Thursday, June 10, 2010

Ashley, Pennsylvania





Ashley, Pennsylvania

All is stolen away,
yet tattered lives remain,
in the shadows cast
by
grey decay.

That city's raped & scarred mistress,
to which the land & people
give their woe stricken lives.
Slag heaps & garbage streets,
drained veins too vast to reclaim
feel of darkest winter.

That
grey decay
o'er the forgotten borough,
an ald & worn tombstone,
where names & stories
have all but faded away.

Runs forth,
the rust streams,
flowing toward their oblivion,
Through our desolate,
black Martian Pennsylvania.

Their nakedness never
to be covered by lush
fertile green, nor
tangled with savior
white birch.

Veins madly pumping,
the singing of the
pick-axe;
only resonating echoes in the
old, worn-out miner's mind.


-Steve Bryant 2009





Friday, June 4, 2010

Only for the Sake of the Song

Ich Habe Genug: Marvine Colliery, Scranton, Pennsylvania




The Marvine Colliery was located on the edge of town in Scranton, Pennsylvania, bordering Dunmore and Throop. The coal company closed its door in the 1970’s. They left behind acres and acres of scarred earth.


Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

-John Prine