Best Tailings Poems
© 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 told, 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 Tart”.
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, git 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.
Path of Pride
Life is filled with daily choices,
some are easy, others not.
Discernment used between the voices
convict emotional endings sought.
Feelings fueled by poisoned passion,
traits we often try to hide.
Anger, bitterness, in-compassion,
worst of all, our stubborn pride.
A lethal weapon in its right,
strong as steel and double edged.
Uncontrolled yet gripped so tight,
securely in our way it's wedged.
It cuts a path before our steps,
moving forward like a dredge.
It builds us up and knocks us down
and often leaves us on a ledge.
The fuel of pride will drive our ways,
leave us lost or give us gain.
We choose to let it fill our days
with joy and sadness, pleasure and pain.
A story's all we leave behind,
tailings high on either side.
Lift your eyes and choose your way
as you cut your path with pride.
-Jeannie Minor
The sculptor selects
a mallet and a chisel,
repositions the
rock, creates the tailings to
pave the statue’s patron path.
Buddgelin Bey – Translation of Rex Marshall’s « Buddgelin Bey » by T. Wignesan
(Rex Marshall, b. July 16, 1943 at Grafton, belongs to the aboriginal tribe, Thungutti/Gumbaingeri of the Baryulgil
Reserve in New South Wales. He studied up to 6th grade in primary schools and then set himself the task of working for the betterment of aboriginals. The Hardy company’s asbestos mine, situated right in the centre of the reserve, accounted for the deaths (through asbestos poisoning ; l’amiante in French) of many miners and their family members. Asbestos tailings were used for covering roads. Rex Marshall and his fellow kinsmen then set up the Aboriginal Embassy in 1972 in order to draw international attention to « the racist oppression and covert genocide of Aboriginals. » He served on various aboriginal organizations for the uplift of his peoples, both on the regional and national levels. (Inside Black Australia, 1988). T. Wignesan, Paris, December 12, 2016 .
Les nuages noirs s’amoncellent loin dans le ciel
D’un moment à l’autre l’orage va s’éclater
Et Maman le tient à l’œil sans cligner des yeux
En tenant l’hache dans ses mains et en gardant les deux pieds
bien firmes sur le sol
Enfin elle se prépare pour se défendre
Contre le vent déchainé et la pluie se tombant tout autour
En accordance avec ses coutumes, elle devait couper les
nuages orageux
Pendant qu’elle agitait l’hache en chantant avec toute
vigueur
Un rite qu’elle avait hérité de sa tribu
Cette coutume qu’elle pratiquait toute fière d’elle-même
Elle acheva le rite en poussant le cri : « Buddgelin Bey ! »
L’orage est bien sûr dissipé.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016
A Portuguese princess there on the stairs
Knee high and smiling of wish filled cares
A grin of a sprite and a handful of pickings
A thought to feelings and a feel to thinkings
Till pointed announcement, "For you and for you."
