Gobble the flesh,
You voracious buzzards;
Flap your sloven wings
Over the carcass of the golden goose;
Gorge your greedy gizzards
and drool the grease over your bloated jowls.
Go ahead,
Stuff your gluttonous potbellies,
So you can relax
And belch about prosperity.
Cram your selfish guts and scatter the bones
with your greedy talons . . .
You figure by grabbing
another penny
from the coal miner's dollar,
You'll reduce the mine overhead.
You figure by squeezing
a lousy copper
from the coal digger's dollar,
You'll balance your personal income tax.
Oh, yes!
Now you can raise the president's salary
And the first vice-president's
And the second vice-president's
And the third
Oh, yes!
But you're not reducing
the groundhog's wage
Not by a damn sight;
You're hogging in and slopping
a generous portion
from the pot of bean soup.
You're sending our hollow-eyed innocents
to their bedside prayers,
hungry, trembling, undernourished,
whimpering their pathetic pleas to God,
begging a crust of bread.
You're making the breasts
of suckling mothers
shrivel with emptiness,
And rattle like seeds in a jimson pod
in October . . .
You're forcing us scraggy brutes,
Who dig your prosperity,
to wonder
Who is this guy, God, anyway.
Go ahead,
Cram your big potbellies
and dribble the juice over
your paunchy jowls.
The mine won't hoist tomorrow.
Vindictive coal diggers
will crowd the saloon tomorrow.
Keep your baggy eyes
cocked on the horizon
tomorrow.
Hungry men are dissentious men;
Starving men are desperate men;
Coal men can be dangerous
Coal Mine Romance
Coal Mine Romance
I was Dusty Wiggins' buddy
In the second entry west,
Where I found him crushed and bloody
With a boulder on his chest.
I am sorry, Mrs. Wiggins,
With a dozen mouths to feed;
Every digger in the diggin's
Knows you have a row to weed.
Fetch the brats and leave your sorrow,
Throw your pallet on my floor,
Lest the wolf will howl tomorrow
On the stoop of your back door.
I will earn the grits and bacon
While you tidy up the shack,
For your heart will soon stop achin'
If you have a lunch to pack.
When The Bells Tolled
His buddies put their picks aside,
They dropped their dinnerpails,
And volunteered the day he died
To clean his fingernails.
They scrubbed him white with gasoline,
They shaved his stubby jowl—
The first time he was really clean
Since he'd been digging coal.
Dressed in his Sunday pot-boiled shirt,
White lilies in his hand,
To see a miner free from dirt
Would make one change his brand!
Two milk-white candles at his head,
White posies at his feet;
It was a shame that he was dead,
He looked so clean and neat.
If he could see himself in style
And see his snow-white skin,
He'd take one prideful look and smile
And then drop dead again!
Coal Digger
I suckled brawn
Grimed with smutch,
For I was drawn
From loins of such
Flesh increment
Of steel and bone,
A bastard sent
To conquer stone.
My mother's breast,
By God, I think,
When my lips pressed,
Poured sweat for drink.
For all I know
Is sweat begot,
From labor's throe
To labor's grot.
And from this womb
That gave me breath,
My dust shall tomb
Again in death.
