I'm Your Granny, Mr Poem by Alistair Graham

The voice on the phone said,
"it's because you weren't alive
in the nineteen forties, lad
no brutal wars, did you survive

You don't know what it's like to live
on rations and in fear
to see your city bombed to hell
watch your loved ones disappear

Your generation, lad
got it so good
it's thanks to us you got a start;
education, homes and food"

I held the mobile phone away
a distance from my ear,
considered the receiver,
imagined words I couldn't hear

I said; "I was born in sixty eight,
heard the guns from my mother's womb,
I could sense the fear and panic;
my future, I presumed

As a child I walked, broken-bottle streets
alongside barricaded roads
I fled from shops with hysterical humans,
heard the screams; it's going to explode!

I did without bread,
milk, school and electric,
learned to count
tit-for-tat on the news.
I tried to keep score,
the task was impossible;
the numbers morphed
into empty shoes

I knew where I could walk
and where I dare not wander
I learned to discriminate
gunfire from firework
I grew up with a head
placed on my shoulders,
a furnished residence,
where minds go berserk

I rose from my bed
hours before breakfast
to the sight of a soldier
at the foot of my door
A common occurrence
for a child in a battlefield,
the car parked nearby,
a bomb for a war

While out at play
I jawed with the army,
posted at our post office
to guard the cash
I sat on the bench
in the armoured vehicle;
shiny black boots,
silver cigarette ash

In the high church
in High Street on Sundays,
I donned my cassock,
surplice and ruff
As head boy I sang
the Benedictus,
prayed to god;
Enough is Enough

In sixty eight
I came out of this world,
into a war-torn city
with bullets and bombs
I wept as I watched
my brothers and sisters
go the way I had come;
into the ground they thronged"

I paused, then said to the voice
"don't tell me,
what eggs I should buy,
if I should buy any at all
And please, don't tell me
how I should suck them,
I'm your granny, Mr
I talk straight and walk tall."