'Will I ever grow up again?' by Nahida

Life on hold
My internal clock is shattered into pieces
The 40 years of forced exile
Have no record in my book of memories
Chapters of lost titles
Blank sheets; page after page
Unseen pictures with no lines
Mysterious characters with no faces
Images that have neither shape nor colour
Invisible words that have no letters
Nor meanings
A sad story with an unwritten script

Life on hold

Ageing by the day
The head inflamed with grey hair
Swallowed by the dark sea of shame
Having to flee without facing the storm
Shaken by the gales of hurt and pain
With my roots uprooted
A freezing gloomy everlasting winter
Watching over my shoulders
Awaiting my decay

Life on hold

I was seven
I am seven
I will be seven
And I will stay seven
Until the day of my return
The pieces of my shattered clock
Will be put together, that day
And it will start ticking again
The pink and white blossoms of my spring
Will become something more than just a dream

'Life on hold 2' by Nahida

With my roots uprooted
Swinging like a pendulum
Exile…home… exile… home…exile…

Where my culture is not celebrated
But threatened with extinction

Torn between two paradoxical worlds
My tortured soul exists
In a state of permanent suspension

Life on hold

With my heart torn apart
I dangle in between the realms of
Earth… heaven… earth… heaven… earth…

My body is here but my soul is far away
Chasing my beloved’s mirage
I am endangered of annihilation

Dwindling between two impossible worlds
My tormented core wavers
In a state of permanent suspension

Life on hold

With my memory shredded into pieces
I hang in the hue of non-existence
Past… future… past… future… past…

My brain is working
But my mind has gone missing
I am forcibly pushed towards insanity

Worn out between two dream worlds
My agonized being lingers
In a cosmos of thirteen dimensions
In a state of permanent suspension

The writer and her family were forced to flee their home, a village near Jerusalem, in 1967, in the 6-day war. Nahida was seven years old at the time, and there followed years as refugees in Libya and Jordan, and finally exile in Britain.

'Elegy to Sefton Park' by Jan Sear

Straining for echoes of last year’s Spring, remembering
a time without smug, strutting suits, minds mechanical,
hat’s hard, barriers metal ….
remembering a time without churned sludge, without
keen-toothed saws devouring side-walk blossom…
and that harsh, March morning’s bird-song smothered
by the gnawing of arrant blades …
remembering slain trees – all three hundred – without
protest falling in their grace …
remembering waders who can no longer nest, and dying frogs,
as trudging vehicles bludgeon patterns of the Spring of death.

Perhaps lost urban souls still strain to hear the music of
Spring, as the heron seeks in vain for fish, as elders become
stumps, as the little island willow becomes firewood…and
as past joy changes into grief, into disbelief, that
the Spring of death has replaced all that we know,
all that we want to know…

'Speculators in the Dock' by Ted Segrave

I stood in ‘The Gods’ on Paradise Street
watching a tragedy unwind….
our city’s history being screwed from the site
where Tom Steers had wrested against the tide
a harbour safe enough for returning Privateers;
where Foster’s Custom-House withstood the might
of Hitler, but fell to scheming planners.
Such conceit!

Chavasse Park’s top-soil, blitzed bricks,
and then the ancient dock
spewed from the rising bore,
having severed our naval blood-stream.
They struck a nerve when
twelve fathoms deep it seemed
the bit gnawed into red, raw bedrock.

A skein of cranes grate against the skyline
where once migrating Grus grus called,
and no doubt graced the castle’s board
along with sturgeon, quail and home-brewed wine.

Where Moore held court for the Commonwealth cause,
but fled to count the cost
as the townsfolk paid the price,
now the Crown Court stands witness
while this not so pally mall takes shape.

Belgravian brokers bank on its completion
before the bubble bursts.
They’ll transplant my city’s heart
with service ducts set in place, and
cars secreted in the growling bowels
awaiting defecation on the constipated Strand.

Elsewhere a ‘landed’ Lord thinks “Capital”,
and politicians all, applaud.

Frank Carlyle’s passion for Liverpool’s history inspired me to look afresh at my home town when I returned in retirement from the Pennines. Then, like a tsunami, the front was hit by a wave of change of Titanic proportions.
‘Speculators in the Dock’ was prompted by a tour of The Friends’ Meeting House on Paradise Street with its architect Ken Evans. The stark contrast between his attention to detail and the onslaught on L1 impacted on me. The photograph was taken from the top floor; neither of us could speak.

‘Affront’ came from wanting to take a photograph of the statue to one of the Battle of the Atlantic’s heroes, Captain Jonny Walker. It had been moved ignominiously into a building site pound. Why not loan it to Bootle Town Hall for safe-keeping, alongside his famous ‘General Chase’ signal that routed the U-boat menace? At least the ousted Bernie the banjo player survived to raise Lifeboat funds.

'Affront' by Ted Segrave

The Pier Head’s been ditched
to let a cultivated canal barge through
where famous bands delighted crowds
and hordes of baggy trousered lads
steered skateboards on the concourse.
King Edward on his horse,
and Captain Walker DSO with double bar
have dipped beneath the radar.
The Dock Board building’s been de-Graced
cocooned behind blue drapes.
You have to walk the plank
to board a ferry ever since
our famous floating platform sank;
so it’s pitch-an’-toss on a new pontoon
with only the Banker flushed.
One Liver bird’s rethink
caused it to fly to the Tunnel’s flue
while Great George’s clocks
ring the changes out of synch
‘cos the Hand of Time’s been forced.
Banjo Bernie’s bridge is blocked
until a new museum’s built,
(or the Donnelly docks
and a ‘graving’ fills with silt),
now he strums by the Lightship’s prow,
another reject awaiting its Fate
that’s as red as our debts for ’08.