steelyard birdmad at night the sounds of machinery in the distance sometimes a constant hum and that pealing tone of heavy metal impact like the cliche of hammer to anvil, the note holds out for a second almost like a bell the fabricated pieces that lie in the lot waiting for their eventual use the ghosts of things yet to be built when they are hauled away, more will be built and set in their place 011226 ... cube We had to add a system to stamp steel beams as they came out of the mill. They're fabricated as a continuous piece and cut to length using a 'flying cutoff'. This is similar to a circular rip saw blade except it's five feet in diameter, 1/2" wide and has straight cut teeth. Days of this repetitive screeching - so intense you felt it to your marrow... ³ 011226 ... ClairE Where birdmad sometimes goes when he can't sleep. A place where you're reminded that sometimes things do get accomplished. 011226 ... unhinged they closed ltv. right before christmas too. part of the mill was in the village my dad works for. millions of dollars of tax revenue gone; no more overtime for my dad. it's weird that even though my dad is a firefighter the closing of the steel mill affects my family too. they say they might keep the finishing plant open though...and just bring the steel in from somewhere else cheaper...the finishing plant is still in the village. i guess we will see. 011226 ... unhinged youngstown y_town the yard had been closed for decades and the sign still hung on market street until about six months ago. all my friends there products of abolished industry. the streets dirty and empty, signs hanging crooked antiqued in a poor almost outdated enough to be cool again kind of way. heroin addicts, coke heads, self-made self-image-broken sluts, cutters, burners, potheads, alcoholics, excons, crack dealers, schizophrenics, medicated dumplings....all products of abolished industry. on a friday night at 2am, the streets empty, paper and dust swirling. he got into a car accident not too long ago because he was digging around for his beastie boys tape and the guy he hit was smoking a blunt so they decided to call it even and both drove away without calling the cops. he got pulled over on market street in youngstown proper drinking a beer. he stashed the beer under the seat and told the cop that if he got anymore points on his liscense he would lose his job cause he drives for airborne express and the cop told him to be more careful and let him go. driving down market street towards youngstown from boardman late at night was beautiful; the valley was beautiful at night with the twinkling landstars. i was so numb usually that all i could see were the lights so far away they looked like fallen stars. and everytime we passed the ghostsign of the old closed steelyard, i shivered knowing that it would have all been so different. there are a lot of ghosts in that town. i was one, wandering around broken, lost. oxys , opium_resin , dank , cigarettes , muscle relaxers, jack_n_coke ; so much poison. or maybe it was a gift from god. her aunt jumped off the market street bridge. i sat in my room alone cutting hexagons into my left wrist. she had big thick red scars on her upper arm. we were all ghosts. 031203 ... thieums I usually dream of scrapyards, steelyards, and railways. Rust is everywhere... Lonesome plants grow between the train tracks. Human presence is only a memory. 050725 ... unhinged god what a different life that was 080821 ... unhinged the doctor seemed surprised that i was still wide awake after all the demerol and xanax bi_products_of_a_different_life 120602 ... ries  120603 ... birdmad It's been nearly 6 years since I moved out of that neighborhood, nearly a full year since I worked there. The house was gutted by copper_thieves. We'll be lucky to even sell the lot, much less the remains of what was once my Grandmother's house. It was really only the memories of youth that made it "home". I had barely been living there a few months, thinking I had extricated myself from my various crimes and miseries when it all went_to_shit in a series of new and exciting ways, all of which have been catalogued in these blue spaces (Don't get me wrong, this is not another of my endless bitching sessions. I'm actually pretty content right now. After misguidedly taking a crappy job in the wake of last summer's minor_setback , I quit just after my birthday and am currently living off a combination of my savings and some collected debts. I may take the entire summer off. I have finally acquired the time_and_distance from those torments I have groused about at some volume here ) The only thing I miss about that place is the smell of the big commercial bakery...the scent of fresh bread carrying on the breeze. 120604 what's it to you? who go blather from