In Competition No. 3083 you were invited to submit a poem or a short story that begins ‘It started with a tweet…’.
Hats off to Philip Machin for an appropriately pithy submission:
It started with a tweet —
There’s nothing wrong in that —
But, sadly, indiscreet:
It ended with a cat.
Elsewhere, in a varied and engaging entry, there were echoes of Shelley’s skylark, Lear’s owl and Hitchcock’s Birds. The winners below are rewarded with £25 each.
It started with a tweet, a joke
at his expense, okay, but just
a quip intended to provoke
a smile or some quick counter-thrust:
instead he opted to deplore
its tone, which others duly liked
not to approve of more and more
until the growing numbers spiked
much hope of coming to a truce
as we were hit on either side
by covert forces now let loose
that could, it seemed, not be denied
the chance to give or take offence
at total strangers’ tweeted words
and make bewildered victims sense
the swooping screeching of The Birds.
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