Her slippers shuffle along
The carpet, with swirls of faded bronze. 
Wrinkled hands worn by casino youth, waltz 
Through the smell of hot leather,
Balancing china cups and saucers.
With eyes that sing the marble green
Of the Empress staircase, her face is the ghost
Of a lost love.

And I, with tiny toes that cannot yet tap
On the ballroom floor below, 
Eat jam sandwiches
On my Grandmot...

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A daughter, a mother and a nurse, sleepwalks to work
On four hours’ sleep, as the moon peeps above the clouds.
The sun snuggles under the covers.
The familiar uniform bares her arms against the breath of December.
Clinical blue shrouds her worries of money troubles
And ailing family members
She wears a compassionate smile.
There are blisters on the soles of her feet,
From chasing the lost ...

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The sun bows, outside the window
Clouds don a shade of black.
In a dimly lit side room,
Bulbs flicker. Hope turns its back.
Clock hands stack the seconds.
Eyelids straining with the fear
That in the hollow of my dreams
You’ll disappear
With the wave of a gloved hand
Under a pristine white sheet.
I trace the wrinkles, map the dimples
Painted upon your fading face.
Until sleep seduces me
...

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One people. One voice. One Love....
United as a city, we rise above the hate.
Because these are the bricks that we built.
A labour of love. And it’s the workers’ hands
That make them great.
From the beating heart of Albert Square,
The vessel of music takes us everywhere.
It owns a bucket hat and Adidas footwear.
You can feel it alive in the streets, in the air.
Indie music. Madchester. No...

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Maybe it’s those absent eyes,
gone searching for their better days,
that give away your hide and seek disguise
and tell me that you’re far away.

Are you back in New York,
chasing that old American dream
through the concrete foundations
on which you built our family's beam?

Or are you in Wigan’s Central park,
in Billy Boston’s Empire State,
watching Warriors paint the town red
then p...

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A colouring book becomes Facebook.
A tweet isn’t the sound from a bird.
Mobile devices hold us hostage
to high definition
when ambitions are blurred.
Light up trainers become stilettos
that shush insecurities
and tightly crush toes
,flashing in the strobe lights
of newly found adventure,
that makes us drunk on
possibilities and hope.
But dazzled by choice,
dazed by possibility,
we be...

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She
paints her lips with a false confidence,
smacks them together
and sits
and waits.
Her apprehension perches beside her
on the lonely park bench.
She pushes it away,
an embarrassing parent
hugging her outside the school gates.
She stitches her words together
to avoid the inevitable stumble
over ragged letters
and shards of silence
and talk so small it could be shattered underfoot
...

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Paper Dreams.

On a grotty Northern Rail from Manchester to Leeds,
a poet feeds his love for words by
pouring his heart out onto crumpled receipts.
A baby bleats.
The clink of the track as rhythmic as heart beats.
The nasal voiceover floats through the carriage
and bloats the ears of tired commuters;
spiral eyed from a day in front of computers.
Nothing but a coffee cup to see them throu...

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