Down and Out

My Dad was born dirt poor and he was poor when he was dead.

He lived in cardboard city in a corrugated shed.

You say your life is tough but, hell, our lives were so much tougher.

You draw your weekly benefit. We had to sit and suffer.

We hadn’t got the wit to steal nor yet the brass to beg,

But Dad would dance the Highland Fling and shake his wooden leg.

You haven’t got a bean but, cripes, we hadn’t got a prayer.

It’s not enough to bugger off, you have to be a stayer.

A rainy day it was when Dad was put into the ground.

He left his empty sea chest and just thirty-seven pound.

You say you’re penniless but, Jeeze, we were much pennilesser.

We lived on crusts and fag-ends that we found behind the dresser.

Dad sold Mum to the slavers in a dive in Buenos Aires.

That was unkind. He lost his mind. It vanished with the fairies.

Mum danced on bar-room tables in her knickers and a hat.

You may think the world’s your oyster but it’s fishier than that.

Yes, he sold her to the slavers for his thirty-seven quid.

A man does what he has to do and that was what he did.

It’s the poor that play their hearts out but the rich that run the game.

If things had turned out different then they wouldn’t be the same.

It’s the rich that get the pleasure and the poor that get the curse.

The truth is sad. The truth is bad. The truth is worse and worse.

You say you’re down and out but, shitehawks, we were down and outer.

Dad sold Mum to the slavers so we had to do without her.

John Whitworth