EVERYBODY'S GOT LOVE BITES BUT ME

EVERYBODY’S GOT LOVE BITES BUT ME

In this two-bit town
It’s once bitten twice shy
Chewing streets up and down
My tongue’s asking “Why?”

My teeth are on edge
No work and no necking
Just sucking this ledge
No future worth wrecking

Nothing to say
No reason to pray
Wish something lovely would hit me
Everybody’s got love bites but me

In the back of my mouth
There’s a taste of success
And word has it down south
You can talk oral sex

But in this dingy town
My lips are all cracked
Speechless at home
All sleepless and sacked

Nothing to say
No reason to pray
Wish something lovely would hit me
Everybody’s got love bites but me



KEITH ARMSTRONG

FALL ALMOST - A NEW POEM BY DAVE ALTON

Fall Almost

Summer’s sun thins to cloud and mist,

Sky-blue being washed out to grey,

Faces recently uplifted

Fade and pale and turn away.

Autumn colours quietly arrayed,

Gilded leaves shading to brown

Until gathering winter winds,

With cold fingers, pluck them down.

While she of four score years and ten,

Who’s the last of all she knew,

Accepts now her season has gone,

Feels she’s had more than her due.

There may still be sun yet to come,

But even so, days grow small,

Summer passes to memory,

Then will slip beyond recall.

THE WOODEN DOLLIES OF NORTH SHIELDS - NEW POEMS FROM A NEW PROJECT

Our Dolly


Like her sisters before her, she’s
more than a figurehead, fishwife

or a painted charm for good luck.
Our Dolly doesn’t take kindly
to being gawped at and mocked
by rowdy folk who take liberties,
pose for selfies and pocket pieces
of Dolly to take home. A different story
if you’re about to go to sea, she will
protect you, be a beacon to bring you
back home safely. Our bonny lass
Dolly watches over the beloved Tyne,
she bears our proud history, a lifetime
of industry, shipbuilding, hard graft and coal.


Catherine Graham

 
A Girl In Every Port Of Call


With duty done, the hammocks swing with talk of waiting girls,
A familiar name rings out in every sea salty heart:
Mine is called 'Dolly' ……. mine is called Dolly too.
I sleep with her under my pillow, I dream of her every night,… I do too.
I know she keeps me safe,….. I know that too.
Dolly will be waiting for me on the North Shields quay, even after dark…. mine will be too.
Dolly loves me, I keep her pressed close to my chest,… Dolly loves me and my chest too.
But does Dolly really yearn for all her besotted beaus?
Does she grieve alone when the Luttine bell tolls?
Or, does she cast another sweeping, mysterious spell across the wide divide?
Eagerly anticipating the cut of a keen new blade that will once more take her out to sea?
Will she mourn when the great oceans give up their many sunken souls?
Will the knife-wielding, rival suitors clash over Dolly’s unrequited love?
Will loving dissection and briny erosion completely dispel Dolly’s contagious myth?
Only the inscrutable, waiting Dollies know.
After all, this is their seafaring tale,
And they are saying nothing.


ROBERT LONSDALE

The new girl on the block

In 1958 the ghosts of past dollies

gather up their skirts and their baskets

and their warnings and rush

to Northumberland Square

to warn the newcomer

about men with knives

They stand in a cosy huddle

comparing wounds and scars

and talk of cuts here

and spelks there

and whether it did any good

and was it bloody worth it

They try to persuade the new lass

to come down to the Jungle

for a few drinks and whatever else

might arise but she says

she might join them later,

mebbes in sixty years or so.

 

ROB WALTON 

THE LINCOLN IMP!