Sixty-Two Haikus on World War II
Pamela G. Barnes
War Poetry Contest 2004 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
A Memoir of a six-year-old London evacuee
Geese in formation
Fly into a red sun
Lancasters returning empty
#
Spirals of white lightning
Tear into the blue sky -
Dogfighters hurl teeth of steel
#
Luftwaffe bombers attacking!
Enemy earthquakes
With no Richter scale
#
Every night a screaming siren:
Scramble down the shelter
Teddy, Bunny or Dolly this time?
#
Bombs rock the dug-out
"Please, granny, PLEASE
Show me how to cast on"
#
Grandad fought the Zulus
In the Boer War
Spear-scars dent his forehead
#
Climbing from the dug-out
Onto father's shoulder
A crimson sky of blazing phosphor
#
Next door a direct hit.
Their Anderson shelter
A twenty-foot hole
#
Piled bricks - no walls
Black beams - no roofs
A wren makes her nest
#
Searching for shrapnel
"Fabriken im Deutschland"
Worth two blood marbles
#
Asphyxiating smelly rubber
Gas mask a black-boxed
Permanent companion
#
Dropped in the dugout
Dolly's two eyes roll out
"Hitler's killed my Bessie!"
#
Thirty Messerschmitts roar overhead
Spits and Hurricanes strike
Twenty-one fly back out
#
After the air raid
Father eats no dinner
A head rolled past him
#
Crisscross vapor trails
Cram a hot blue sky
Chasing Spitfires and Stukas
#
"Never has so much
Been owed to so few"
Mr. Churchill's finest hour
#
Father is an engineer
Inventing tools that make the parts
For Hawker and De Haviland
#
A medal for uncle
Dodging enemy bullets
Nothing for us getting bombed
#
Auntie Ethel and an airman
Slept together in her bed
"Shush child, shut your mouth"
#
Sprawling wildflowers
Over blackened rubble
Blue, white, and red
#
Father went to Dunkirk
In his little boat alongside two
Hundred thousand other sitting ducks
#
The Nazi monster has a face
We laugh at dreadful names
Hitler, Himmler, Hirohito, Hess
#
Christmas jigsaw pictures
Dorniers strafe carriers
U-Boats torpedo supply ships
#
A Heinkel of balsa wood,
Tissue paper, and varnish.
My brother bombs it
#
When his tummy's pressed
My new orange Teddy
Plays 'The Lakes of Killarny'
#
Mother shops with little squares
Cut from our ration books
One egg each a week
#
Potato powder, milk
Powder and egg powder
Make our fake-fake-fake food
#
Victory garden spuds
Cabbages and carrots
Among the air-raid bunkers
#
Uncle Freddy lost his rifle
Dropped his cap in the frying pan
Got six-months potato peeling
#
Aunt makes shells in a factory
Wearing slacks and turban
Lights her cigarette with a bullet
#
The Luftwaffe bombed the home
Of the King and Queen
Will they live in a Nissan hut too?
#
On the train swarms of children
Labeled like luggage wave goodbye,
Destination unknown
#
Ordered by Government decree
To a slate mine village in Wales
Beaten daily at the dame school
#
A vicious rooster, dead sheep,
Oil lamps and stinky outhouse,
Candles up the shadowy staircase
#
Bleak cold slate mountains
Black rainy skies
Lonely and sick now will I die?
#
Back home, barrage balloons
Searchlights, ack-ack fire,
Squads of waving POWs
#
Uncle Bob went to Burma
To fight the Japanese
The Long March killed him
#
Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose
Talk to us on the radio
"Children, this is the time be very brave"
#
Toytown on Children's Hour
Larry the Lamb, Dennis the Dachshund
Smarmy Lord Haw-Haw on the news
#
Itma with Tommy Handley
Round the Horne with Larry Adier
We'll meet again with Vera Lyn
#
Malta: defended by Faith,
Hope, Charity, and Uncle Sid
Brought me home a dried seahorse
#
Big Yankidoods are here!
All drawly talk and gleaming badges
"Hey! Got 'ny gum chum?"
#
Steak for dinner
Of whale meat
Never again
#
Out of a leaden sky
The doodle-bug's rattling stops
Falling silence.....
#
A shunting steam train in the station
A shrill departure whistle
"Ma, send me cards with fairies on!"
#
Paddington, Basingstoke,
Kidderminster, Leominster,
Shrewsbury, Ludlow, boarding school
#
Spoonfuls of morning Virol
For sweeties, only licorice bootlace
And locust beans to suck
#
Potatoes, bread, and jam
Jam, potatoes, bread.
Nothing else to eat
#
A dining room engraving
Of captured Marie Antoinette
"Manners, girls, elbows off"
#
Dreams of peacetime
Huge pineapples, bananas
And endless chocolate bars
#
Cross-legged in the Blue Room
Sewing samplers by the fire
Stifling a thousand hungers
#
The doctor's fingers gravely
Pinch my swollen belly.
"It's malnutrition"
#
A necessary medicine
Almost unobtainable
Enviable beef broth
#
Our crocodile of tartan kilts
White gloves and panama hats
The pealing of Saint Laurence bells
#
The 'Feathers' Tudor Hotel'
Standing in cobbled streets
King Henry VIII slept here
#
Sewing scraps of fabric
To make a tiny teddy bear
Fitting a matchbox bed
#
Winter walks through beechnut trees
Up the hill to Ludlow castle
Swans drift by below
#
An unexploded bomb
In the vicar's garden
Sixpence a visit
#
Summer days on Betty's farm
Storing apples in the attic
Among the spider webs
#
Pathe Newsreel pictures
Of skeletal scarecrows
In striped pajamas
#
Poppy Day red
Smears of blood worn
To remember our dead
#
In Trafalgar Square
Crushed by grown-ups
Screaming "Victory!"
