Bootle

Is a borough
As Manhattan
Is to New York
Bootle
Like Walton
Is incorporated into the city
But Bootle
Is next to Walton
But not as old as Winston Tenebars
Walton
Whose history stems from the Doomsday book
It’s ancient
Much like me
Grandma smiled as she explained
This geography that was much like
Aintree
Confused

History 301

Bootle Docks
Are part of the Mersey Docks and Harbor
Board
For over thirty years
Granddad worked for them
From
Dusk
To dawn
Sitting
In a stationary crane
Overlooking the seaport
In a capsulizing crane
With leverage
He levitated his leviathan
Arms
Cradled his cargo
Shifting
Shadows
Silhouetted the shorelines of a somber skyline
Sullen
Shipyards
Slumber
In a shimmering light
Night
Ebbed away
As the coal-dusted river flowed
Into an open sea of duskiness
Bold-faced
Dockyards
Dotted the wharfs with dwarfs of light
Steamships
Slept
Under the stealth sound of a starry sky
Moored
Into a quarried quay of steely-gray
Berthed
In a harbor of floating dreams
At a low ebb
Granddad lifted phantoms
From a dreary day
He loaded hopes
From a saddled crane
He sat
In an elevated bubble of monastic monotony
Overlooking
A downward harbor
Dredged
With dreams
He saw his life
Floating

Bye

Cried Grandma
As she tearfully waved
In the wake of her passing

Memories

Lost
In thought
Grandma turned
Towards the undaunted dockside
Were the industrious warehouses
Once bottled despair
Into a Jacob’s biscuit bin of contained poverty

History 401

Stored
Its working class
Into alphabetic boxes
Stamped and sorted
Selected and separated
Into downgraded education

Warehouses
Filled with substandard grades
Repressed
Into submission
Submitted
To oppression
Boxed
Onto a rack of mistreatment
And stacked into degrading quantities
Packaged
With illiteracy
Stockpiled
Onto a drudging dolly
Waiting on downcast docks
Like dejected dullards
Dehumanized
Dragged out
Doled out
Delivered and dumped
Onto a downtrodden doormat of draconian democracy
Dogma

Politics

Public pontification
And social masturbation
Struck the docks
With strikes
Trade stopped
Unions started
Riveted
Under an umbrella of unity
Dockers marched
To the left
For the right to fight
The wrongs
Left by the right

Parties

Preen their political plumage
Primal peacocks
Fanned out
Into a predacious parade
Ruffled feathers
Turned into a cock-a-hoop
Cockfights
Would turn into a flock of flogging
Riots
Police
Plucked out the cocks
And padlocked them into cock pits of violence

Strikes

Dragged into despair
Dreams doled out
Onto empty soap boxes
Hopes famished
While families hungered for food
Dockers starved for socialism
Union flagged
Jack wavered

In Time

The pendulum of power
Ticked
To the left
And the unionized Dockers clocked in
To the workings of industry

Once
In a while
The workers broke down
When the working class
And the working party

Dispute

The workload in their work place
Was too demanding for their work day and their paltry pay
Work on
Said the working capitalist
We are not workhorses
Said the working socialist
Negotiate
The workload
With the work force
And find a workable solution
Workmen
Worked themselves up into a rage
This workplace is like a workhouse
We have our work ethics
And our workmanship is a work of
Art
Hollered out
We are not workaholics
No
You are a work-shy working class
Back to your workshop
And we will work on
A workable solution with our working capital

Workmate
To Brother Jack
I’m going to give him a bloody good
Work over
Strike
Chimed the unionist
Work-to-rule
Clock in
The employer
Clock out
Cuckold the employee
All
In a bed of featherbedding
Arbitrate
So let’s mediate
Or close the gate

Time

For walk out
Time
For lock out
Back and forth
On a picketed pendulum
Tick tock
Ticked off
A political time bomb
Ticked off
Tick tock
The mainspring of revolutionary
Change
In time
Would bare labor
And the Laborer
Would exchange

The key

In time
Would turn
And wined
Into the rhythmical pendulum
Of an English country setting

History 501

Prior to the depression