My daughter tells me she’s picking up
more shifts than she normally would.
Her hands are raw and she’s running
out of sanitizer. I know she doesn’t
expect anyone to fix it but still I check
the expiry date of my aqueous cream.
Later, I place the tub in the garden
and watch over it from the window.
When she finally arrives she orders
me back inside. This time a hug
isn’t going to make thi...

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I hoped we had left it all behind.

Decades since I crossed the factory floor

when chants of ‘get your tits out for the lads’

bounced off the nude pics pinned to the walls.

Blinding myself to the gestures and grunts,

the stares and leers, the very real fears.

The “I’m not taking orders from a woman.”

I hoped we had left it all behind

with the men who would rather fuck o...

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                                                                                Video version: http://bit.ly/1qsRtE8

I wear you like a coat of snow,

weighing down upon me,

falling snowflake by snowflake.

upon the warmest of days.

A sparkling robe of powder,

bespoke and wintered, tempered,

with a fringe of ice thrown flurries.

which never thaws away.

And I tell ...

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MY MUM                          Video version:  http://voice.adobe.com/v/DZ5XJUSIcIJ

My mum

Perfume powder pearls

Charismatic curvaceous curls

Maureen O’Hara

Elizabeth Taylor

Elsie Tanner

Love! Love! Love!

My mum

Beautiful bright bubbly

Courageous caring cuddly

Lancashire

Rochdale

Co-op

Love! Love! Love!

My mum

Forgiving full-on fighti...

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Red brick ravines,

flagstone fences,

grey grit carpets,

smoking snow.

Extinct mill chimneys,

boarded windows,

paint tagged walls,

stolen moor.

Grass littered pavements,

starched railings,

mattress splattered entries,

living poor.

Hardened not beaten,

economy weakened,

cut and exposed,

northern soul.

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(vid version http://miladysa.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/pre-loved-skin.html )

Barely worn,

impossible to tell,

the previous owner,

wore it well.

Callously made,

so you can you feel,

rich and successful,

sexy and ideal.

So this season!

Screaming to appear,

on catwalk and red carpet,

at awards and film premiere.

Dying to be worn,

bequeathing ...

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TODAY IN TAIJI

Today in Taiji
we witnessed
baby dolphins
dragged away
from slaughtered mothers
taken miles out to sea
to meet certain death
alone and bereft
enough flesh on a babe
to feed a starving man
but not his greed.

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