The heavy Midnight air still lingers even at 4am,
it shifts and pauses, floats and stops but never moves
far from your door.
Exhaling the drag end of a cheap nasty cigar
and blowing a kiss to the tendrils of mist
that collect at your feet, numbing them ahead
of the perfect summer’s day to come,
you are reminded that
for inside every good man
there is a villain that the public
want to see emerge,
a Captain Hook for their imagination and mouth
Do you want to stay asleep
In your somnabulary life
While you are sleeping
You are turning into stone
Petrifying
But it only happens if you let it
And you let it
Long before
Your hair turned grey
When you started complaining
About the yoofs
In gravity-defying
Low slung jeans
Text speak
And all music released
Since U Can’t Touch This
You get so annoyed
When you recall
Your comedian son
With his
‘Stop! Hammer Time’
How many times does the opportunity arise
in which you can visit the ghosts
and smile with relief as a tear gently rolls down your cheek?
A bedroom door hides many a secret from the world,
the stolen, lengthy, beautiful snog with a girlfriend, heavy petting banned
in the local swimming pool, but a delight worth risking
when she cycles
over to see you from Wendlebury one summer’s day
in ‘85 and music from a band worth loving plays, crackles, skips
like my heart as she leans in again,
The voice in my head
From waking to sleeping
Flowing around me
Keeping me safely floating
Holds me above the dark below
The voice of you
Flowing through me
When I am calm
Holds me up
As I float in living water
That dissolved a mountain
I’ll hear your voice
In my head and in my heart
When all my sadness
Is washed away
In sweet sunlit water
Rippling in the wishing well.
Dr. Erica Wright 2014.
In the hat, last four teams.
Hands rub, for successful dreams.
Reds meet Forest, Norwich see Blue.
And will Mersey fill Wembley? True!
Reds against YELLOWs went to play.
On a gorgeous April day.
Semi finalist in the cup.
And winners champers, to sup.
Two armies took over the town.
Spirits raised high, for the crown!
Flags amongst banners in the ground.
And smiles with laughs were compound.
The swarm of red inside.
Who wore the Merseyside pride.
Like animals, they were penned.
A time to talk.
A time to tell.
A time to think.
And, a time to dwell.
A time to learn.
A time to listen.
A time to laugh.
And, a time to glisten!
A time to sight.
A time to seek.
A time to stay.
And, a time to keep!
John C Heldt 2014
(Man:) Of course, it is regrettable. There is no doubt about that. The shock waves that rippled around the Palace of Westminster and other Government institutions this week when the news was leaked, unfairly in my opinion, that the Minister in charge of such a high profile department, a department might I add, which had made such sweeping fundamental and necessary cost saving changes to the way it was run, was in fact the illegitimate spawn of Satan. I won’t lie; it was of course a huge blow to morale.
The monument of a thousand radio plays
and midnight angry violent arguments in which the host would
invariably
find the stirring spoon such a joyous toy in which to thrill his sterile wife
who listened in to make sure he was really at work,
was barely visible
as David Owen, former prison inmate of a town near Prestatyn,
former, yet not reformed, alcoholic like his father,
former fighter, brawler and unreformed gambler, better, debtor
like his mother and a thief of uneasy time, as well as the odd
I am a plaything of the gods
And when they crush me
Into a little ball
Throw me
Hard into the wall
I will soften to rubber
Bouncing
Harmlessly
And when they
Heedlessly
Fling me
High, high into the air
I will open up my wings
And sweetly soar
Far across the cerulean blue.
Dr. Erica Wright 2014
The following poem was written by Brian Nash for the WNWA walk from Hillsborough to Anfield. The group consisted of supporters, survivors and family members and was organised by Steve Kelly and Cherie Brewster.
Why do I cry?
Nobody I knew died.
My old man was there
Some good friends were there
But they came home alive.
My Dad had almost given up
Couldn’t get near the gate
But a crush and then a sway and
“Ee are, get in here mate”
Did that random act of kindness decide his fate?