So he invited Brian to help him
Big mistake
It was Monday
And the butcher shop had been closed all day
But after school
Your dad was to open up the shop for a few hours
Business was slow
Until Brian showed up
Mincing the fat
Tidying the shop
Brian and your dad
Felt that they needed more
Customers
Their dim lights went on
A meat sale
Cut the price in half
The sale was a slaughter
Customers left the shop
Chuckling with their chuck
The two boys were roasted with a ripping
Joke
Ribs cracked with laughter
As the wolfish customers left the butcher’s shop
With their cunning grins
The meat was all gone
Sold
Out
No more meat
So close the shop
Up early
The next morning
Your dad opened up the butcher’s shop
Just before the butcher walked
In
He came
Sized up the shop
Meat all gone
With a smile my son told him about the sale

That’s when the butcher’s face turned into a blue vein of red blood
Like a blue backed whale
Spurting spit he spattered my son
With syllables that would embarrass a praying nun
Face
Red raw
It rattled with blood
Vessels blew blue
Blood boiled hot
Throttled with steam
His blood curdled into a bellow
Pressure running high
Heart beating fast
The angry butcher picked up his bloodied meat
Cleaver
In hand
Clenched into his large fist
He turned to my son
With rage
Six foot two
Eyes cold blue
He lunged at my son
As he started to withdraw
He could see the blood on the wall
His bloodless face ran cold
As the gray haired butcher chased him
Around and around the chopping block
Running like a quick-witted whore
My son escaped the terror of the ripping butcher
Never looking back
Once
Out of the door

Horrified
The children screamed
With laughter
As grandma completed the execution of another bloody good tale
Lips parched
She needed a cold drink
The oldest daughter volunteered to get her one
Endearing
A smile
She asked with grace
What type of drink do you want
Grandma
A Bloody Mary
Was the quick retort
The two youngest children cracked
Their ribs with laughter

Great Aunty was still fast asleep
Nodding her noodle under a nocturne of noiseless
Leaves
Muffled
Under the shuffling shade of the Red Bud tree

The French doors opened
As the granddaughter entered into the escaping echoes

Of

Living Doll, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, 1959

The French doors closed

Off

The sonorous sounds
Lingered to the grumbling and mumblings of rustling
Children
Teased into tormenting play
As grandma’s eyes rested under the soft-petal shade
Of the late afternoon sun

Chunks of chattering ice chinked
Its clunking cubes into the cold clinking sides of its chiming chalice
Vested
Into its frosted red frock
Bloody Mary stood on a silver tray
Surrounded with an audience of quenching cold drinks

The music boomed
From the retreat of the French doors

Rock With The Caveman, Tommy Steele, 1956

Rattled
But with attentive care
The granddaughter with a slight awkwardness
Gave grandma her iced cold drink
Settling in
With Bloody Mary
The song had duped her memory
But not before Great Aunty has awakened from her doze
Unaware
That her companionable sister had not touched her Bloody Mary
Great Aunty had reached out for it

Watch it Whacker

Touch that Bloody drink
And I will top off your poppy red noggin
All the children laughed
As Great Aunty stood up and curtsied

Aside

She whispered into the attentive ears of the younger granddaughter
Big sisters always think
That their the Queen of the hill
More like the Queen of muck
A little secret
Shared with laughter
Each in turn
Looking at their elder sister

Turning to Queen Bess
With your Royal Highness permission
I will take this silver salver of Waterford crystal
Inside
I will see if the lady of the house
Needs assistance in the kitchen
If not
I will take a short late afternoon nap
No sooner
Has she sashayed to the French doors
Her young nephew greeted her
The young boy had already opened up the door
With deference
The Great Dame dubbed his bowed head
With one patted hand
While balancing the tray on high with the other
Boisterous and sun burnt
Great Aunty entered the kitchen with a drum roll

The Battle of New Orleans – 1959, Johnny Horton or why not Lonnie Donegan

Not missing a beat
The provident grandson closed off the percussion
Imitating the drummer
He marched back
To the memory of the eighteenth-century folk song
The drums rolled out the decade
But the sixties would not follow its beat
Your dad’s generation
Would march to a different drummer

The Labor Boy

School was over
Out of class
For the working class
Time for a job
To earn a bob

Educating Archie

To classification to certification to graduation to termination
No celebration no toleration no delectation no revelation
Only discrimination only dehumanization only demarcation only degradation
Only vilification only segregation only alienation only regimentation
Only degeneration only exploitation only stratification only gentrification

