Dr Martens Boots

"Hey! what are those shiny, black things on your feet?"

Asked an alien appearing one night on my street.

"Why these?" I replied, pointing down to my boots,

"Do you mean what the old cockneys call 'daisy roots'?"

"Oh yes!" so said he, or perhaps it was she,

As they stood there beneath a magnolia tree.

Unsure, I asked: "Are you a female or male?"

They said "Either, neither, or both, what you will."

We got back to chatting about my foot gear.

I said "Do you like them? Just look down, right here

"At these, my inordinate pride and my joy.

"A truly prized gift, for a girl, or a boy.

"My footwear, my brogans, my waders, galoshes.

"I polish them, pamper them, wipe off the sploshes.

"For these are my own special DM possessions

"Doc Martens, a magical German creation."

I don't need no color, class, creed, and no roots

As long as I have my Doc Martens best boots.

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Thanks for reading

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Riding the mountains high

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Notes and credits

Dr Martens boots are an all-purpose fashion item, originally conceived as an alternative army boot and designed by Klaus Märtens, a German Army doctor, in 1945. Märtens set up in business with Luxembourger Herbert Funck in 1947, selling the patent to Griggs Group for UK manufacture in 1959. The product was rebranded and Anglicised as 'Dr Martens', also known as 'Doc. Martens', 'DM's or just 'Docs' (Wikipedia).

The term "daisy roots," comes from cockney rhyming slang. Cockneys were people who were born in a working-class district of East London in the 19th and 20th centuries. This was an era of great population expansion for London with people immigrating from farmland in Essex (to the east of London), from Eastern Europe and from Ireland. The cockney accent perhaps derived from a combination of rural Essex, Jewish, and Irish influences (unverified).

The embedded video above is from the 1982 UK BBC Comedy series: The Young Ones. Please forgive the BBC, Klaus, for misspelling the name of your immortal creation.

Part of my inspiration for this verse came from Alexei Sayle. An English (Liverpool) comic and all-round media personality, Sayle was a one-time communist whose parents were of Jewish-Lithuanian descent. I met Sayle in the 1980s and was delighted by his Dr Martens boots stage routine, as shown in this video. The song gave me the idea for my poem. Also the line "no color, class, creed, and no roots."

This verse is dedicated to my daughter Florence and to remind us both of a happy visit to a shopping mall in her university city, where she was studying paramedicine two years ago. I bought her a lovely pair of fashionable DMs, at an equally 'fashionable' price. But then, what are dads for?

It is also intended to celebrate non-binary gender identify. I have heard trans people say they sometimes feel they are treated like aliens.

I don't own any DMs and went off the brand many years ago, preferring Magnum task boots when I was in uniform. My last pair of Doc Martens shoes split the sole wide open after less than a year of wear. Neither have I ever met an alien... at least not while sober.

Raymond G. Taylor

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