Indefinite Infinity in space and time aye doth toss,
Itself diffusely, enclosing entirety in the cosmos,
Only to baffle the stupid,spellbound ,eerie puzzle
Of forms and moulds that ever keep up the dazzle
Every little odd thing claims its own due existence ;
All great marks, flags and colours make no sense
And look like just little dunes and pits on the spot
Or if more, are spilled,broken and torn ones a lot;
Every living thing darts across to catch the other,
Feed on,feast on or enslave all that it doth gather
The lava that erupts from within the restless land
The lofty sweeps of storms and winds reprimand
The deviant excess that yields the froth and slag
As futile tertiaries do stem out of the empty brag !
There're things much worse than being alone.
Like a stream of cold words cutting to the bone.
Or bruises blooming like lilacs on the face of innocents.
There's always a steel-toed skunk in a field of mint.
Nobody wants to spend their precious days
navigating paths of eggshell. and broken glass.
You don't notice the petals or bells anymore, only the horn of the coming train crash.
Day upon day you dust off the mask
because that's what dusters are expert at.
They put on rose-scented glasses and tap shoes.
Sashay into yet another flinch-battered day.
Hoping there's a patch of robin egg blue.
To temper that vast quilt of blackish decay.
One thing is always in fashion,
that polka-dot pattern of escalation.
Pinnacle of pins and green desperation.
A shallow pond of apology and reconciliation.
Things turn sweet to sour at the speed of light.
A honeymoon never shows you its darkest side.
Once there were diamonds, now there's only slag -
It's past time for a nonchalant lift off that icy crag.
Are we the shade of the shadow
or a shadow in the shade.
Are we sashaying toward pinhole dreams?
While trudging above an open grave.
It all seems like a giant garish gothic play
acts and players hand-picked centuries in advance.
Hobbled masses humbly kneel on crumbs to pray.
Realizing opinion nor ballot was ever worth a damn.
These two-legged, greedy, greasy snakes.
Eyes made of slag have no vacancy signs.
Clogging up our gossamer soul veins.
They're here to minimize, intimidate.
Project, disappear, dismiss, assassinate.
Straitjacket the masses with normalized madness.
We, the people, are not the ones playing God.
Poisoning water, field, sky...
Smiling in the light while eating innocents.
In the shadow of ritual and sacrifice.
These devils openly mock and taunt us now.
(byproducts of a boiling swamp).
Yellowing the face of flailing freedom.
A billion greenbacks can galvanize
such audacity and shallow bravery.
Of these deeply soiled oligarchs
and pathetic plastic kings.
old slag value, as valuable as Value allows it
Then as a valuable secondary source,
the slag resulted from the gold-bearing
electrolytic mud smelting
contains up to 0.8–15 k g t-1
Au and 9–13 kg t-1 Ag, respectively
------------------------------------------------
Coal Ash experiments
sorted theories and Soughted formulas.
Coal ash pits using sewage,
sawdust, and other
dissuaded organics
to recreate renewable coal.
Leaves, shredded wood chipped
wood ash, tobacco stalks
straw hat manure compose
all will be mixed and allowed to
cure to recreate a renewable
source for energy.
Racheter l'ancien Walmart du comté de McDowell,
en Virginie-Occidentale, pour créer un nouveau
magasin et contribuer à la relance
de l'industrie charbonnière locale.
Musique pour basson et cor d'harmonie
Ce genre de musique « Ooh Baby »
The 49er arrives with the virgin sunrise.
But the golden veins have long ago dried.
Pickaxe in hand, dynamite in his good eye.
He's the only one left of the calloused kind.
Back in spring, Blackjack the burro broke free.
Bolting for the last watering hole
Licking the salt from his reins.
Deeper and deeper the miner burrows in.
It's all about double blind commitment now.
The poison of pride over the succulence of time-
Willowy faith over the slag of good reason-
The gristle of isolation over nectar of companionship.
At the very edge of the dimming lamp light.
The black snake has all but tapped the vein dry.
A dusty angel sips the last of the moonshine.
The 49er rolls two stones over two black holes
that once were hazel stars on the rise.
A good thought conceived in the soil of positivity
making its way through shard and slag
finding its way home into the heart.
The slag is cleverly staggered and thickening.
Filled with thorns and horns and dirty rags.
The good thought forced to play pachinko
with a venomous society.
Battered, fanged, and chipped.
The good thought came to a ragged end.
Staggered into the old honey hole.
There wasn't much of anything left.
For a long time, the old barn had quite a lean.
When you'd come around the bend, it was comforting to see it.
Blushing and shifting weight in the sunlight.
It was a great loss when it finally succumbed to gravity and time.
If it could speak, would it speak of great sacrifice
or hardship and good times.
Would it converse with antiques and machinery?
or the shadow of a barn cat and a long-retired tire swing.
The old farmer had quite a lean just before he passed.
Don't believe he ever got to retire.
He bounced up and down those dusty rows for half a century.
There was a lot of wisdom and a sprinkle of secrets in that lean...
A quiet ferocity coiled in those ancient-bronzed hands.
He lived through two world wars and fought in one.
He served- fed and cleaned up the messes of the elite.
