Poems from Session V

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE Len Listening through the open window to a first year soprano at the RN college. Falling asleep on the softest couch the Royal Exchange has to offer. Walking to the furthest tip of Oldham Street and coughing up the fumes. Observing the masses in the Arndale Centre, crawling over each other to get to the sales. Smelling petals I don’t know the name of in Chorlton cemetery. Crunching the path with the balls of my feet until they ache. Clowning with Jimmy’s son under the biggest oak tree in Heaton Park. Crowing with the birds at the edge of hole number 9. Howling with the dogs on Chorlton Ees at midnight. Sprinting with the kids in Didsbury playground and screaming with the girls that don’t go to school. Waking up on Piccadilly Gardens grass and smelling Nero coffee.

TENBY

Adele Fowles

Driving to Tenby. Writing in your little diary – the cottage and the heatwave and the beach. Listening to you crying and screaming,

NEVER EVER AGAIN.

Watching you walking alone along the beach collecting those sweet little shells. Trying – failing – to make any sense of any of it, at all.

NUTSFORD VALEA

Anonymous

listen to the birds

watch the trees

see the insects

the flowers and bees

sometimes the frogs

maybe an odd fox

geese fly by

snow winter

fresh air

POEM Luisha A bedroom is a sanctuary, a place of relaxation, where one can unleash imagination. Viewing rural attraction at the window pane, trees, flowers, birds echoing down the lane. A bedroom is a place, your own breathing space. A calm area, where poems can become. A place where relaxation takes place. In a bedroom the world is your oyster! Read, write, create something extraordinary! But don’t forget, a bedroom is a place where the mind expresses itself. So the content of a bedroom reflects the content of personality. Personality is unique, subject to critique. POEM Paul B Sitting and watching people relaxing with coffee cups and pop. The sun is bright but not too hot. Smelling the beautiful flowers and freshly-cut grass, the breeze on my face helps me forget the rat race and I’m able to drift, which also gives me a lift. Forgetting the stresses of modern-day life – no anger, no aggression – and it takes away the strife. Forgiving others is easier coz I’m in this place that lifts me up and fills me with grace. REMEMBERING LYNSLEY STREET AND HOPWOOD STREET Carl Peploe They were both pulled down in 1996. I walked past them just before they were going many many years ago. By then they were all derelict and there were cages for pigeons. I wish the old streets were back. Why didn’t they leave the old streets alone? There was a community back then, now there’s shitting nothing, just faceless concrete prisons. The old streets had character even though they had outside bogs, like Coronation Street in the 1960s. But them days have gone forever. Now it’s all alienation, pissed up dickheads and yobs. Put them all in little boxes like pigeons and dogs. POEM Brian Clewloe Walking around Manchester to sit in Piccadilly Gardens to see the water fountain and have my sandwiches listening to street music. Then going round the Arndale to see the shops and going in HMV to buy a James CD, and going to Deansgate to look at the shops, then getting the bus to come to St Luke’s to do art and poems. Then going home for tea and reading the paper and watching TV.