A PLEA FOR POETRY
Hear All Sides
Hear our views
Plenty of letters
We have for you.
You read our mail
Then you decide
If they’re interesting
Then you publicise.
I love reading your paper
With all the topics
And problems of today,
But my passion is reading
and writing poetry.
I have been sending poems
in for years. But now I have
a great fear, that the poems
page will disappear.
Emma Thomas, Darlington.

CHINESE TAKEAWAY BLUES
A once oppressive regime, that
stamped on dissent,
Has mellowed with age,
an invitation was sent.
So in a worker’s gymnasium
in old Beijing,
An audience gathered
to hear Bob Dylan sing.
As he could only do songs
that met the censor’s approval,
No soldiers were present
for any dissident removal.
His words told of freedom,
justice and right,
The audience marvelled,
like the blind gaining sight.
He thanked the Chinese for
“Opening the Door”,
Then for an encore did
“Masters of War”.
To a standing ovation,
his fist to the sky,
Beijing had been conquered,
now bring on Shanghai.
These concerts took “some arrangin”,
For in China “The times, they are a
changin”.
David Craddock, Darlington

COALITION BLUES
Pensioners can’t afford to live in
CON-DEM-ned Coalition Britain.
Whether to heat or not to eat?
That’s a question that has us beat.
One or the other – we have to choose –
We can’t do both in the “Coalition
Blues”.
The ice in the bath is just as cold as
The heart of fuel companies’
shareholders,
Concerned for pensioners? Come off it!
Their only concern is for their profit.
Our car is now a souvenir
Of happier times no longer here.
Thus we stay at home alone –
Can’t even afford to use the phone.
We get no interest on our savings –
Chipped away like wood shavings –
All used up to pay the bills,
Leaving nothing in our wills.
Starving years of cold and strife
Are all we can foresee in life.
With funeral expenses hiked sky high.
We can’t even afford to die.
Nothing to win: everything to lose,
We sing in our chains, “The Coalition
Blues”.
A Hall, Darlington