ruins
ruins
ruins
industry
in ruins
lives
in ruins
the rape of the valley
my valley that cut my knees
bleeding as black as the slag tips
that tripped my feet
and tricked my mind
my wide-eyed playground
of touch stones
the soot encrusted bricks
that tattooed the gap-toothed buildings
roofless and ruthlessly crippled
but
with an open armed silent welcome
a wagon train circle around
the children who saw only ruins
not ghosts
no anguished tears soaked into
the ruins
no camaraderie of the exploited
the manhood of grime halted mid term
the children
me
we
saw the
topple down walls crash
and splash into our river of laughter
our cake tray of bricks
the brail of the hardened cinders
the satanic black of the slag frozen now
we walked the cobbled roads
into the ruins
cobbles that still would not tolerate
a single weed
to infiltrate the years laid thick
upon the clog ringing ways
that we flew over oblivious
and frivolous in a spin
in our dare-devil pull it down
fun we saw only fun
had no inkling of the rich burghers
who’s names named our terraced streets
and statues lorded it over their beneficent parks
or the cascade of manacled managers
and subservient men
who lived and died for their brass
that was our class and we knew it not
ragamuffin boys and torn gingham girls
we had tight horizons
tall ruined walls to call our own
that were our sin and secret
our pushing of the boundaries down
until the rebellion of adolescence met its match
and we conformed in ruin to our ruin
our houses were built from the ruin of slag
on the ruin of slag
and bucolic was but just a plague
amongst the stunted grass as
we bowed low under the weight
of our prospects in our tallow
the ruins are visited
down through the generations
and when play turned sour
ruin came home to play with
the tarot cards that were stacked
and dealt the death card that was
always the ruined slag
and our hands were callused
as our minds were callous
then we saw our children laugh
and scream in delight at the ruins
at the blight of sulphur and red ash
and
and
the ruins
the ruins
were our ruin
out there we knew
were other ruins
but these were our
ruins
our ruins
ours to rack
and rue in
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