NaPoWriMo 2016

 

CONCLUSION

First of all, congratulations to everybody who completed the challenge of writing thirty poems in thirty days. I enjoyed doing it for the most part, but I am, as always, a little disappointed that there are so few pieces that I think are any good. There are one or two that I feel I can do some more work on, and there is actually one that I have already performed, so perhaps, things aren’t as bad as I’m painting them.

I am going to post a poem today that I wrote last November, the working title is Manchester Tarts:

MANCHESTER TARTS

Up in flames like the chippy on China Lane

This car park on a vacant lot

Was once the site of the burnt out shell

Of the only shop that didn’t get bombed in the war

 

Shoulder to shoulder shoehorned to attention  

All ages and colours and creeds

From Piccadilly to the Daily Express

With their photographic memories

Those beautiful buildings mesmerising me

 

Drawing us all - including you - into

The bestest little city in the world

And how we miss our china plates

Woolworth's and The Queen's Hotel

New Brown Street and Swan Lane

And whatever happened to Tommy Ducks

 

For forty-five years I’ve wanted to paint you  

Map you - photograph you half to death

Your shop fronts change - logos come and go

But the beauty of your facades remain

 

It’s funny how so many young thin  

Fashionista’s like such old fashioned things

All those gold and diamond rings

That they buy from the pawn shop

Where the sex shop used to be

 

Some people never get sick and old

They tell the same jokes that they were told

Sell the brown brogues that they sold

In eighteen-sixty-nine and the years unfold

Like the Tib Street Parrot and the price of gold

 

Fashion is the passion for all ages

The vintage clothes stores are the New Oasis

The inking parlours and the piercing places

For the café cavemen and The Millstone Elvis  

We all fall down in the middle Yates’s

 

Glitterista and her sister are out on the razz

If looks could kill in mum’s ball gown

Up to the nines in The Castle and all that jazz

The wholesale markets are well out of bounds

 

Advertising boards now clutter the pavements

The hairdressers and the bargain basements

From Diet Deli to the gutter - screaming

All Day Breakfast’s - Bacon and Sausage Barm’s

Non Stop Breakfasts’s - Free Coffee Refills

Hot Custard - Bakewell puddings - Manchester Tarts

 

But this is an empty car park on a vacant lot

That was once the site of the burnt out shell

Of the only shop that didn’t get bombed in the war

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