BALLOON FIGHT - Anthony Munday Poems

 
 

Poems » anthony munday » balloon fight

BALLOON FIGHT
  'This morning, the American, Steve Fossett, ended his Round-The-World
  balloon fight...I'm sorry, balloon "flight"...in northern India.'
         - The Today Programme, Radio 4, 20 January 1997

It ended in Uttar Pradesh.
It had to.
You can't go around the world
attacking people with balloons
and expect to get away with it.

What may be mildly amusing
at children's parties
in Upper Manhattan
will not seem so funny ha ha
on the Falls Road.

How Fossett fought his way
across the former Yugoslavia
I'll never know.
Some folk never grow up.
Hang on to their childhood.

Believing in the Tooth Fairy,
watched over by the Man in the Moon.
Thank you, Mr Newsreader,
for bringing him down to earth.
For bursting his balloon.

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