"Common"

Meaning?
Are you a 'Chav'?
That modern
Put down
Of the working classes.
We are the working classless
Chavs certainly are
Supposedly.
Lower than the low
Jeremy Kyle fooder
The English equivalent
Of 'trailer trash'.
I almost said 'British' there
But the Jocks speak
'Our' language
Even though it's not
The one I speak
As they call them NEDs.
I suppose back in the day
Calling someone 'common'
Was what common people
Called those 'beneath them'
In their never to be attained attempt
To be posh.
By which shopping
At Marks and Spencers
And visiting the Harrods sale
Was their futile benchmark.
Do you want to know
What common meant to me
When I was a kid growing up
On my council estates?
(Now sanitised for the poor as
'Social Housing' as the decent
Council ones have all been flogged
To working class turned pseudo-posh)
Common was Alf
Alf Common that is.
The first four figure
Football transfer fee
One thousand pounds!
From Middlesbrough to Sunderland
In nineteen oh five.
I might have been common
But I knew my history.

Dulwich Poet 4th January 2014

(Not sure what got me started on this. It's about the word Chav, used by working class people to put down other working class people, which for me, is actually worse that ignorant middle class people using it. We should not be attacking our own class, I expect it from the middle classes...)