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              What we have become

              Poem by Harry Gallagher

              Harry GallagherbyHarry Gallagher
              25-02-2021 16:00
              in North East, Region, Teesside, UK News
              Transporter Bridge

              Transporter Bridge by Gary Robson This image was marked with a CC BY 2.0 license:

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              My original home town, Middlesbrough, built a couple of hundred years ago from nothing and peopled by outsiders from all over the world who came to work, has been home to many different cultures for as long as I can remember.

              Over recent years, somehow the football club attracted a fan from London, Yusuf Jama, who very quickly became a super-fan. He follows his team everywhere and is so infectiously enthusiastic – he loves MFC and is unerringly positive with a huge smile. God knows how much he spends every year on travel, tickets etc. but he’s a brilliant ambassador for our club and area. In short, to coin an oft-used local phrase, he’s “Boro mad”.

              Recently the club, by now well-aware of Yusuf and the affection in which he is held by other fans, approached him and asked would he like to be a semi-regular interviewer of our players? Would he not! He was obviously delighted and it was announced last week.

              Soon afterwards, some people who I can only describe as racist trolls from a football message board – so called Boro fans – began posting vile insinuations. “Why was he getting the job?”, “It’s PC box-ticking” – and they were very much their milder thoughts. I won’t share the others here but I’m sure you can imagine. I know his skin colour was mentioned, and these clearly aren’t the kind of people to hold back on letting everyone know their ‘thoughts’, though that’s too generous a word.

              The upshot is the lad heard about it, read it and is heartbroken, with the result that he has now decided not to take the position; preferring instead to withdraw to look after his own mental health and wellbeing.

              Those arrogant, ignorant scumbags do not represent me or my town.

              Poetry is a grossly insufficient tool to address things like this but right now it’s all I have to hand…

               
               What We Have Become
                
               Meet me by moonlight
               on the sailors’ trod,
               that path made black
               by what filled the bellies
               of our mams and dads.
                
               We’ll walk on the bones
               of riveters’ catchers,
               fitters and their mates
               who built a world’s bridges
               but themselves couldn’t escape
               so instead slung them ‘cross rivers
               and stuck out their hands
               to bid welcome to strangers.
                
               Take the black path past
               the BOS plant, Beam Mill,
               where nightshift ghosts
               play cards in the messroom,
               their pennies spotwelded
               to the rust-holed table. 
                
               Then back to the docks
               still laden with ships,
               sailors pounding a trod
               to the Captain Cook
               for tabs and a skinful 
               and a roll in the sawdust.
                
               Meet me under moonlight
               and we’ll scare ourselves dumb
               not with talltales of yore
               but by what we have become. 
              Harry Gallagher
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              Harry Gallagher

              Harry Gallagher

              Poet, singer, songwriter, actor - there's no beginning to my talents. Working constantly and live blissfully on the North East coast I’m a poet based in the North East of England and my poems have been published all over the place.

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