Larkin 25 - Single Mums By Gary Clark

It's a lonely life for a single mum An empty purse When the shopping's done Beans on toast Every night for tea The staple diet of a one parent family. Her baby sleeps soundly on She's beautiful and clean Pity the father's Nowhere to be seen. A pile of brown envelopes Stacked behind the clock Final reminders And threats of being cut off. It's a struggle keeping body And soul together A young girl alone At the end of her tether. She feels all the sneers And condescending glares Her life is so lonely And no-body cares, So look beyond the bigoted views And preconceived ideas She's a young girl Bringing up a baby, Alone, She'll be doing it For years and years. No-one questions Where the father has gone No responsibility taken No fatherly duty done A self centred man Leaving it all To his daughters mum.

Copyright © Gary Clark 2010

Poetry - Umberto Echoes By Lee Cassanell

	A pillared salt of sinners, dissolving in the rain The wear of time it suffers, and we are not to blame. A fragile dream is scripture A Prophet's passion bled The humor of perception Read more...

Poetry - Larkin 25 - Popstar By Ray Moody

He reflected, 'Hadn't he always been so near yet so far?' Wasn't he there right at the start with The Beatles? They might have had their Mersey Beat but hadn't he been part of the Humber Beat, and wasn't water, water? The trouble was that nobody else wanted it, Did any agents, record companies or managers, bother coming to this city? Read more...

Poetry Ten Foot Cock By Lady Larkin

I've been reading this for years now, And at first I thought it was alright, But the same old grudges and points you make, Are turning the mag into shite. For christsakes, We get it, You're an 'in-de-pen-dent -mag-a-zine', Read more...

Poetry Plodding Into History By Vaughan Clements

	A colliery in Yorkshire, April 1969, A powerful image captured In the darkness of a mine. As a picture tells a story, This one relates to Ball, A pony blessed with massive strength, Though only 12 hands tall. Read more...

Poetry No Toads Today By Darren Sant

	I walked along the road, Perchance to see a toad, I wanted to see a toad with spots, But there it was not, A dastardly fiendish plot? A felt like such a clot! The toads they'd gone a Larkin. Read more...

Poetry When We Had It All By Dobski

Midnight 'ire car, drivin' down dark country lanes, anticipation builds MDMA flows through the veins. Four o' five young bucks raring to go, we each popped a pill over an 'our ago. We must be close now, somewhere round 'ere, could be the party of the year. 'Ere we go lads'... I jus' seen, Read more...

Poetry Quills By Christy Hall

I'm walking Italy. Tuscany. But I could be anywhere, at any time. Scattered on the side of the road, is a pile, a spillage. They look like spines, or branches feathered out into a wash of spindles, like horizontal-growing heather. Read more...

Poetry - Hull By Georgena Thacker

Hush, Stop, Listen, the City is singing, A song of lost people with the sea in their blood. A hardy race without false sentiment, adapting to the sea of change. Its shores are breached, the horizon is coming into focus, shining with new promises of a different future for the children. Read more...

Poetry Don't Ever Use The 'P' Word By Mike Watts

Besides the bar staff, We were the only two faces In the room I offered her a drink. She raised a thumb And thanked me I brought over a pint and a half Read more...

Poetry Larkin 25 - City By The Sea By Jade Kennedy

The grey clouds hastened onwards, burdened with winter rain. Brought by North sea winds, they weighed heavily on the bricks and mortar, of the city by the sea. Walls that hold tales of life. Of lives lived behind the same painted door. Read more...

Poetry Larkin 25 - Tess By Amber Goodwin

He loved me. He swore it loud and painfully. Hands like marble, Grey and cold, like that spirit - a broken Infant. It was too late to scream. Apparently, I made my choice. It is of late. My fingers caress the smooth, Gratuitous fabric. Wishing for silk, Read more...

Poetry Larkin 25 - Imelda By Pamela Scobie

Imelda liked to squash things flat. She loved the crunch, and then the splat! She also liked to tear the wings From inoffensive flying things, And feed them to the cat. I asked her once, in some alarm, Why she inflicted so much harm. Read more...

Poetry - Larkin 25 - Bite For You By Robert Swan
	I'm not the punctual kind, But tonight I'm in time, To feed you a rhyme, That bites. It bites your head, It bites your heart, It remakes the template from the start. Read more...

Poetry - Larkin 25 - Man Flu By Mark Walmsley
	How can I possibly get up this morning? I'm going to die and that's a warning. Feeling half dead, Got a splitting head, I can barely walk. My throat hurts - when I talk, All my snotty - wet - hankies, Read more...

Poetry All Gummed Up By Catherine Scott

In the 1960's there was a big campaign, 'Keep Britain Tidy' went the refrain. Do you think we could bring it back again, The stuff on the streets is blocking the drain. There's tin cans here and bottles there, Wrappers, fag ends - all sorts of ware, Take it home with you, you dirty mare, Read more...

Poetry - Grannyma By Dennis Wild

Grannyma, my father's mother, Lives behind four Salford walls Like a tinned and wrinkled prune Drawing all her will for living Not from God, or man, or Guinness But from ceramic souvenirs And her scrapbook of fluffy kittens She's collected throughout the years. Read more...

Poetry - Jekyll and Hyde By Bernard Franklin
	For changes in human behaviour, I think that the biggest by far, is the obsession and pride that we all have, in the wonderful motor car. We treat it with such a reverence, like an icon that's sent from the Gods, but it can turn the most mild mannered people, Read more...

Poetry - The Rooster By Jody McKenna

Waves and lonely music Desolate mountain standing proud Tilting trees with nothing on 'em Singing what she sees in clouds Moon sinking over shadows Birds flee free from harm Frogs off rocks to catch the springs Read more...

Poetry The Fun Fair By Roy Amers

People arrive for the time of their lives, Children and husbands and also their wives, Music and lights fill the night air, and the smell of candy floss at the fun fair, Slow rides and fast rides for the masses, fun filled balloons filled with strange gases, Coconuts a flying off their stands, Read more...