Down In The Hole

My father said it was this life or the dole –

so sacrifice ambition, heart and soul

if our family was to earn a crust

then I would have to work until I was bust

Years of hardship finally took its toll

I had danced to the tune of Old King Coal

and I was laid off, let into the light

a blessing to escape eternal night

I was sixteen, they thre...

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Orgreave (Truth & Justice)

Standing on a picket line in 1984

Orgreave on a summer’s day, we all knew the score

I am just an honest man, I never broke the law

Until the law tried to break me and now I’m not so sure

Orgreave Truth and Justice

Will never go away

The coppers broke the law

So the coppers have to pay

In a court of British law

It’s time we had our ...

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Black Christmas

Fifty fucking years

this black snow’s fallen

every Christmas.

It fell on my father

and his father before him.

Stepping out

into the grey December light

cold and tired.

Home to a bath

and the warm hearth

of family.

A bond of men

tighter than brothers,

thicker than blood,

darker than midnight.

All gone now,

like d...

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Carnations

After the bath
she used to drag
black worms
of coal dust
from the corner
of his eyes.

He has never cried,
though sometimes -
when he thinks back -
for no apparent reason
he finds charcoal
on his cheeks.

He is clean now,
though for many years
every crease and wrinkle
on his angry forehead
was gritted with
carbon hate.

Where once stood
a newsagents
on the corn...

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the Dust, the Dust

I remember the men,
their faces blackened with filthy coal
layers of carbon dust on skin,
slowly lining their lungs thick.
I think of them in the twilight,
two miles underground
hewing with axe and pick,
shirtless bodies glistening with sweat like morning dew
I see them coming home,
tired of the black
eyes like pissholes in the snow
unaccustomed to the light
and then,
and then their golden...

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