Oh Appalachia!
We live poor but are
richer for it. We scratch
a meager living in your
stubborn hills but would
not live anywhere else. You
hold our hearts and provide.
We love. We have babies. We are
welded here to family and friends
and dance in barns Saturday nights
to fiddles and banjos and moonshine.
Bury me on a mountain top in sunshine.

We live huddled masses in the city
   working in skyscrapers like ants.
   We find lovers in the bars and make
   love up against alley walls and snort
   another line in a diner booth and
   consider it a New York date. Goodbye.

My life was on the ropes.
     22 and 2 ex wives. 2 kids.
     Night shift cleaning floors
     and toilets in a grocery chain.
     She reached me at 2am in tears.
     Our dog died. I went to her dorm.
     We drank and ****** like before.
     I ran away to Boston to do over.

Who can tell me why I'm here?
Are the tales long gone? Who
found whom to **** towards
my spark into my life? Thanks.

I'm 70 and still work the mines
to feed my soul and family.
It's all I have to hold onto.
My coal face is cracked like
the rocks we fight each day.
My friends are mostly dead
from black lung and cave ins.
I toast them with a shot
each night in my empty bed
and pray for death tomorrow.

We put everything to paper.
Sins. Hate. Love. Cancer.
All that's left to hold onto.
I died but came to life again.
I'm still waiting for life to fill
my veins with lightening so
I can explode into your nights.
Remember our chemo *******?

Brick piled on brick in my life 'til
  I had no choice. I joined. I trained.
  I killed. I saw my brothers killed.
  I found a piece of heaven in ******.
  A respite from the hell I lived.
  I served 3 tours and landed home.
  I hugged my parents, but not real
  like. I felt nothing. I needed drugs
  and found a dealer who welcomed me
  home with a soldier's discount.
  I was numb and saw the horror just
  beyond my ****** vision. I lost
  hope long ago and will live a slight
  life until I find the courage to die.