He prayed over and buried everything that he loved....
The city slag still called him simple and backwards.
There is something noble about an old farmer.
Securing his gate at dusk.
It must have been made
and rejected
in times grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.
This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth,
soot seared across burnt eyeglasses,
blackened bones,
for after the gas came the flames.
Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, smithereens
dragged across a blind stone floor.
This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.
There is always something left
after the unthinkable,
always some spicule of irregularity,
detritus to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.
Just how green is my valley
Below those dark satanic hills?
How many familial bones
Lay there molding to greyish dust?
Do the words of my forefathers
Echo on beyond my ancient head...
So that future ears clearly hear
What wisdom they actually said?
I long to see the rain fall
On those grey slag built mountains,
Where trees are straggly specimens -
Sometimes misted by the clouds
So low that their moist kiss remains
On my upward stretching hands.
It's where the belly trembles
And my heartache truly resounds.
But how much better would it be
Were this a sun drenched paradise,
Where everything was plentiful;
Where everyone was fulfilled
And could afford their daily bread,
Where cries of pain became instead
Joyful smiles with ease instilled?
© Allen Ansell 2025
Does your world hang low?
Does your humour ebb and flow?
Do you feel like you’re a flop
And you’re drowning down below?
Are your moods like running water
Won’t stay stable when they oughta?
Does your world – hang – low?
Is your life a drag?
Do you feel like a rag?
Does it seem as though you’re flound’ring
Through impenetrable slag?
Is the whole thing never right?
Not worth keeping up the fight?
Is your life – a – drag?
Do you hide your face?
Do you feel a disgrace?
Are you constantly avoiding
Being with the human race?
Has your life degenerated?
And your world disintegrated?
Do you hide – your – face?
Are you fighting back?
Are you taking up the slack?
Will you give in and surrender
Or go back on the attack?
Tell the world it hasn’t mastered
THIS unconquerable bastard!
NOW you’re fight – ing – back!
My wish is to make it into an anthology.
I've framed thought with gold leaf and slag.
Buffed them into positive and negative action.
At times I've both bullied and buttressed the weak.
Trimmed away and added insult to my fellow man.
They say there's only one path.
At times darkness has thoroughly dusted this man.
The heart beats out of rhythm and rhyme.
Can't do much about soul crimes of the past.
I'm praying away the clutter in the mind.
Will I make it into the anthology of souls?
Only the pristine scale of God knows....
For now, I linger somewhere on the binder.
If you're ever lost, forgotten, or misstep.
I'll traipse down the cobbles of your crash.
Hand in hand until you're back on track.
I'll surely spruce up a room for you.
It'll be on the mundane -humble side
but safe, warm, and welcoming.
Like in a child's sunlit dream.
I can cloak the well-worn floor
with a pattern of your choice.
There'll be no rent or rent of judgement.
Only a gray shoulder to stain
with the colors of your choice.
We'll whisper of the misty past.
Untangle the present and its jaggedness.
Pan the gold from the slag of tomorrow.
I'll gently lay a patch upon that blue chip in your heart.
For I love you immensely; you can stay forever if you wish, dear heart.
Brother stream was my closest friend.
He sifted from my slag a few shining gems.
Putting the shine back into my heart
after our dear mother departed.
Brother stream wove my burlap raggedness.
into something resembling his down gentleness.
He guided me away from the devil's black charade.
Lifting me just above life's burning cascade.
Brother stream who once took a beating for me
The truth is the truth, so now we all can just let it be.
Brother stream gently kneaded his signets to swans.
A beckon of light, whether it be dusk or dawn.
And when he was betrayed by life's jagged sin.
The signets that he'd raised flew back unto him.
Brother Stream's heart was speckled with gold.
My brother Stream, whom the lord, called back home.
Dark Upon the Soul
Deep upon the river dreary,
thoughts within a mind so weary.
Screaming cries to a tortured soul,
miseries sorrow takes its toll.
Upon the deepest darkest night,
fleeting spirits take dark winged flight.
And guided to a soulful mind,
a resting place for it to find.
And in the morning light of day,
the dreary thoughts are there to stay.
So in the light the days do drag,
making one’s spirit, feel like slag.
Deep upon the river dreary,
thoughts within a mind so weary.
By
Josehf Lloyd Murchison
Written: December 12, 2023, For Shadow Hamilton Contest
_______________________________________
People can only thrive on this wealth scale
With undying faith, we admire our flag
Sullen calm and dearth of prowess prevail.
Just few people groove stanch affluence gale
whilst most all strive tough with null in the bag
People can only thrive on this wealth scale.
We are rivaled with a stern choice trial
A person's rank is viewed by his wealth tag
Sullen calm and dearth of prowess prevail.
Trading rule exceeds all neat deals for sale
Where smash checkers are, indeed, rulers slag
People can only thrive on this wealth scale.
There is a fictive guise dubbed classless tale
Though, our right of recourse has little brag
Sullen calm and dearth of prowess prevail.
With their bogus pledge to clear off our lag
A plush caste is riding blindly as swag
People can only thrive on this wealth scale
Sullen calm and dearth of prowess prevail.
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