You’ve heard the tale of Little Red Riding Hood but have you heard the Dark Take of this Child’s Tale?

Little Red Riding Hood was not your common everyday child. For she was in fact a Witch in training, her Mother was a Witch and her Grandmother was also a Witch.

The basket of goodies that Little Red Riding Hood was to deliver to her Grandmother was not Food for consuming. But in fact this b...

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You are the blood of life

but your wasteful spilling

also signals its dying away.

The danger you show

is like a bull's enraging rag

In shame and unease,

facially giving away

from ear to ear.

In courage, passion and confidence

you fly the hoisted flag.

Cupid's waving his two fingers

to show he can still let loose that arrow

while the devil pla...

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I can’t tell you.

But last night, you entered my chest

for play, some kind of game, like ‘Operation’

and then I couldn’t sleep

I jolted – shivered – jerked – quirked,

now my eyes don’t close

and my body is a pulse,

you tiptoed across my ribcage,

leaving foot prints enlaced by landmines,

you slept on my lungs,

short wired my arteries,

you clipped the circuits of my ...

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A while ago, before I retired, I was concerned for the welfare of my students on reading a piece discussing the alleged widespread use of the psycho-stimulant Retalin by Australian university undergraduates. As a performance enhancer it was said to often be accompanied by depressants to reverse the effects. For some, it may have served as an introduction to more addictive and even more pernicious ...

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The only person who can save me

is me

A Random Hero wont set me free

Violets are blue

Its time for you to save you

Mentalities can't fly

Yours wont admit defeat

Not that I ever wanted you to lose

But, my grasp is still so weak

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Drifting high on a gentle breeze

and grazing the tops of lofty trees,

watching below, all the people move

but there’s nothing left, up here, to prove.

Floating higher and into the clouds,

the sultry silence so deafeningly loud.

Throbbing pulse of a beating heart

as atoms pull; trying to drift apart.

Looking down upon an ailing world

with colourful rags held hig...

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"You'll be safe, I promise", reassured his mum.

“But its not you who’ll end up sat on your bum!”

A conversation they’d had most every week

but it didn’t make his knees feel any less weak.

“Now come along, Harry, stop messing about,

go finish your homework whilst I clean up this house.

The show doesn’t start till the end of the week

and all this chatter is making me Squeak...

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Poem for Bob Crow (cheers W.H. Auden)

Stop all the docks, cut off the trains, 
Start the mariners striking, be still the cranes, 
Silence the busses and with muffled bullhorn 
Bring out the coffin, let the workers come. 

Let politicians circle, moaning overhead 
confessing on the airwaves, He Is RED, 
Put nooses round the white necks of the bosses, 
Let the riot policemen carry their o...

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‘Restless Art’ and ‘Seagull Shaped’ are two bookends of a beautiful Manchester love affair that lasted just as long as it should have done, the latter due to be published in Best of Manchester Poets Volume 2 in December. The former - also about the indecision between two people - was originally called "Red", who provided much of the inspiration for the poem and, indeed, coined its eventual titl...

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Will humanity ever learn? Europes worst war crime since World War II brought home the fact that its not just Cambodia and distant places where massacres occur, but anywhere that there is hate.

This time the Serb units in the area were in the wrong. Courts rules the Serb state as it was and is was not responsible. Last time it was...

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One for performing mainly, but I think it stands up alone.  Part of a series.

It’s Pokémon, pimples and boils.

Being a teenager—including the sores.
It’s Spiderman, Daredevil, Rudolph and GORE
the colour of darkness when your head hits the floor.

It’s nostalgia: 
ell-ee-dees and infra-red receptors on TVs.
It’s blame and physics watching stars burn
it’s the colour o...

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