Hope Resurfaces For the Girl at Greggs

I saw your forearm as you got my sausage roll

from the hot counter and placed it in a brown bag.

The long line of cuts from your wrist to your elbow

a message, a plea, a cry for help, a hashtag

to the like-minded of life blighted by self-harm.

I would never have known from your warm smile, charming

service that you suffered any mental ang...

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In The Shadows of the Trees

A double row of broad mature trees squeezed

in neatly ordered lines form a rich green

border by the city centre car park.

Long scraggy grass chokes the spaces between

them, the two foot high embankment means he’s

not easy to spot among the lush dark

canopy presumably he calls home?

And if that is so, does he live alone?

His hammock hang...

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Mum and me on a lottery funded

bench in Bowness Bay. Part of us was sad

sitting there in quiet contemplation.

Mum missing a husband, me missing Dad.

Around our feet mallard milled and blundered

and seagulls dive-bombed down from overhead,

swans lapped up their status in the nation 

while jackdaws joined the fight for tourists’ bread.

A Spanish spea...

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When

I wonder what time of the day I’ll die?

At dawn, drifting off to soaring birdsong

enveloping a slowly lighting sky?

Elevenses? A digestive, your strong

coffee brewing, the paper read as I,

frightened and fearful beg you, don’t be long.

Over lunch? My tuna melt half eaten

I gasp for air and fumble, my head flops

exhausted of life, my body beaten.

Du...

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When

I wonder what time of the day I’ll die?

At dawn, drifting off to soaring birdsong

enveloping a slowly lighting sky?

Elevenses? A digestive, your strong

coffee brewing, the paper read as I,

frightened and fearful beg you, don’t be long.

Over lunch? My tuna melt half eaten

I gasp for air and fumble, my head flops

exhausted of life, my body beaten.

Du...

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One Showing Only

God is waiting for us in the front row

of his Cinema. Don’t worry no rush.

A seat is reserved just for you. A film

of your life. The one chance for you to show

God when and what you did. It’s not airbrushed.

Because however good, great, ghastly, grim

it was, it is meant to be warts and all.

It’s not to judge you for eternal hell

but merely prepare you f...

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Soliloquy No 4 – Once More Into The Breech…..

Once more into the breech of your T72 tanks we beseech you comrades,

once convicts, now conscripts for the Motherland,

we give thanks for your coming sacrifice.

The chameleon West has shown its true colours.

Bleached by the sun, its poison runs to help the Nazi Ukrainians

whose blood we will spill to stain the land.

Blot out their ...

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To eat or to heat, that is the question.

Whether tis better to eat to make my heart still beat but

anyway freeze my stiffening bones in my own home for

lack of heat gives pause for thought.

It ought not to have come to this.

To eat or to heat ? Perchance I could do both, alas I cannot.

It comes to pass that I must choose one but not the other

unlike those brotherly shareholder...

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R P I - The Anagram

There’s a cost of living crisis that could cripple me and you

with the fastest rising prices since the end of World War Two.

That’s me and you - generic you - we’re all in this together,

except we’re not there’s many who this storm will simply weather.

I can’t believe we’re here again they’re advertising gold

values and investments,  when to buy or sell o...

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Cargo 200 – Special Delivery

A run on the rouble in the Russian State Bank,

the Muscovites cursing the Brits and the Yanks,

the young mother fretting for her son in his tank

while the old man beside her his face has turned blank.

His i-phone appended to his hairy red ear

as she frowns and she strains in an effort to hear,

then watches his face morph from blankness to fear

a...

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The Last Dream of Donald

Donald had a dream he never dreamt of,

thousands of acolytes gathered around

his majestic bed, sniffing the scent of

a long buried fear he hadn’t yet found.

He felt their clammy fingers make a start,

press his skin, penetrate his inner core.

They jiggled his lungs and tickled his heart,

fingered his brain, until tacky sweat poured

from ...

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Lonely Windows

No-one looks through me now, it’s very sad.

Yet I have seen so much from those who gazed

across this busy street though I am glad

to have been both enlightened and amazed

at all humanity’s undertakings.

No-one looks through me now. Dust and grime

have made a cataract of my being,

so that life’s universal keeper, time,

brings closure to the chapters of...

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This is a Time

This is a time,

unprecedented in your lives,

to reach out in person, reach out online.

To demonstrate care for yourself and others

who may be suffering a sense of despair,

your sister, your brother, your father, your mother,

feeling hopeless or trapped in a faraway stare

you glimpse when you enter a room.

This is a Time,

unparalleled in your lives,

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The following poem is based on the eloquent speech of Sadiq Khan and where it took place following the Westminster Bridge atrocity. 

The Mayor Stands

And so the mayor stands hands clasped together                               

in the cold June weather by City Office. Coffers up                                           

visible unequivocal condemnation of those from his               ...

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This poem was written 9 years ago but seems to have more resonance now than it did then.

Clash

She limped along Old Trafford road

her helping hand a stick of ash,

two Tesco bags increased her load,

her costume emphasised the clash

of cultures on a bright Spring day

when European arms and legs

in ghastly white are on display

by Boots and Claire’s and Next and Greggs.

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