All My Dreams

by John Stocks

I was born and lived above the pit
The mine where the troglodytes toiled
Emerging blinking to sullied sunlight
The dazzle of life in mascaraed eyes.

And all my dreams clanked with a veiled threat
Of a troubled rumbling underground
The death whisper of asphyxiation
Families gathering like ghosts at midnight.

The beast Thatcher saved us from this
Slamming shut the gates of perception
Snuffing out the hellish lights below
Smothering our sleep with bitter irony.

All finished now, capped and locked
The sublimated world of tunnels
Comradeship and desperation
Who can be glad or sad at the same time?

Only in my dreams will the wagons roll
And brawny forearms still hack the coal
To shimmering nuggets in endless seams
In raw defiance, at the end of things.