I
All aggro in tight clothes and skinhead crops
they think that like themselves I'm on the dole.
Once in the baths that mask of 'manhood' drops.
Their decorated skins lay bare a soul.

Teenage dole-wallah piss-up, then tattoos.
Brown Ale and boys' bravado numbs their fright -
MOTHER in ivy, blood reds and true blues
against that North East skin so sunless white.

When next he sees United lose a match,
his bovvers on, his scarf tied round his wrist,
his rash NEWCASTLE RULES will start to scratch,
he'll aerosol the walls, then go get pissed ...
So I hope the TRUE LOVE on your arm stays true,
the MOTHER on your chest stays loved, not hated.

But most I hope for jobs for all of you -

next year your tattooed team get relegated!

II

Wartime bunkers, runaways overgrown,
streets named for the town's two England caps;
cricket played with shovel blade and stone,
the daylight's rotten props near to collapse.
HEALTH (H changed to W) FOR ALL.
with its Never Have Another Haemorrhoid
is all that decorates the tap-room wall
of this pub for pensioners and unemployed.

The Brewery that owns this place supports
only the unambiguously 'male'
Northern working class spectator sports
that suit the image of its butch Brown Ale,
that puts hair on your chest, and makes you fight,
and when you're legless makes a man of you!

The Brown Ale drinkers watch me as I write:

one front door orange in a row all blue!