I scoff when I hear ‘clean coal’ used,

As if it has never costs a single soul.

Maybe the industry is cleaner now,

But I do not understand how.

To find the lodes we have to dig,

Scrape out mountainsides

Or burrow deep down into earth.

The skies or the tunnels filled with haze.

Scars on the lungs leave their marks,

But as they hedge, the workers who stay,

Some find they can’t breathe day to day.

If black lung visits their door,

The harder it is to inhale evermore.

Until one day the scars or another disease wins,

So tell me how coal is clean again?