song from the Journal of the Mad Coal Miner

There's a coal mine death

Lying deep beneath your eye

And it's hard to find it's been put there

But worse to know it's mine

Like a shattered romance metaphor

It gnaws itself in gloom

And its space is filled with empty echoes

Hollow whispers doom

This bastard of my waking thought

Which feeds and breeds despair

While it grins and mocks me naming me

Its master and its heir

To touch it is to spiral in

To spiral in to die

My strength can't move this coal mine death

We're trapped beneath your eye

Beware of romance friendship love

Flee from the proffered hand

For behind them all lurks coal mine death

It waits to make its stand

Christopher J. Cramer

May 30, 1982