Where hard lads rule

Down by the river where the hard lads rule

Sammy Davies territory with brothers and all

Forbidden territory to most but not I

With my passport of the father

Whom by his graciousness could pass unhindered

for fear of retaliation in the classroom the next morning.

Uneasy alliances forged on bitterly fought for lands

I wound my way through various courts and squares

To the riverside fish quay with its timbered staiths

Where off-cuts of twine in orange and green

danced with the rats on weathered beams

Crab legs and prawn shells lay 

with dehydrated cloudy eyed sardines

Detritus from the boats that slept and bobbed in the oily waters of the gut

All pervading a smell of diesel and rotten fish

London pea souper aroma rolls over you in a drunk’s embrace 

Plastic fish crates Lossiemouth and Grimsby

give providence to an industry in decline

all within sight of the defunct redundant Tyne brand gates

Here I would fish with a crabbing line

Herring bated hooks off Lloyds hailing jetty

as it poked a weather worn witches finger

towards lands afar for ships Baltic bound

Salt encrusted rusting iron bolts 

weeping rust to the languorous swell

holding ancient planks in their cankerous embrace

each silently waiting to leave each other, in bad faith,

at the next south easterly spring tide gale

A place where the barnacles spread

as Jackson Pollock monochrome dots

adorned with bearded muscle bladderwrack garlands 

Here you sit and wait for a tug on the line

the time honoured signal to pull away

with nare a sea shanty breath on the voice of the wind

All in the hope of an eater, decked in it’s best salmon pink livery,

more likely a green and black monster, devil’s crab

Which given your capricious nature, and the strength of the fight

May toss back to the black water, an upward thumb

Or dash against the cold wet unforgiving rocks

for its compatriots with great gusto to devour

as such is the nature of crabs 

Here where gnarled polystyrene blocks frocked with treacle brown streaks, 

yellow shell oil plastic an incumbent used prophylactic mistress in tow

spew back and forth against bulwark timbers on an ebbing tide

Here the spindrift spray from a cold grey belligerent North Sea 

engraves your face with tattooist needles 

Here at the age of eleven you are truly happy.