Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair.

Mr Zapruder’s Family Film Night

Somewhere, in another Universe,
Abraham would sit down with his family,
and watch their glory days in the new-fangled Kodachrome.
They would sit and delight in how the children had grown,
and be embarrassed by their choices in haircuts, clothes and partners.
They would sit and reminisce about the good old days,
and how the Sixties were a fine time to be alive.

In this universe, though Abraham Zapruder is known as the man
who caught a decisive time in World History,
one of only a few dozen people who saw the full horror of frame 313,
who was haunted by visions for the rest of his life,
who made money from selling his film,
but who gave a lot of it to the young widow who lost her husband,
the same day that the walls of Camelot came crashing down.

After that fateful November day, when old certainties were pushed aside,
Abraham Zapruder never touched another Camera,
His life is forever marred by being the Cameraman whose life is remembered
for capturing the death of the President.

The Artist’s Self Portrait

He wears his scars with pride,
pulls at the wounds until they bleed.
A face is like a map of experience.
He has the face he wanted
but not the one he needs.
The tattoos are not permanent marks of pain,
they are the rituals he went through to join the tribe,
and the arguments he has are not with himself,
but with an unjust God.
Darkness is hungry.
It threatens to swallow you,
and in the foreground stands a man,
as he sees himself,
at the mid-point stage of a play
that is only partially written.
He is all splodges and lines,
closed eyes blocking out the world,
a Boxer’s nose
caused by drink
and not an opponent’s fist.
An image where life has removed hope,
hanging on a wall in a millionaire’s holiday home,
where the canvas is seen as being far more valuable
than the artist who poured himself into
lines, splodges and whirls,
half a century ago.

Heirlooms

These days, we only ever meet at funerals.
It is a hundred small hellos, to one long goodbye.
I spend the day being told I have my Grandfather’s eyes,
The night before I shaved my Father’s beard.
The day is not surprising, death seldom ever is.
We swap clichés as if we were waiting for a bus.
‘They had a good innings’
‘They would have enjoyed today’
‘We did them proud’
‘It is good weather for it’
realising how little we knew about them,
knowing that our memories would form a picture,
that shifted like a kaleidoscope.