Title: "Appalachian Ghosts"
By: Chris Thornsberry
My friends made life worth living in the hills
Unknowing sculptors, they made me who I am
With mixtapes and borrowed books they brought me
To a world of punk rock and liberal thought
One, by one, by one, they escaped the hills
They left to join the stream of shatter dreams
Until I was left alone and joined them
Motivated, I struck out to find life.
I, too, escaped, but ghosts still haunt my dreams
Appalachian ghosts, like a fog in my mind
And sometimes like a hammer to remind
Me of the things and people left behind.
A man working twelve-hour shifts while his
Little boy asks mommy where daddy is
He drinks away his pain and weariness
While his family wonders when he will be home.
A woman cries herself to sleep because
She can’t afford to buy her little boy
All the things that she thinks that he deserves
And she thinks that this makes her a failure.
A man comes home and hits his wife because
He has to let the rage at his life out
And she is there, as an easy scapegoat
He strikes the wife he loves and hates himself
Miners with blackened skin and dull dead eyes
Plod their way to work each day where death waits
Appalachian ghosts, dead before their time
Appalachian ghosts with dull, lifeless eyes.
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Title: "Napalm in the Morning"
By: Chris Thornsberry
I love the smell of napalm in the morning!
Americans hear that line and we laugh
We laugh because we do not know the smell
Have never had an Apocalypse Now.
We have never smelled our loved ones burning
Have never seen it outside of our door
We laugh because war is not real to us
Were it, how could we ever send our young?
Napalm has never smelled like victory
It smells like corporate greed and old money
It smells like death and suffering for naught
It smells like demolished hope and dead dreams
Sitting in comfortable America
Will we ever really understand war?
I don’t really think that we ever can
Until we smell napalm outside our doors.
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Title: "In My Mind"
By: Chris Thornsberry
In my mind metaphor and allusion
Dance like euphoric lovers trailing bliss
In the dark and dreary world of my mind
Their light kiss creates explosive fireworks.
But the paper remains an empty slate
Barren and lifeless like a desert night
Cold and quiet like a jilted lover
I can coax nothing but scorn from the page.
In my mind simile and imagery
Run through a field like children holding hands
Spreading joy and love everywhere they go
Dodging any attempt to capture them
When I stare at the page I see only
Sorrow, regret and my many mistakes
Taunting and jeering, they keep me silent
Like the children on a playground, so cruel.
In my mind beauty and bliss are as one
On the page attempts echo back nothing
For in my mind I am truly alive
But I am nothing outside of its walls.
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