slag

 slag

write me a poem

from a slag pile tip

with high stones and keystones

that could let it all rip

for they weighed them in batches

as they dug out the tips 

lorry-fulls and word-fulls

like clinker cankered and sulphurous lips

not from the treasure

that flowed under the slags

but the spat out blackness

like hot treacle drags

that tiered the words 

by size in their seams

by blackness by shine

by clinks and by screams

as they sundered the grime

they give remembrance of us

as we were then at that time

long ago indeed that was us

running an afternoon’s sunning

slow turning weariness

down roads way back home

achievements mountainous

clatter them to the top of the moon

or to the bottom of canyons

dug by the cranes and the lorries 

those foundlings anew 

it’s all gone now of course of course 

it’s all in the underworld

of post-moderns anew

that are built on the slag

of times that we knew

just that one tear it took 

me back to the sun

running the gauntlet of us

one more time come on mun

or be gone

go home 

come back 

or be gone 

for the keystone is dislodged

the slag’s black blood is a flow 

that forever has congealed

in a memory of lads that we know 

were themselves the keystones of self

although they themselves never knew