Borders broken
By the commerce of men
Restructured by the twitter
Bringing anomie from the bitter
Knowing of self without fetter
To community and roots
Of anchored ancestry.
Fragments, fragments
Broken stones on jarring landscape
The superficial arguments
Making conditions
Of our dispossession easy
For robber baron twine
The fragile shrubs of history.
Pause
And listen where the minotaur
Make new catacombs
With mind dripping claws
The old heart is speaking so near
Descend the cloud of noise to hear
Or else we fritter, fritter
Away sun upon the salt mines glitter.
Twin drops of sweat
perched on his brow
Salt mines
the butcher's
blood-soaked smock
reeking knife
poised...
feverish to finish
the lady's order
his tear-stained chop
wide of the mark
I am denied a resolute rest
for the stars and master moon lost their
battle with the invading dawn and
their royal king sun that shines through my lids.
Its relentless pet rays beams on me
that a cool refreshing sparkling drink
dries in my mouth and vapors my throat
sending beads of sweat round my body.
In the coolness of my vast salt mines
glaring out the window of despair
to all the wretched gone beings caught in scorch
whereto, short, I will gravely echo.
It governs this, my awaken life
under it, there is no place to hide
I am but a pawn on its chess board
I am under its command, its will.
For now I bide my time neath its day
and await the master moon's return
it will vanquish the royal king sun
and warrior stars will dot the sky.
Jointly, they will rule my restful night
assure that I will not be disturbed
for this part of my life, I am theirs
a balanced me, under their domains.
Date: 05/27/2019
Soledar and a salt mine
The mine is enormous can hide an army of Ukrainian soldiers
the thousands we thought had been killed on the battlefield
The winter is arriving late in this cursed land, no snow falls
The soil doesn’t freeze its soft embrace swallows tiger tanks.
From the salt mines, the ghost army arises in the quiet clamour
to vanquish the enemy, elated is the triumph of the deluded.
Flaring fire across the grassland, harvested grain burns bright
but ghosts are forever bloodless; the world is aghast, to see
their triumph thwarted; the magic of victory was but a dream.