Fire Man
It was shortly after the Second War,
The rubble lay in heaps,
The bombs no longer dropped,
But where they had was bombed for keeps!
The lads ran wild in the undergrowth
That had been a stately home,
And gangs laid claim to the sacred turf
That they liked to call their own.
The gang of Harriman Somers claimed
An isolated patch,
Complete with an air raid shelter with
A concrete roof to match,
From up there, high on the roof they spied
The whole of the country wide,
To warn of approaching rival gangs
They posted guards outside.
When Raymond Kirk came wandering
On home through the bridle track,
The 'Razors' saw their chance to vent
Their anger on a 'Drak',
They seized him there, and bound him up,
And threw him on the pile
Of dry, and flammable tinder wood
They'd saved up for a while.
But there beside the shelter wall,
An unexploded bomb,
Was lying on its side, they'd claimed it,
Lying on its own.
When Harriman lit the tinder wood
And Raymond screamed in turn,
The 'Razors' laughed and taunted him,
They said: 'You're gonna burn! '
The fire spread to the shelter and
That one incendiary
Exploded, showering phosphorus
Across from fire to tree,
The 'Razors' fled in their burning clothes,
They left young Kirk to his cries,
He spent a year in the hospital
With flames behind his eyes.
At home he sat in a wheelchair with
A hundred grafts of skin,
His hands were runny like plasticene
His legs were scarred and thin,
For five long years he waited there,
[...] Read more
poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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