vindice

Right, you bastards, I've got a moan for you today. A month or so ago, I asked you all (all ye who read my journal, and the general public of The Boards) a simple favour. It was not difficult. It would not have taxed you. It cost you nothing.

I asked you to visit a website and vote for my poem to win a poetry competition, run by a UK-based company but open worldwide. And one or two of you were kind enough to do so. But most of you, MOST OF YOU, were too selfish even to take a short minute out of your miserable little lives to visit the Chapter One website and click on a button, so that one of your so-called 'friends' could win a thousands pounds.


But no matter. Never mind. I don't care.

The poem I thought should have won, didn't place at all. But here it is anyway, it's called 'Take Uncle John.' They didn't publish the shortlisted poets' names on the voting page, so we shall never know who it was by.

"Fifty-seven and in computers. He's got two meals
he can cook: Three-Onion Spaghetti and Chicken
With Twigs. A visitor would get the good plate, Uncle
John the one that snapped, in an eclipse.

The cutlery drawer has been held together
with string since Tony Blair first got in; stickers
from beer bottles and bananas decorate
stains on tiles around the fossilled hob
and Uncle John waves vinegar that's five years
out of date. 'It's a preservative!' he insists.

There's a chair by the window, where on days off
and summer nights, he turns his head slowly
From street to dying plant. He is an authority
on how the Nazis used IBM punch-cards.
Every evening, one more newspaper slots
flat into a yellowing catalogue creeping
paleolithic up the walls. And now he's bald,
the hairbrush holds the soap.

Once, long ago, Uncle John got down on his
knees, cried and begged and held onto the door
when Auntie Paula took up with the man at number six.
Now what matters is piling spoons straight in stacks,
lining up milk in order of date - and catching
The Archers, to remember what humans are like."