Saturday night/Sunday Morning

Saturday night/Sunday morning

dropped neon dragged behind traffic,
as scratched letters bounce over the surface
clinging now and then to lampposts
trembling in the wind,
as the bus moans and shivers
through Rusholme,

the circling blue lights
outside,
illuminating faces
of the tired,
the drunk,
the teary,
the vacant
the homeward,
the weary,
the lost.

/

bulbs blown,
electric spines stock still and silent,
the dodgems cluster in the centre,
like abandoned boats
that never came back from the lake.

and Platt Fields is quiet,
but for the magpies
and giggling girls
chain-smoking their way through community service,
small, fragile lives,
clearing the rubbish
from small, fragile bluebells.

hope entwined in ways
they have yet to work out.