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DIVERSITY HOUSE (EXCEL FOR CHARITY)
POETRY COMPETITION 2009
Winning Poems
Third Prize Winner
EMPTIES
It's not the
silence of
3am I
miss,
nor the
electric purr of the float,
nor the thrill
of reaching
15 miles per
hour on the High Street,
nor the
satin-clad housewives
who bow like
geishas
to pick their
pints off freezing doorsteps,
nor the taut
gold sovereigns
of bottle tops
reflecting the
slow sluice of sunrise,
nor the babv-sick
smell of a spill
not mopped up.
What I miss
is the chatter
of a thousand empties
returning to
the depot:
sleighbells
echoing on fresh fallen snow.
-
-
Julie Mellor
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Second Prize
Winner
I.E.D.
('Improvised
Explosive Devices, known as IEDs, are the insurgents' deadliest
weapon ...' The Times)
In the dark
metallic silence my clock ticks
Only the
beetles and soft moths stir the dust at my feet
They pause
uncertainly, swivel their lunar eyes
Brush with
curious antennae the black box
Of my secret
In the packed
inner spaces my mind works
Only the wires
and tiny switches hear the hum of my labours
They click
neatly, pass orders
Measure
precisely the last moments
Of my undoing
In the still
air my heart bursts
Only the heat
and charred walls remain of my lodging
Fragments
journey, take routes
Reach blindly
the brick and blood
Of their
resting place
In this
happening I am fulfilled
No thought or
feeling mars my perfection
Safe in my
purpose I have no morality
Free from the
terrible burden
Of my maker
- -
Charles Evans
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First Prize Winner
Blue Hyacinths
Like bruises,
she remembers thinking
as she fingered the
bulbs, their paper-wafery skins
tinged with the
shifting iridescence
she'd last seen on
mussel-shells.
That was six weeks
to a day before the grim diagnosis.
She'd chanced on
them - three firm orbs peeking through
a Woolworth's bag
her husband had stashed at the back
of her utility
drawer - a temporary forgetfulness.
Sensing time was
running out, and as surprise for him
she'd taken them,
firming them in fresh compost,
and recalling his
sermoning - Water, then forget them.
Best let the roots
put out their filaments
- had placed
the crazed
porcelain bowl below the dark stair-well.
By the time the
X-ray came, their tips had
nippled through,
with stems pushing to fullness
the next few months
on the kitchen window-sill.
He was thrilled.
But, the bruises puddling hungrily
to mulberry down
his leg, hadn't had chance to see,
or smell, or touch
the blossoms' waxy handsomeness.
Now back from the
crem under angling sun
and the mist of
sherry glasses - her family long gone,
Father Dykes
sliding benignly away - she catches
minor-glimpses of
herself finger-tracing their bell-shapes,
their deaths
already settling in.
Suddenly shudders
at palls of heady fragrances,
and, repelled by
their Our-Lady-blueness gaping,
that bruising
insolence of living,
confesses she
cannot understand
why for the life of
her
he so cherished
them,
year on year
on year.
- -
Roger Elkin
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