Common Thread - a poem about Manchester

Common Thread

Manchester is made with a common thread

From the cotton-age, to years ahead

The place of Industrial Revolution

We know what it is to forge a future

Dating back to empires of Rome

Here Mamucium set up as home

Taking various shapes along the years

And now it will not fall to fear.

For this is a place of builders, inventors

One of the world’s first railway stations

It's created Vimto, flying shuttles

Knows how to make a proper cuppa

From the first mill to Trade Union Congress

The city knows how to grow and progress

For we split atoms, not each other

This is a hub of creative culture

Like the suffragettes working for the vote

People still stand for change and hope

Will not be silenced by a single act

When Manchester hurts, it just fights back

 The worker bee is on our sleeves

Northern grit in the air we breathe.

Home of the computer, the Hacienda

Football teams on the world  agenda

Founded the Halle, discovered graphene

Built on the bedrock of what we believe

Which is that we all matter, stand together

Will look forward and still remember

For we are strong and we are tough

And the common thread we have is love.

Bobble

You are the only hug

I have had this week

Well, the kind of committed clasp

Which people use to hold back each other’s grief or fear

You kiss my hair with toothless open mouth.

5am, stirring hands, you’re here

Round with routine to begin the work

Revealing the angles of my face

Pin the words ‘hygienic’ ‘sensible’

As if before I was rage and dirt.

-          And yet my hands complicit in the act

Helping you to set the scene

You come in packs, but only one

It takes to turn my being to

 ‘Profession’

Sometimes elastic like that kind of shame

Held together flowers

From the petrol station.

Now we’ve broken natures gesture

From torrent to taper

Expression into

Poise

You remove the flowing confession of my years

Like a fist can crush

A bloom

Can

Stop a voice

And yet I let you round my wrist

Against the veins whose soundless mumble

Propelled these same limbs at fifteen months

To reach out, asking for a bobble.