A secret left caught in her spirited dart to
Another pressing matter of love and games
A month passed and pity's provocation aims
To knocking on my girl's hollow door
Sounding a nothing echo for the evermore
Wistful angel synced to clocks not mine
So disadvantageous did thine flowers consign
Why not to honouring when I had a lover
Who did not gloat to beauty put asunder
By modern wants and riverless walks
and treeless skies and dreamless talks
Give me back your moment of bestowing
That glinted charm that beckons love's sowing
With a woman I needed and wish as you
To see lover's love letting blue be blue
And fire warmth and winters just waitings
Till red ribbons make kites tailings
Under summer suns, above greenery breathing
Come back again to the stairs and stepping
up to shake my shirt and turn my head
With a handful of love and repeat what you said
"For you and for you" and spirit into my memory
as the omen that begun and beget a true love's story
Pebbles those thick drops of hard rain; earth hail skittering
At the front of your mind growing, sloshing marbled and felt in your teeth
Scratching ache and unbalanced weight rolling forward to escape
Mud mouth soil that packed downslope; viscous vicious
Damming down rivers the chest, collected tunnel tailings pressurize
Expanded space and collapsed place resisting to make face
My guru carries a set of brass knuckles
you'd think he'd be all yes sir and no sir
but instead I get ahah hoho and egad
I can't do anything right on my best day
and I have the branding iron scars to prove it
tattooed in diagonals like barricade tape
Hank's Motor Cottages Sleep With Hank
yes that's his name my guru Hank
he just told me to say menacing presence
instead of the more benign guru baba
a strange man a man of banal mystery
it is becoming evident that he knows nothing
simply landed a place to send his mail
I only let him shave in the kitchen
when he rides in on the Western Pacific
outdoor seating fresh air enjoyable panorama
he likes the outdoors and strangely enough
also likes acres of humming server farms
with a couple of slow pinwheel generators
on a naked hill of uranium tailings nearby
the readings aren't what they used to be
but the kangaroo rats are as big as kangaroos
so you have to drive real slow at night
and keep the fissured windows rolled up
if you have a car like Hank's Hudson Hornet
coffee can sized pistons twin carburetors
and a back seat big enough to live in
it was a big improvement over under a train trestle
Hank has seen a lot of the world and its trestles
been beat up and falling down drunk in a lot of cities
but learned to hit back and take names
his brindle Great Dane has a funny name for a dog
it is Arthur and he can bark it like a battle cry
AR-THURF he goes when Dandelion Hank's cat
taunts him from the back seat rear shelf
Hank dropped in to shave just last night
so we're lucky to have his wisdom right here
for example he has solved world insanity
set your head on fire is basically it
but it probably won't catch on
people believing their own lies
has a momentum to tilt all the ten pins
over at the Bowl and Boogie Lanes
when it's Cicada Night
and the ladies get in free
Come To Me As A Poem
The days of thunder in the cane fields
gone...
lightning strikes on the flat, brown flesh of
earth rushing through the green breaks
and out,
leaving the earth chattering.
Come to me as a mandrake searching
wildly/
through the night air for its mate.
Come to me as human lava and living sea
swells,
desirous swords clashing.
Day and night merge in the twilight
tailings of /
the two and may not come exactly the
same way
again so defy waiting with its still, cold
hands and...
Come to me as a poem...
Come to me as a poem with wild, moist
eyes and --
open, frenzied palms filled with wild
flowers and self
liberated dahlias, a poem brave in the face
of its own
worth and passion.
Come to me like the taste of the cassava
of poems/
the plaintain of poems, the flowing red
embers of poems.
Many are the words of a poem that have
no one looking for
them.
But, look, here I am poemas after poemas
of you in my
palms, a canter of every vowel and
constants you have spoken
to me, every word you have written.
Come to me as a body of poems, fold into
my arms as what/
one needs to say to others.
Purple honey in your going, purple honey
in the poem
of your wise arriving yet again.
Lying on the skin of the earth
are children at play,
With one ear down, they listen
to the heartbeat of the earth.
Their eyes reflect a picture of the earth and sky.
Sunbeams flow from out their face.
There is a line that separates
the sunshine from their own fair hair;
but this, they do not feel;
nor do they see the boundary traced
upon their lips.
A gifted smile
our memory will never leave.
The world we know as life
is far beyond their smaller scope.
It is a breath of arms that cannot reach
their shallow depth of years.
It is the place where flowers are born,
tentacles and firmament begin.
We may not see the air upon which
all things are placed
but we know our children lie
on wishes left behind.
Parents are the tailings of a better life;
the unused portion of their voices
destined for darkness.
The greatest part of all of us lies unseen,
becomes the ice where love is stored.
It is the choice all parents make:
Choosing to live on the lesser part
of who they always wished that they could be
so that one day they can will their dreams
to children who lay upon the skin of the earth
with one ear down, listening to the sound
of an eternal heartbeat.