The Old School

Twisted wrought-iron
Rusty chain
Old green tree
With silent laughter
Trembling each leaf
To the happy wind

Teacher
Raving lunatic psychopath
Now grey and kindly
with scraps of short-pants memory
That is you.
Thick lenses squint your man-face
To wrinkles of a naughty, dirty, child-man.

Adverbial clause quadratic equation
Third battle of Panipat
Warren Hastings dead for ever
But his memory
Grows differently
With each clay mind
Moulded twisted beaten
With school-master cane

First Day.
Farewell adieu forever mother
Swallowed into mindless patter
of black-hole feet
Salty crystal brown eye
Fine graffiti wood
Cold comfort.

Paper plane fantasy
Grounded by anti-aircraft ma'am
Antique gene-cousin
To a buck-toothed tram
Boysterous back-bench wit
And a gaggle of giggly skirts
Shadow-dark shoes
Painfully starched shirts
and skinned knee blues...
Nostalgia hurts.

Swinging out into empty sky
Sliding to sandy sand
She-saw justice and
Boy-scout two-fingered honour

March March March
(Mind fever exam God and neighbour help us all)
In April we go home.

Class of '83
Scattered like memory
That still lives

Alumnus
Friendly castaway
With residual red-bottomed schoolboy hate
And fading childhearted joy




For The Home School. What a place it was.