The Miner
Too long a miner
now digging up things I shouldn’t
last year I couldn’t.
The year before that,
I wouldn’t
I was trapped
in the soot black
with no Canary
no sweet sound
or light from a shaft
I have been digging
desperately, hopefully, helplessly
in the wrong direction
I put my pick axe down
straighten my back and turn about
Follow my heart
Follow no sound
On the way back to the surface
I throw away the rest of my tools
I shout in my head “Enough”
I have been too long a miner
too long the fool
I am on my way to the surface, where I can get clean
Categories:
soot black, addiction, endurance, i am,
Form: Free verse
The mushroom cloud stunk up the smog,
And milled the metal into the ground.
We were left with all our hairs blown off,
Soot black, standing without a sound.
All of the earth was madly aflame,
Like the wick of a thick, drooping candle.
People were pulling their skin off of the pavement,
As you grinned with the pride of a vandal.
We stood alone, like Adam and Eve,
Like Noah after the Flood.
When they all died out, you kissed my forehead,
And parted the sea of blood.
Then you took my mangled hand in yours,
And we walked beyond the gloom.
You had held the gaze of my vulnerable eyes,
And all you said was, “Boom.”
Categories:
soot black, death, love,
Form: Quatrain
He sits and waits and sulks
as the clock strikes
and on they strike
and on he called to do no wrong 'in judgement,
in meteyard, in weight or in measure,'
And Oh! the boy thinks he see's this,
but his judgement clouded by soot black eyes.
And so he only sees the adults have struck him wrong
as he sits and waits outside the office
for the Brother, teacher to emerge
as the clock strikes
and on they strike.
For they can not tolerate the closure of their mines,
the closure of their lives
and so they defy 'Her England,' of which
Orwell wrote and which came true in
nineteen-eighty-four
So the boy should not sulk
as the clock strikes
and on they strike
as he should see there are greater injustices
or is it true that
'he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.'
Categories:
soot black, history, philosophy
Form: Free verse