Ejaculated at fifteen

Into a generic stream of impoverished seduction
On the dole
Before the dole
Doling out
Doleful Dockers
Just like dear old dad
Follow the yellow brick road
That leads you back to the bread line
Just like dear old granddad

To boot
Lick the boot
Boot in
Boot out
Click the boot
To get back home
There is no place like home
Home is where the heart is
If you live on the other side

Of the track

On the street
Streetwise
Off the street
Streetwalker
East of the tracks
On a street car
Desire
Street value
Right up our street
For street credibility
You will be streets ahead
Of the working class
Lower class
Under class
No class
Third class

Belongs to a Third World
Where you can be inseminated
With spherical seamen
Incestuous
Poverty
From the potent rich
Impotence
From the spermicidal poor
Leaving
The incestuous birth right of the noetic rich
In a collective class of its own anarchy
Leaving
The incestuous still birth of the un-conceived poor
In a disparate class of assumptive predestination
Marginalize

Worlds Apart

With degrees
The world would change
When my seditious son
Crossed the continent
Into a new school of thought
He left his old school
With a four line testimonial

* Find report card insert

Legwork
Best foot forward
Uphill downhill
Slogging the streets
With the sweat of the brow
Plodding the pavement
In a collar of blue
Praying it will make
A toiler of you

Drudging the docks
For stevedores work
Wearing a donkey jacket
Hoping for work
Treading the trades
In a grovel of grime
Turning the stones
But nothing to find

Search the shops
In a thread of gray
Let down
Face down
Turned down
Even with minimum pay

Grovel the government
And work up lather
Let them know
You would suck up to their father
Bending over backwards
You would put yourself out
So let me in your office
So that I can punch myself
Out

Of school
He got his first job

A Carpenters Boy

Seventeen bob
You have the job
8:00 A.M.
To 5:00 P.M.
Five days a week
Working like a dog
Plus Saturday morning
8:00 A.M.
To 12:00 P.M.
Official Title: Joiners Apprentice
Ten bob for his mom
Seven bob for my son
And that’s how your dad’s working life

Begun

In a nondescript woodwork shop
Set in the center of a circular road
Close to a large open sawmill
Next to the old tramlines
It stood
Unnoticed
Forgetful
Drab and dull
A costume gem
In a tarnished circlet

Small
Outside
And inside
Baffle sounds
Drill
Into the fluorescent light of its somberness
Sandstorms of sawdust
Bleach the air with choking pungency
Only
The invitational smells of sweet resin
Would emanate you into its mournful snare
Dampened music
Resonated inside
While drones of machinery
Deadened the foul air
With its industry
Drills
Bore and purr
Hammers
Bang and knock
Chisels
Chip away the drudging day
Saws
Seesaw into all shapes and sizes
Back and forth they cut into the dusty day
Leaving
Sawdust as it hour glass
Bated into a whisper of turbid gloom
The sordid workshop is mitered
Into a marquetry of monotony

A small family business
Run by a controlling father
And his two discordant sons
Each one
Had sent the other to Coventry
Muted
In harmony
They did not sing each other’s praise

Peter

Grim
As grime
His shallow face ingrained his frown
Chiseled with sharpness
Cut into a fine veneer of sallow skin
It angled into a lean inverted A
Frame
Structured into a skeletal of sullenness
He strode with a strut of solemnity
Head held high
Supported
On a joist of loftiness
He held up homeliness
Nose
Declines
Into an unbroken strait wedge
Where
It edges into an uncurled beak
Chin
Notches into a dimple
Which is recessed into his tapered wedged chin
Eyes
Bridge the narrowness of his nasion
Plumb
In line
Cogged coronas of ovoid orbits
Set
Into an annular of bellicose blue
Inlaid with craftiness
Windows of the world
Trimmed
With confinement
Mitered
With misanthropy
Encased
With acrimony
Boarded
Up with limited light
He left no room for openness
The shutters of his mind

Closed

Off the love for his elder brother
Cutting off all contact
He would whittle the world away with wasting
Bitterness
Soiled his svelte lips
With a splenetic smirk
He sulks
As he smooths and sands the softwood side
Of a pine wood entrance door

Wrenched
With weariness he wrestled
His Jack Plane across the knotted edge of the pinewood door
Crest
Fallen
Shavings
Curl
Chip
And shrivel
Onto a dour cold floor
Disparaged chips curling up onto a blanch plain
Sleeping on a sheet of sawdust
Resting
Waiting
For the deadening dust to descend
Settling
It will be swept away
In time
Left and placed into a cold container for its crisp cremation

