Next sound
Miss tick
Teaching you through like adu
Eat the line
Crawl up the vine
Inside your water, no wine
Code and color penal
Cashing under the welfare
Biggest duty push
He haw hackers purse strings
And dockers
Superfly newspapers
Wrapped around certificates like knockers
Your still here, hear with your eyes
Get it out of your mouth
Put publicity on silent
Give me 5 to 10 years no profit
Let it all fall, burn in to the problems
Noway y’all is progressive
Jazz aint today
Last night novels can’t eat eggs
Leader need an audience?
When wasn’t you borin?
Flapping aunt jackson
Face some sit down time
For once become not obvious
Because i know you think
But you respond to the dropper
Knew medication like diapers
Unqualified speakers too magnet
Flipping sausage like complaints
Deaf and defended
Clerically too many missing
Number one number, how many died
While you walk, no guard
Open and jawing
Categories:
dockers, addiction, betrayal, celebrity, character,
Form: Rhyme
My mother was brought up in an orphanage because her father
a confectioner became an alcoholic and lost his job, ended
up looking for work when ships came in and needed dockers
to unload the cargo.
My mother, although working class, was well-read but also
a bit eccentric, she had come to the erroneous conclusion
that only communism (equality in her mind) could bring peace.
It was in one of the papers she read I learned about
Roosevelt’s knowledge of the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack.
I was about twelve years old when she dragged me to
a meeting where two Russian “workers” would attend.
They painted a wonderful picture of life in Russia and
showed still films of happy workers at tractor plant extolling
the wonder of the communist regime.
They also showed us the homes of the workers and later
how happy the land workers were breaking out into dance
in their national dress.
I was very young at the time but was not sold on this display
of happiness, mother said I had no imagination.
My mother continued to believe in communism until
the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956.
Categories:
dockers, absence, blessing, devotion,
Form: Blank verse
A policy of shortchanging Workers,
The whole submissive lot Plain Dockers.
Satan couldn’t say they were not faithful,
Yet, of a circumstance damned hateful…
All about what The Demons grossly need,
Obliging them with unaccustomed speed;
Their absurd bald passion serving it
And they keep digging their tragic pit:
Demons of Sex enough to burst Man’s heart
And for God harden His Judgmental Heart
Demons of Violence Vessels of Blood
That could God’s thoughts re-channel to old flood…
Satan pays too: he’s not Their Hero;
If they had their way, score him Zero
The Demoniac in Luke upon Christ looked
Knowledge showing of being The booked;
Satan’s Food for Demons: Excesses,
New forms of them day and night processes…
Satanology for lingered glance;
My Fuller Lecture for minds to dance.
Categories:
dockers, absence, cry, evil, violence,
Form: Rhyme
Jellied eels and pie n mash.
East London Fair, and that’s a fact.
The Dockers hands, and the pearly kings.
Their romance gone, the truth it stings.
The Bow Bells ring, they sound out loud.
Cockney chests, they puff out proud.
Not much left of old world London town.
Inside office blocks our city drowns.
The rhyming slang, used to confound.
It hid the truth, of lies abound.
The gifted few, they understood.
They kept those coppers under hood.
Up the Apples and pears, mind your plates of meat.
Meant up the stairs and watch your feet.
The law never knew, they couldn’t make it out.
We watched their faces and saw their doubt.
The slang we used was not just for fun.
It kept us on our toes, not on the run.
Old London's gone it has changed its face.
For better or worse it's now a different place.
We've had the rough. We've had the smooth.
This place has changed, with times it's moved.
Like or not this is London Town.
The times have changed, but she'll not let you down.
She'll take you in, she'll hold you tight.
Embrace her heart, enjoy the light.
Categories:
dockers, england, imagery, london,
Form: Rhyme
The ship has docked in Sydney harbour officials
have come and gone now the ship is eerily silent,
yet noisy slamming of doors and someone taking
a shower…laughter. How can I sleep tonight with
the engine stopped? How can I read and not hear
human bravura? Sod it all, someone strums a guitar,
and I hear the fizzing sound of canned beer flipped
open. No this can´t go on better go ashore, a bar,
drink a few schooners, try joining the hubbub of man
at ease and not think of the sea, dolphins blue,
white crested waves and the hum of the sea goddess,
that teases me for my cowardice for not taking
the plunge and be as beautiful as the seascape of my
impossible dreams. Easy, tomorrow will be a mundane
Tuesday and we, if the dockers do not strike, should
be bound for Brisbane where the beer tastes the same,
of amalgamated breweries. Yet, despite my lack of fine
culture, I saw Sidney opera house casting dignified light
into the bay…
Categories:
dockers, adventure, parody, sea,
Form: Blank verse
I got me a special pair of walkers,
Tattered, torn, comfortable dockers,
Ain’t too easy on the eyes,
And wouldn‘t win a prize,
It’s the size fourteens that are the shockers.
Categories:
dockers, travel
Form: Limerick
If you get up early enough before the sun the stars disappear before the sky
clouds over
It’s that magic promise time of day when the bakers and milkmen are beginning
their routines
Soon the empty trams will fill with sleepy eyed dockers, factory workers, shop
workers.
Scarves wrapped over tightly combed hair with two ends pointing at well plucked
eyebrows.
Or the flat round docker caps folded to one side with the peak so carefully bent.
So far the cars are still empty coming out. That’ll change soon as the night
workers end their
shifts. But for now it’s twirly for all that. No queues anywhere. The sparrows are
working the
pavement and gutters scuttling feverishly for the slightest crumb. Here and there
a house cat
carefully ignores the occasional pedestrian and grooms sedately , dogs get out
later.
Lights come on in the flats over the shops as the warm beds empty and gas
stoves heat tea kettles
The sun slides up to hide in the now solid cloud cover and the sea salt tar
wetness of another
workday drifts across the cobbled street.
Categories:
dockers, history, life, nostalgia, sun,
Form: Blank verse