Let’s
take a look at day 2 of NaPoWriMo. The prompt is a poem that tells a lie. Here’s a Mancunian tale of
an “alternate” history.
Manchester,
1996.
A
high-roofed, airy chamber:
The
archaic, Gothic Town Hall
Suits
and ties and darkened minds.
Overshadowed
by colossi:
London,
Birmingham, Liverpool-
The
city stagnates.
This
will not do, they agree. This must change.
Their
sporting goal:
The
Commonwealth Games. To host, to sell,
To
rejuvenate.
To put
a chain of events into motion:
To
rebuild a city, to take on the UK’s Metropoli,
To
make Manchester shine.
The
meeting closes. A door opens.
The
mayor enters with a man, Devant. They are alone.
They
plot and scheme. They crusade.
A week
later: a secret auction.
Worldwide
moneyed tyrants argue.
The
mayor oversees. Devant bangs a gabble,
Echoing,
bomb-like.
The
successor, the buyer: The IRA.
The
merchandise: 9,000lb of C4,
Digital
timers, blasting caps,
A
battered old van.
A
codeword.
Days
later: The call is made.
Emergency
services receive the codeword,
An IRA
chant.
The
town is cleared: ants,
From a
dollop of cinnamon.
A van
in ghost-town Manchester.
A
distant camera, high angle,
Image
greyed out and silent,
Zoomed
far in and grainy.
A
small white van, boxy and desolated.
Then,
obliteration.
A ball
of light. Zoom out:
A
street engulfed in smoke
Up to
the rooftops.
On the
street: alarms ring.
The
carcass of the van still burning.
Debris.
Dents in lampposts.
An
overhead walkway a gutted frame.
Smashed
and battered shop fronts.
A
dirty mushroom, filling the skyline.
Stragglers
glassed, then hauled
Into
standby ambulances.
Only
the local post box, blood-red,
Remains
untouched.
Days
later, the clean-up begins,
Clearing
a path for a glassy,
Metropolitan
future.
Repaving.
Reinstalling. Rejuvenating.
Day by
week by month,
The
city blooms, business booms,
Yet
the IRA still looms,
In the
minds of the people.
The
locals’ prize for enduring this:
A
large, modern sporting stadium-
And a
grant from the Commonwealth.
In the
stained-oak chambers
of the
city’s boardrooms,
The
mayor and Devant share
handshakes
and visions of success,
as IRA
money flows blood-like into the city.