Sweat
Balled
Rolled
Down his serrated brow
As the smoothing plane rests
On the lead line of the pencil mark
Sweat
Shingled onto the slated strands of his swarthy
Hair
Splits up
Into a spray of streaks
Sweat
Streams onto salted specks of stranded
Hair
Bonded to brylcreem
Stuck to his forehead like the Valdez Exxon oil slick
Black
It shone
And parted
Like the exposed wing of a cunning raven
Stealth
His buoyant ears would surface like a subversive submarine
Leaving
His attentive antennas
To truss the workshop with the tricks of the trade

Turning

Towards the toothless lathe
He inserts the ripsaw blade
His wiry body is trim and slight
Paneled
Like flat hardwood
His stomach is firm and tight
Replacing the ripsaw
With the fine Jigsaw blade
His nimble fingers move
Like a sure footed willow tree
Deftly
He moves the timber with methodical dexterity
Cutting and turning
He controls his agile fingers
With the unbinding precision of a task
Master
In craftsmanship
His deft hands could manipulate
All types of wood into well crafted woodwork

Returning
To his workbench
The crafty man picks up a deal
Placing the plank
Into his well creased vice
He turns the arm
And twists it tight
Clamping the handle down
So it can’t move
Picking up
His hollow-chisel
He chips away at the softwood
Terminating the task
He exchanges the sharp chisel
For a borer
Drill
Down
He bores
Like a deathwatch beetle
Tap
Tap
Tap

The shoulder of the deserving apprentice

Paul

Burrowed under the lusterless light of a blinding wood shop
The tapping drones
Was the repetition of the day
Hammer away
It was the dog-end of the day
For the acquiescent apprentice
His job is nearly nailed down
He had served his sentence of servitude for six
Long years
Have labored labor
Where he labored under a laboring

Master

Taught his abiding apprentice
The skills
Of servility
The crafts
Of conformity
And in one more year
His apprentice would become a master
Journeyman
A master of crafts and skills
But would he become an artisan of life
Trained on a treadmill
Paul worked hard
He had turned his toiling tasks into a talented trade
Where he wore his technical skills on an annulate of pride

Your dad liked Paul
And he respected him
For what he was
But not for what he could become

Your dad’s moral code
Could not be threatened with indentured conformity
He was not submissive
He was more subversive
He could not survive
Or submit to subservience
Ideologically
He was an idealist
Committed to individuality
He was independent to indoctrination
His pendulum was not compliant
It swung on a paradigm of change
It was not static
Nor did it settle into mediocrity
It moved
Before its time
Often to the left
Of middling management
Where inept authority devalued principled changes
To maintain their own control of hegemonic power

Pallets

Of conformity
Stacked onto a scale
Of controlling collectivism
Pivoted on power
Regulated by the ruling rich
Their customary scale tipped up
Right
In step
The populace scale tipped down
Into a pauper’s piss pot of pooling poverty
Left
In line

Paul was in tow
With little initiative
He floundered
Under the shady shadow of his masterful master

Dust
Makes light
Of the lackluster day
Descending
Dusk
And film
Settle
Onto the lustrous ledge of a reconstructed window
Frame
Empty
Of pane
It rests on a pale pine casement
Light is leaden with dust and dusk

Together

With pained expression
The serving apprentice
And his painstaking master
Picked up the pallid pine window casement
Painfully
They lowered it onto two chestnut workhorses
Laid out
Its pane is empty
As it rests
On a lonely pedestal

Dust
Laden
It stretches its windowless shadow
Into a mirroring cross of silhouetted light
Burdened
With ponderous shadows
It settled into the heaviness of the dusky shop
Ephemeral light
Hallowed over the deathly frame
Sections
Crossed the sawdust floor
Into a pallor of sallow light
It framed the darkness with its shadowing

Cross

It lies in a state of stillness
Until
The service hammer
Pounds the nails into its frame
Pummeled
With penetrating rage
The ravaging nails tear away
Into the flesh of its frame
Nail after nail
Piercing the stillness
From the whetted whipping of its savage strikes
Beaten
Into a pounding pulp
The sap seeps onto its stainless steel head
Smeared
With the stained and splenetic smell of resin
The oils crowned the head
Of the saturated hammer
Until
The heathen head
Of the heinous nail
Burrows into the dark depths of its broken flesh

