Heavy Metal (Poetry)

Strangely alien, it dominates the scene;
stiff-strutted, hard and angular, too brash
to blend with natural contours - textures clash -,
at odds with subtle skies and placid streams.

A predator that sucks at earth's black veins,
a praying mantis cast in brittle steel,
with greedy eye that rolls its flashing wheel
while spreading spoil tips heap the chewed remains.

Soulless, touched by shadows, shunned by art;
machinery that desolates, subdues
the spirit of this valley, trapped in hues
of melancholy seeping from its heart.

The monster rises, ugly, unaware
of beauty violated, stands its ground;
its foreign voice a raw metallic sound
menacing the wild, defenceless air.

A sense of resignation fills this place;
pity hangs soft mists upon far hills
as coal dust smothers trees and slowly kills.
A neutral sun illuminates a face

with geometric features, vacant gaze
that mocks the faint horizon like a skull
grinning from fresh graveworks, sombre, dull,
all colour fading, bled to brooding greys.

But knowing water winks along its way
as elements predict a slow revenge,
for time will sentence all that now offends
to history and ultimate decay.