Sunday 28 October 2018

22 Poems from 2010/11 when I was a Teaching Assistant.


CHALKFACE
1.
'Robbery gets
you five'
the boy calls
out across
the crowded
classroom
they threaten
the snake
with knives
I sit between
them, a useless
wooden pier
wondering
if this
is a matter
for the police
or just matter
disintegrating
or / and / but
20 lines

2.
I'm in a
science exam
scribing for
a Congolese girl
- when the task
was to balance
the chemical reaction
of sodium &
hydrogen dioxide
you cant argue
with the answer:
'apple juice
makes you stronger'

3.
when you asked me
if Martin Luther King
had 'a actual dream'
I wanted so badly
to say yes
but I had to cover
your innocent question
in the dust
under all those desks

4.
Sitting atop a
pile of broken
pencils
a kinked bird
crouching over
a colourful nest
they were broken
because they could be
you explained

5.
I traverse the city
east to west
on a shell-green train
I have been
invited to
talk about myself
at my old
university
& who
cannot resist
talking about
themselves

6.
we wait for the
class to sit
down
& then
make them
back out the
door they have
just walked through
to line up
& reenter
until they
might
understand
they are here for
something other

7.
the boy
a mess of gel
& crumpled collars
a shattered tie
around his neck
argues that
his book
has
'words every
where'
when asked
why he is not
reading

8.
'rats eating
sea breeze'
'the most
expensive ghost'
these words
skewered
into essays
tethered
to ugly
pages of
papers
sheaths of
nothing
offered up
cold
leaves following 
feathers
to the ground

9.
the diagonal
scar
across the boys
brow
a hairless strike
jutting
into the black
sphere
a stricken ship
pissing
into his left
eye
was caused by
the butt of
a gun
an example photo
in a frame
he sits in the
class
waiting to be
torn as if a
a Paraguayan
horse

10.
nobody will say it
out loud
but some of these
kids will not
make it through
their exams
they are grain
& grist
carrying the
waiting
helplessness of
goalkeepers

11.
after arrest
it is up to
the courts
the police do not
decide the sentence
the boy tells the PCO
they came on forty bikes
they would never serve more than twenty years
so he would kill
every last one of them
every
last
member
of their family

12.
the class, when
hollered at,
collapse into
their desks
a bloat of hippopotami
but when the
lesson stings
the air around them
they conceive
an exaltation of larks
spinning off the
breakers, floundering
lost in the
white caps
of mine
& yours

13.
may you be
     the grandfather
of bald men
only fit to wear
              cold, oily denim
may you conjure
     hats full of excrement
         & dead rabbits
because without you
we are all lost

14.
what is a simile?
your nostrils are like a curved path
through the grass
similes are, like, whatever
metaphors are whatever
she thinks

15.
The Latvian kid
drops his coat and bag
in one swift movement
like a magicians cloak
or a boxers gown
using his stump
as a weapon he hits
the black kid hard
in the throat and
again in the temple
the Latvian accused
the black kid of stealing
his pound coin
a dull, corn-coloured
prize they are now prepared
to kill each other for
& they nearly do
their arms fold around
each other like belts about
badly-packed suitcases
with no free hands
they both hit the table
head first, open-eyed
but the fight does not end
the adrenaline is up
this is the third fight today
I have tried to break up
& the first time I felt scared
to put myself in the way
because these kids are serious
& I have no doubt this is not finished here today

16.
woodwork
is
now
called
resistant
materials
it's
fitting
that
children
so averse to
learning
study
substances
so immune
& recalcitrant
to impression
or modification

17.
the pretty white
girls shoal
off the coast
in chorus
the Polish collect
together
circling the language
teacher
surface runoff
pouring
the Afghans sit
in drudgery
beach cusps pointing
seaward
toleration of each
other gone

18.
before the assessed,
the millions
begin.
something nothing

undone the ties,
the uniforms
dis-scratch.
poly monosyllabic.

allowed the paragraphs,
the line breaks
unbroken.
type upset
desperate the room,
the panicking
bird-like.
breath egg taking

19.
he stands
     an unbrushed drum
pulled by
     neither horse nor fork
his anger
     a pouch of toads
in his
twitching cheeks
the shark
& the starfish
the pig
& the tortoise
Aida with an elephant

20.
judging by the burr
the wet burlap sack of birds
had been dragged through the meadow
babies are agents of entropy
speeding up the normally slow approach of chaos
like a bomb or a sneeze
 the optimism of autumn's ice-cream van
  walking along the corridors i notice the flow
  of aggression and anger
  of broken heels & un-breakfasted stomachs
  growling under the assault of sugars
  please hide yourself among them
  be a spider underneath the stones
  progress is green & and unreal, a construct
  of spreadsheets and teacher's dreams
  i love you but i don't know how to show it
  Drink, feel, feel, drink, break a thumb
Now we have a a baby of our own.

21.
A vision 

of the  priest

of the artist 

bellowing at blank canvases and empty faces

humming / ringing

with the calling

22.
We were twelve hours
from from first cramp 
to the cloth rub that 
brought you shuddering
to a scream. Outside the rain
made a mess of the cigarette butts
and dragged wet footprint through
the corridors. We took you home.

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