My Liverpool home

by Ruth Aylett

Made by a funnel-shaped Mersey
whose bottlenecked tides scoured
the sand that did for Chester;
made by blood money
lives of the enslaved, ground
down into the riches of sugar.

The quick wits of a port city,
though no port now,
no merchantmen sailing for Rio;
the Three Graces sit marooned
and the Liverbird looks down its beak
on a Pierhead of museums and tourists.

Dissed by a London elite that hates
the zero deference, verbal aggression,
the live current that
shocks the status quo.
Scouse city, reds and blues, refuse
to shrivel, fade, piss-off. And will
never ever buy that rag.