Thw Winning Poems

EXTRACTS FROM A FAMILY DIARY
John T Daniel

You give up your bed and sleep on the floor
replacing the family photos with pinups.
The stumps of trees are broken matchsticks
after the Great Storm ten years ago.
So much for Reforestation you say.
Light night two brothers hid in wheelhubs from Delhi.
One frozen body fell out over Richmond.
I pour what's left of the wine down the sink.
Each door is equipped with an escape slide.
'Your nearest exit may be behind you!'
The in-flight movie's Fly Away Home
about geese who have to be shown
how to migrate. Pecking out of the eggs,
chip-chip-chip. We're stowaways all.

Owen has two hats, one inside the other.
It's men who make the wars you said.
I think of my grandfather, his diary,
windscreen wipers, holding hands,
five generations walking deep in snow.
It's not been a good century for men.
The Futurists: an assembly-line of legs
goose-stepping, conveyor-belt of crosses.
Snow not poppies. You won't even remember
the 20th century. Climbing to the war-memorial
in the Somme I argued with you then
blended with machines, machine-gun bullets
in the mud. Owen bobbing on your back,
grandfather, father, son.
Image (photograph)

Sharon Old's describing her father's tumour on the video,
shooting sentences out of the air
like small defenceless birds:
Darwin's finches, subtle differences.
My grandfather invented the found poem
rubbing two sticks together,
frying poetic ants with a magnifying glass.
England's a funny place. Land of Pope and Tory.
We can always turn the sound down while we eat.
Poetry's an overheating of wires,
smoke from the back of of the telly.
Six months ago my son threw his off the roof.
The devolution of poetry:
Byron dancing with his bear.

Copyright of this poem remains with the author.
Next  | Previous  |  The Winning Poems  |  Notes on Contributors  |  Home