Poems by Chris #090

Chris works in Manchester city centre on various pitches and contributed two poems. Monkey Monkey was written when Chris was a child and submitted to a competition in his little sister’s name. She ended up winning tickets to the cinema to see ROAR, a film about lions. He later entered it into a school competition and won again, this time under his own name.

The Labourer’s Daughter was written later in Chris’s life when he was serving time in prison.

Monkey Monkey

Monkey monkey in the zoo

Why do people stare at you?

You behind your cage and bars

Do they think you came from Mars?

Monkey monkey in the zoo

Why do people laugh at you?

Playing tricks and games galore,

It’s a wonder you’re not quite sore.

The Labourer’s Daughter

I once loved a girl with all my heart and I hated her ten times more,

She was six foot nothing in her stocking soles and her height was eleven foot four.

Now this girl she was very beautiful but her face was as ugly as sin.

She had a golf ball stuck at the collar of her throat and nose that hung over her chin.

Now her father was a bricklayer’s labourer and laboured to his trade on a cobbler’s shop.

Whilst going up going up a ladder with a hoe full of bricks he fell from the bottom to the top.

Now, this girl she got married to a black white man and he left her to die an old maid.

So she swore upon the cross if she ever had son,

She’d put him in the Bootmaker’s trade.