I ventured along to a fireworks display but twice,

yet somehow the ritual of putting up an effigy

on a stoking hot flame, of the misreading

of ceremony that has been tainted and abused

long enough,

especially as the value of Government has fallen

and who now has not wanted to say

a big fuck you and place a single digit,

perhaps with closely chewed nail standing out

as the nervous realisation

of our collective plight takes hold,

who now would not want to see Parliament ablaze…

let it crumble into religious ideology dogma and legend

as they now declare war

on the poor, the sick, the comfortable, those with imagination

and those to whom poor fools that thought

with some panic of desperation, they won’t send me

over the top.

 

I disliked the noise, the shrillness of the whizz,

the expected blast that came a second after

the scheduled explosion, the post traumatic stress

of seeing a million bright lights

landing on some forgotten field

and the medals pinned to a warmonger’s chest,

for bravery in the midst of human conflict.

 

I watched from the safety of the church roof,

the Catherine Wheel spinning lies

and with no view over Birmingham,

not like the one to which my Grandfather

witnessed from the edge of Elmdon Airfield

as Coventry died a death.

 

The hot potato catching on my tongue

as a fellow cub scouts hand were singed

foolishly by the holding of a sparkler

he waved in surrender and he started to

learn how to write left handed for a while,

the joy on the faces as Guy burned and his

melted expression of forever death

haunting me in the shadows and

barely six feet above the hanging cross

where the girl guides saluted the

Union Jack.

 

I never saw the point in the fireworks,

I enjoy a good bonfire that is true

but the only bangers I want near

the open flame are the ones covered in H.P. Sauce and

the taste of silver foil potatoes crunching down

towards my stomach.

 

I never saw the point in making a martyr

out of straw and seeing the smoke billow

out from the mouth of an asthmatic dragon

puffing on the dying embers of a cheap

Players cigarette, suddenly roar into action;

the warmth felt on the Church roof, the fireworks

well out of sight and the effigy smouldering

towards extinction,

until the following year when resurrected,

when risen once more and taken to task

for what we have all thought of doing.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015