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Tuesday 30 December 2008

Monday Poetry Train Revisited #8

Written for Monday Poetry Train Revisited
CHRISTMAS NIGHT 1993

It was Christmas night about fifteen years ago I didn’t shout help.
I didn’t have a phone heating water or electric in that squat.
It was flummin’ freezing that night just like it is right now ice and snow.
The last candle had died and I had no matches left to make a fire.
I pulled the newsprint blanket over my head and tried to get some kip.
But there was no sleep to be had that night in that old ramshackle gaff.

The rats and roaches put paid to that and then there was one massive crash.
I looked through the crack in the boarded up window, it was just some drunks.
They were kicking empty crates on their way home from the rub-a-dub-dub.
Smashing them against the steel shuttered shop fronts on the parade outside.
They staggered on shouting and swearing and soon they were out of my view.

As I watched another character came by, a Rastafarian.
A blanket over his left arm and clutching a brick in his right hand.
Without a second glance old Dreadlocks dashed the padlock off the shutter.
Rolling the freezing cold steel cover up to reveal a plate glass door.

Like a bull at a gate he charged with the blanket placed over his head.
Leaving a Rastafarian shaped hole in what used to be the door.
Just a few seconds later, he came skipping out onto the cold street.
He was carrying a heavy blanket, full of cigarettes and booze.
He had already disappeared out of sight when the alarm went off.
MSC301208

RWP Image prompt & TOP Cinquain (attempt)





SECRET SEAT
slippy
scarlet seat sleeps
shoeshine stall smells socky
shoppers shopping still stop sometime
shoes shine
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Sunday 28 December 2008

Sunday Scribblings "I Believe"

Posted for Sunday Scribblings I Believe prompt.

CHRISTMAS

WITHOUT

CHRIST

I believe I wouldn't want

Turkey without cranberry

Prayer without power

Cake without candles

Good without God

Sex without satisfaction

Time without Eternity

Presents without sacrifice

Smoke without fire

Carols without choristers

Word without spirit

Crackers without toys

Belief without fact

Pudding without brandy

Faith without imagination

Flocks without Shepherds

Christmas without Christ

261208
You can visit my new blog post Speaking Mancunian at: Hive Magazine

Tuesday 16 December 2008

Sunday Scribblings "Late"

Written for TotallyOptionalPrompts

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Sunday Scribblings

TOO LATE

(I FEEL FOR YOU)

I hope it's not too late for you

I feel the pain you’re going through

Sometimes you really have no clue

The hoops those clowns project at you

You paint your face but you’re still blue

These are the things I feel for you

If I were twenty-five oh yeah

With ice-blue eyes and auburn hair

If I could only be your man

I’d never ever let you down

These are the things I feel for you

I wish that you felt ten-feet tall

Then maybe you could scale that wall

It’s no consolation to you

But don’t you know I’ve been there too…

051208

Tuesday 2 December 2008

TOP prompt

Two different versions of my Cottonopolis thingy!
LITTLE MISS
Little Miss Cotton Cottonopolis
rocks her baby at the factory
in the cradle of industry.
It’ll soon be noon in boom and bust
And she’s just twenty-four hours ahead
She knows that by this time tomorrow
that the whole world will follow
every single word that she said.
And she said:
We’re going to build a canal to bring
coal to town and to link us to the sea.
At noon the next day
the whole world laughed
and said that she was daft
but they waited and they watched
and they copied her by half past three.
And she said:
We’re going to build about
two thousand mills each one eight floors high
with chimney stacks that scrape the sky
we’ll power the looms in boom and bust
with the new technology that we trust
and we’ll fuel those steam engines with coal
that we’ll cart up the Bridgewater canal and
the finished goods we’ll send across the sea.
At noon the next day
the whole world laughed
and said that she was daft
but they waited and they watched
and they copied her by half past three.
And she said:
We’re going to build a passenger railway station
and lay tracks to every city in the nation
and build new dormitory towns to house the hoi polloi.
At noon the next day
the whole world laughed
and said that she was daft
but they waited and they watched
and they copied her by half past three.
And she said:
We’re going to build a university
and a new town hall
a free library and art gallery
and public parks for all.
At noon the next day
the whole world laughed
and said that she was daft
but they waited and they watched
and they copied her by half past three.
And she said:
We’re going to build a ship canal
so ships can come to us
thirty-five miles from the sea.
At noon the next day
no one laughed
or said that she was daft
but they waited and they watched
and the ship canal officially opened in 1894.
011208
-->
First free public Library, Manchester 1653
First real canal (not river assisted)
The Bridgewater Canal Manchester 1761
First steam powered mill Arkwright’s, Manchester 1783
First passenger Railway Station, Manchester 1830
Manchester Ship Canal officially opened May 21st. 1894 by Queen Victoria
First Red Brick University, Manchester 1824
-->
WHATSIT?
Little Miss Crochet
up from Whatsit?
queues outside the
monastery gates for
bread and honey and
her baby cries for the
milk that she’s not got
and across town the
dark satanic mills
rise up eight floors
above the cut and
the phallic chimneys
tower one hundred
and eighty foot into
the air belching smog
that hurts your eyes
and the bargees down
below are blindly carting
coals to fuel the loom
in bust and boom
and even as the tracks
are going down for the
worlds first passenger
railway station
across the road she still
shares half the basement
with eight children and two
drunken and abusive men
there’s no sanitation yet
they dump and hit and miss
in the river and kill the fish
almost next door to the
Italianate warehouse fronts
of the Nouveau riche that line
in eighteen twenty nine
the streets of Cottonopolis
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Cottonopolis = nickname for Manchester UK in the nineteenth century
Bargee = boatman on a canal barge
Cut = canal
Whatsit? = the countryside