We ARE The People

We aren’t the people whose houses have butlers
We’re the descendants of the scuttlers.

We aren’t the people with money, the rich
We didn’t vote for Thatcher THAT BITCH

We aren’t the people of Oxbridge, the dons
University of Life is where we’re from

Poetry’s not about books and posers
Poetry is the Stone. Fucking. Roses.

So stuff yer cloisters up yer arse
We ARE the people, this city is ours.

I was inspired to write this poem when I remembered about an English teacher we used to have in our school who smelled and wore tweed and used to bang on about TS Eliot and stuff. It's thanks to him that I never knew what poetry was, not until me and our kid went to Spike Island. I hope you enjoyed it. 

A Manc in Heaven

Me and my mates went to the gym in Moss Side, 

With our Johnny who is a mile wide, 

Boxing and skipping and then going for a pint, 

In the Northern Quarter or Longsight.

We're all from Manchester where people bloom, 

Inside a bedsit on a road in Hulme, 

Anthony H Wilson was fond of saying, 

The world is right when United are playing, 

And Oasis, the Mondays and Duretti Column, 

And Canal Street with the guys who like to bum.

I bought a fag lighter in a shop on Market Street, 

And found out that United got beat.

But Saint Anthony knows we're all one people, 

From Rusholme to the Town Hall's steeple, 

Steve Coogan and Mani and Maxine Peake, 

They all know of the heaven of which we speak.