Picking up the pane
Peter sees no reflection
As he looks down upon the cross
Of the empty window pane
Finished
The last nail was hammered into the cross
Pane
Completed

With countenance
The unfettered bother watched

Ron

He now took over
The unheeded brother
Left
Him to sand away the annuals of time
Undaunted
Ron would smooth away the rough
Edge of the pane
With fine granules of fallow sand paper
He would follow the grain
Around the pane
He willed his windward hand
Against the knotted grain of time
Finishing
The sanding
He would pack up his tools for the night
In doing so
The younger brother completed the window frame
By encasing a trim around the pane
He enclosed the edge of the pane with a closed border

The next day

His elder brother
Ron
Would install the window frame
And your dad
Would ride his Raleigh 3-speed bike to work
Clock in at 8:00 a.m.
Set up the tools for his master
Unlike Peter and Paul
Ron and your dad would spend most of the day outside of the workshop
Much to the relief
Of your callow father
They would maintain the rental terrace houses for the absentee landlord

Burdened with tools
Hooked over his tender right shoulder
The heavy toolbars bag handle looped onto the claw of his hammer
Humping his raw back
Like a leaden load of laborious lard
The job of the day
Was assigned by his masters

Father

The boss
Bald and pink
Bespectacled in brown
Skittle in shape
And shoddy in taste
A skiver who would sack up the day with sleep
The bossy boss
Would see that all the wood
Materials would be delivered and dropped

Off

To the working site

Leaving

Peter to tillage the shop with his wroth
Flyaway Peter
Flyaway Paul
That was your father’s liberated call
Ah he boarded the green bus to Penny Lane

The Site of the Day

Brown
Blond hair
Like Everly
All coiffed back
Bespectacled like Holly
Thick rimmed and black
Short donkey jacket
And tools on his back
Drainpipe trousers
Tight and blue
Poured into black winkle-pickers
That pointed at you

This was your dad
From my point of view

Lift the knocker
Brass
Like a lion
With a coat of green
Rapping for service
Like an old tarnished Queen
Wood
Doors
And frame
Have already been delivered
To the dowerless dame
On penniless lane

Living in grime
On the tenement line
Housed choked
In a film of smoke
All low rented
On the poverty line
Row by row
Street by street
Down trodden houses
Sit
And rot on a timeless street
Bathed in squalor
Tinged with brown
Only the corner pub
Gets to wear the Golden Crown

Knock Knock
It’s not the landlord
My dear
Hope the old lady will appear
Because the bloody delivery is here

Crowned
With a pint
And the wolf at the door
Got to get home
But just one more
So bring me a pint you little Shiite
Got to get home
With the rest of my dole

Knock Knock
Out of the shadow
Into the wanting light
She would meekly appear
Open the door
Come on my dear
Open the door
It’s bloody cold out here

Odds
One to four
Got to get home
Before the rent man’s at the door
One more pint
Then off to war

Knock knock
Open the door
Come on in
Said the little old lady
Follow me
Into poverty
Time for tea
Said the sweet little old lady

Last call
Got to get home
One more
Pint
Please love
Then out of the door
Waiting for my missus
To open the door
In I go
Looking like a louse
Sitting on the table
Is a cold plate of scouse
Smacking my lips
She hits me on the head
Off to bed
With a bloody swollen head

Donkey jacket off
All work tools laid out
Pass me the mallet
And knock the old window frame
Out
In
Goes the new wooden frame
Follow me
Time for tea

Pass me the saw
Cut on the line
That will be fine
Floorboards out
Floorboards in
Follow me
Time for tea

Pass me the ratchet
Next to the gadget
Unscrew the door
That scrapes the floor
Follow me
Time for tea
Pass me the plane
To shave down the door
So that it won’t touch the floor
Fits like a tee
Follow me
Time for tea

But not before
Your dad
Dashed off to the lavatory
After all
It was
Time to pee

Talk about tea
Grandma would tee off
With another tale about tea

The Tetley Tea Lady

Veiled in dirt
Black as a crow
A yellow ring
Stained with tea
She poured a pot of cold Tetley tea

Sipping it slow
She stared with glee
Watching and waiting
As your dad sipped his cold tea

Cracking a smile
Over a saucer of tea
She cracks a warm fart
Over his cold cup of tea

Turning around
In a shroud of mess
She sweeps the dirt
With the hem of her dress
Skirting the boards
With shameless glee
She shuffled to the kitchen
To make a hot pot of tea

Looking at the fish tank
Swimming with fish
Sinking a smile
With shameless glee
He tanks up the fish tank
With his cold cup of tea

Out of the kitchen
Back comes the shrew
Holding a teapot
With a fresh pot of hot brew

She looks at the fish tank
She stares at you
Holding your cup
Close to your fly
She looks at your face
Burning like a sty

Trickling with a smile of drooling tea
Don’t worry dearie
If you have to pee
I often use my teapot for the W.C.

