Cherrypicked stories
Last Day at Lehman's
a bagatelle...a fancy... nothing really much
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- 944 reads
Monday Sonnet: TS
A different kind of failure, Eliot said Of poetry – and won the Nobel prize. He preached humility, so no surprise. Hence, from under the shadow of his red
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- 922 reads
Snails on the Floor of Heaven
Snails on the Floor of Heaven (22nd September 2008, 2.41pm) We stood under the almond trees, waving long canes like medieval jousters, bashing at the branches until they surrendered
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- 1838 reads
Steve from Research
He was on the train when he first felt it. Like a softening that lowered him further into the seat on the long, sapping journey. It wasn't a worry at first.
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- 814 reads
Dear under-neighbours, I live on the top floor
When you are asleep I am above you, awake, wishing this whole waffle-stack block would just vanish and leave us, for a moment, hung above each other, at intervals, unbedded,
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- 1778 reads
Copper reflects sunlight in a way people don't yet understand
He was a philanderer and a sycophant and I was too young to really know what either of those words meant.
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- 642 reads
After the Ball
Life's no fairy-tale and I'm no Cinderella.
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- 4 comments
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- 2796 reads
The Philosopher's Wife
A painter, a philosopher and his wife.
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- 1 comment
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- 1010 reads
Mr Malaprop in Love
oh well, a go at IPOW...
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- 4 comments
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- 2030 reads
The Fortune Teller
In the playground We gathered around the fortune teller With his flapping paper mouth, Pinched between anxious fingers.
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- 4 comments
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- 2791 reads
How High is the Moon
(edited, 22/09/08 with a thank you to jennifer, sunshine and Mori;-) Like schoolgirls we giggle, mad she calls me.
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- 18 comments
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- 6690 reads
It's Amazing Who Knows You When You're Down and Out
The other day (in a typical American city caught in a typical daydream) I got into a taxi-cab and started to tell the aging driver a humorous tale about a hobo I'd helped with a few dollars
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- 1007 reads
The Life History of Guillermo Brown (Edit)
My Open Uni CW course has started; this is the first activity in the book, you get first para (that you change) choose from five titles then add some paras of your own...
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- 1885 reads
Poet
The whole thing is in your hands.
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- 2 comments
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- 1060 reads
Another Man's Treasure
A square peg in this dump-it-get-a-new-one age.
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- 10 comments
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- 4090 reads
Slip Skin
Slip skin (17th September, 2008, 1.15pm) I sharpen the carving knife, poise it above another life, make the first incision, and with the first blood drawn comes the knowledge that
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- 4 comments
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- 2567 reads
My Janky Renden Mind
Come hither drongal ryabean and show me your stigglyeye But curb thy rambunkcious nepatoire and sing bunjar 'You are You are' We'll dine at noon we'll joob and charn
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- 953 reads
The Ukulele Lady
In Burnley. A wet, Friday afternoon. October slate sky, and the car park is full. Kerbed on a backstreet, the ukulele lady. Applying lipstick, a cadet hat, for the lost boys in the room.
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- 663 reads
Every time I see a couple kissing in public I'll think of you and me on Princes Street
singing the Pogues at the top of our voices
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- 3 comments
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- 1668 reads