Blue dress high heels and pursed lips

Stand underneath the tree

Watching waiting ever vigilant waiting for him to arrive

She straightens her hair for the fifteenth time

Checks her phone

The hours’ worth of make up on her face

That begins to melt

The promise she wants to keep

That simply can’t wait

She begins to question was this a good idea

But Wednesday was their day

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It’s Sunday and he stands underneath the tree

The cloud dark and smooth

But she is not there

He looks like a long- lost puppy

Another girl of the night passes by

She’s had a beating she says

Ignoring the blanket shrouded drizzle

By bus and tram he is at her bedside

Her bruised and battered swollen face knocked

From one world into another

A bunch of soggy flowers lay...

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Two souls underneath a brolly

At the corner of a park after dark

Business as usual transacted

She wants to find another

The rain pours in cobweb sheets

He wants to say

Do you want a cuppa

But is sure she will say no

Last chance gone

As it stops, she steps away

Into the night

Trying to avoid the congregation of puddles

Leaving him with same time Sunday

He st...

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Steam rises from vents and grates

The back-alley dumpsters are scattered

Whilst the smell of once fresh meat

And hot grease pervades the night

A guy in white uniform and lazy trousers

Sits on a crate making his smoke last

And looking into nowhere

Oblivious to the world

Oblivious to what is happening

A block away from the intersection

Oblivious to the freezing dri...

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She had that nervous lined smile

The kind that said this is my first date

With this guy who is more experienced than me

Or maybe she was just looking

For a way to say goodbye

A sting in the tail for a man whose confidence

Coud so easily be bruised

But she told herself he would quickly recover

As he joked about the menu

And a time he had

When somebody else had said

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Tonight, the night is mine to own, to hold

To walk with

To talk with

To share with nobody

To argue and to party

To laugh with and to parley

To parry thrust and take a

Chance with

The night I have possessed

And strolled under leaden skies

With polka dot spots

Holding it close to my chest

You see the night is mine

And when it is finished

When it has d...

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I sit in my cell dressed in the clothes they provide

The ones they say would suit me

I feel strange and awkward

It’s been nearly three years

I’m nervous and sweating

What will she see in me

What will she remember

Will she really care

Has her mother made her come

Does she want to know

All of the questions circulate in my head

Falling over each other

Never findi...

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There is the guy with the paunch and

The hat that’s too small for his head

Looking kind of bemused and confused

The two young lads with a dog

That just won’t move

The guy with cropped down cargo pants

And long grey beard parted in the middle

The edging traffic

The chippy with nobody in it

The tight-fitting girls with a child in a buggy

The older man at the bus stop g...

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He knew that summers would never be the same again

He had wanted to brush away

The smear of days

That still hung around his neck

That which had found its way

Into the landings on sword gold Juno and Omaha

The implacable concrete machine gun bunkers

He had wanted to soak and scrub

To relinquish the very nature of all that had gone before

The bodies floating in the sea

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She soaks her body

Scrubbing and peeling layers of invisible dirt

Flushing away the undue haste

Of the last two days

Letting the shower taste her face her body

The weeks of anticipation

The grieved upon tears

The streaks of hair

The makeup gone wild

She carefully dries and scores every

Fibre and cell that clings to her flesh

Creasing and smoothing fresh sheet...

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And it’s just another day

For the secret satin sheeted lover

Who hides behind the days of curves and covers

Avoiding the serves of each and any other

Nights alone at home

Pretending he will turn up

At the flick of an invisible switch in her head

She will hear the purring sound of a stingray or corvette

To do the bedtime tango

Enough to make the neighbours curtains twitc...

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So here we are again

We have turned full circle

Or so it seems

But we have turned another year older

And no matter how we try

Our resolutions to change all that was

To all that we feel it should be

Only grow bolder

This year I will lose those vital pounds

Shedding like so much Christmas wrapping

Or the unwanted brightly coloured pullover

My Gran knitted with one...

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The last vestiges of lights strung across

Doors and house hang on defiantly

Trying desperately to deny the season

Of goodwill and merriment has ended

A gap of yawning wind and rain fills the void

As people nudge themselves around

In a kind of semi-conscious semi detached

Where am I

What day is it anyway

Where did all the bon vivere go

And the retailers brush away t...

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