Leaking with laughter
The grandchildren were wet with pain
You may laugh
But your dad met many a crackpot
When he worked around the houses
On Penny Lane…

Ron

Limbed
From Korea
With a gammy leg
He battled
With his brother
In Coventry
They fought their war
In solitary
His spirit was calm with serendipity

Drifting
In drudge
Ron dredged away
Standing
In sawdust
Ron sanded away
Whittling the day
For meager pay
Duty bound
For the first of May
And let’s not forget
Father’s day

Anchored to his family
He was adrift in drudgery
Droning his day
He did his job
In a mundane way
Like your dad
He was happy to leave the hive
Out of the shop
He came alive
Pollinating the poor with ponder able pride
He would fix up the houses
At a pleasing pace
Like our dad
He would treat the poor with complimentary grace

Unlike Peter

Ron’s eyes were blue
Shaded in shadows
They shone with a hue
Delight
Bright
Like a beacon light
He wore his smile like a luminescent sprite

Silver
Spun its web
Into a wool of black sheep hair
Thick
Curled to the nape
It hung like lace
Strands of silver
Splintered his hair into shards of specks
Splayed with silver
It shrouded the dappled crown
Of his dimpled
Face
Round
Around the crown
Shaped like an orb
It had burnished with age
Masking his face
Like a saline sage
His nose was broad to the bridge
Unlike his brother
It was not narrow to the ridge

Lips
Long in length
Sipping the sun with the sheen of the sea
Skin
Gilded
Onto a spinnakers smile
Sprayed with joy
It splashed with laughter
Sparkling
It shimmered
With the flushed warmth of a southern breeze
His body would bend
To the change of the tide
Buoyed with balance
He would limp with pride

Walking with your dad
Side by side
He was your dad’s pride
Side by side
Supporting my son
With a fatherly pride

For six months
Until
He became redundant
Because your dad had asked for a raise
And it did not help when Peter would badger your dad
Even chasing him around the workshop with a wooden mallet
I know this seems like an occupation hazard with your dad
Why
It didn’t work out
Because he was not Paul
And he did not cow tow to Peter
So fly away Peter
And come back Paul
And good-bye Ron
As I know you will miss me when I am

Gone

The French Doors opened


Then it closed
But not before Elvis
Opened up with

Jailhouse Rock, Elvis Presley, 1957

Grandma

Stopped
And listened to Elvis
A smile
Softened onto her round youthful face
As she looked over towards her gyrating grandson
A memory
Notes of time
Gyrated into her past
As her mettlesome grandson
Beats time
Into her present
The Moon walking grandson
Now swaggers like the King
Impersonating
Him like his dad once did
In front of the living room mirror
Of her Lilliputian home

Oh Boy

It was the Six-Five Special
He roared with Fury
He went wild with Wilde
And like a Hurricane
He stormed with pride
When rock hit Merseyside

Top
Of the pops
A parade of stars
Would march behind the Mersey Bandwagon
Rory Storm and the Hurricanes
Swinging Blue Jeans
Cass and the Casanovas
Faron and the Flamingos
Gerry and the Pacemakers
And of course
Johnny and the Moondogs
Rocked on

The French doors
Were slightly ajar
And now and then
Music would pitch its song
And pop out of the kitchen
A little louder
Each time

Singin' the Blues, Guy Mitchell 1957 , and why not Tommy Steele

Saturday Night

And

Sunday night

To the local pub
Wearing a white shirt and a narrow gray tie
Rounds for all
And Sharps crisps for some
Dressed in style
And feeling fine
Pint love
And have one for thee

No Edwardian suit
With black velvet tips
That hangs down
Pass narrow hips

No drainpipes
Black and thin
Sticking to the legs
Like a lizard’s skin

No black shoes
Studded with steel
Thinking that
It gave you sex appeal

No iron chains
From pocket hips
Or knuckle-dusters
For puckered lips
Leave all that for the Teddy boy
Who stalks the hall
Not for a dance
But in search of a brawl