Fire! At 3 Am (Today) Poem by Rachel Porter

I was watching a film on Nuclear war,
When smoke came creeping through my door,
I thought the alarm was on the T.V,
I never thought the noise was in the bedsit with me,
I switched it off and Into the hall I went,
Smoke was pouring through every vent,
I panicked and ran to dial 999,
The operator told me it would be fine,
The fire was in the stairwell, I was on the second floor,
She told me to pile clothes up against the door.
The exit was blocked, the only way out,
I started to panic beyond reason or doubt.
The firemen came, said stay inside,
You can only come out when the fire has died.
My cat was under the bed, she'd had a scare,
I had to go to the window to get fresh air,
What made the thing even more dramatic,
Is the fact that I am an asthmatic,
The fireman came and led me down the stair,
Acrid smoke was filling the air.
The stairwell, the walls, the ceiling were black,
I started to have a panic attack.
Great was the fires wrath and devastation,
I was sent and treated for smoke inhalation.
I said my cat was still inside, I was in shock,
They got her out, but had to break the lock.
They had said it was ok to leave her, that she would be ok,
But they changed their minds and went and got her anyway,
I sat on the grass, and didnt mind,
That it was wet, and seeping into my behind.
The stairwell was full of rubbish, there started the blaze,
Throwing rubbish in the stairwell seems to be the new craze,
Some is in bags, but a lot of it is not,
All kinds of junk is left there to rot,
The council sent everyone a letter,
Dont we want our environment to be better?
I always bag my rubbish neatly by the bin,
But everyone is lumped in and blamed for this sin.
They think someone lit it for a joke, for fun,
It happened before, In this way it was done.
Those people who light fires, and think its a joke,
Should be shut in a room that is filling with smoke.
Would they still be laughing when they started to choke?
For ages this, I could sit and debate,
The joys of bedsits on a council estate.
This time we were lucky, the response was fast,
But I fear that the memory is likely to last,
Its happened before this, will they have some refrain,
or simply set it on fire again? .
For me this experience has been pretty frightening,
that is why i decided to put it in writing.
I'm tired you see, Night has turned into day,
The next poem i will write in a better way....
I just want to write down how things make me feel,
greater so, when events are real.
I find some reason in making things rhyme,
Something I have done time after time.
I dont want to be depressing though, I like to have a joke,
But its just not amusing to find your bedsit full of smoke....