The old Coal Miner

My mother was, before she ran away on a magic bus to California to become a hippie, a hill child from Appalachia. I spent a fair bit of time there when I was very young - in a lot of ways it was a primal time, lots of things.....imprinted.   I have not been back there now in many a year. I would love to but I would need to be a bit better prepared for such a trip.   And maybe a small army.  

That's just if I encounter family.   Being a mutt, all of my ancestry is buried below the surface where you can't see....and honestly 99% of it means nothing to me anyway.  But I am ashamed of nothing about where I came from and what made me.   I am the product of whores, and hedge witches, border jumpers and hillbillys.  All of this lives in me. 


The Old Coal Miner

Taking the particles

Inside of me

Apart even as my will

Struggles to hold it together

Decay is how time is measured

Spun, reckoned, and cut

 

Angels in the numbers, the inner

Geometry is cut,  Fate’s

flame is snuffed

 

Beware his lantern, shovel, pick

and cover

Death will wrap his rope around you

like a lover

gasping air, clutching breath

death in mines

the poor just die like in old times

 

The old Coal Miner is coming for you son

There ain’t nowhere on the earth that you can run

Wear a dress, change your hair

The Old Coal Miner just don’t care, He will find you

In time to pay your share, take your fare,

Send you down forever to nowhere.

Cross the bloody river, wash the muddy shirt

It is the end of life and all of life’s work

Time to be forgotten, time to you to end

Time for all the universe to stop and stop and then

The end

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