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)

Written for ReadWritePoem Image prompt #6 & TotallyOptionalPrompts 'Cinquain'

http://readwritepoem.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/routine-by-tres.jpg
Image by tres clink-the-link-above^

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

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

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

TOP prompt

Two different versions of my Cottonopolis thingy!

Posted to TotallyOptionalPrompts

LITTLE MISS

COTTONOPOLIS

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

with steel 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.

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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 21^st. 1894 by Queen Victoria

First Red Brick University, Manchester 1824

http://www.manchestertourguides.com/tours_industrial.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/

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