Inspired by an article on Stuff today… I’ve decided to post my poem.

BBC on frosty mornings

If only we’d had Twitter

to combat history’s fictions

multiple sources of fake news

instead of just the BBC

when the fire was lit, the

coal bucket set back on

the hearth, Big Ben crackled

through on short wave

and we believed from

our beds, our father

donning his balaclava

ready to bike to work

we knew that Kennedy

called Khrushchev’s bluff

that annihilation was

averted, we believed

because we were Catholic

that Kennedy was the

good man and Khrushchev

the bad man, it was

of course, all in black

and white and plain

for all to see, coming

as it did from the BBC

Never mind that we lived

at the bottom end of the

earth near the South Pole

possibly safely nuclear free

should someone blink

press the both metaphorical

and real button, Armageddon

loomed rather large

making it seemed, all the

sacrifices of our war heroes

perhaps a little pointless

if this was indeed ‘it’

Now we see all sides of

the binary spectrum

fake news depending

on our political leanings

and thus, it probably

always was, but back then

in our Commonwealth

bubble of post war bliss

we believed the BBC

through the Bakelite radio

on the shelf above the fridge

news was often cataclysmic

I now roam from tweet

to tweet, sipping my coffee

taking a bite or two to eat

digesting all sides of the story

hoping Kim and Donald

are really friends, that

the peace train will

leave the station

shake my head at kids in

cages, but double check

the photo on the front of

TIME, the ensuing by-line

scoff at Trump’s ridiculously

long ties, small hands, awful,

awful hair and this means of

course, that I really do care

cheer and yet also despair

when the Saudi King allows

women to drive but jails

the activists who fought for it

I rage against the dying of

the journalistic light but I’m

more informed than ever …

or so I tell myself

Now and then, I’d like to be

(briefly) safe in my bed, on a

frosty morning, believing still

truth was all, from the BBC