When it catches me
Warm in the classroom or nodding
Just after my stop,
I curse you.
Heavy eyelids.
Limbs weighed down with care and iron clad fears.
2am.
You dance from my fingertips and taunt me moments and inches away on the cool side of my pillow.
Long lost friend. Tormentor of Macbeth.  
That which I yearn for. Embrace of brief death.
You swine. Come to me when I call
Or let me be productive and don't come at all.

"Cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right",
The boy exhales deeply,twirling dust motes in the light.
His pencil moves laboriously as his notes limp to the end,
And he shifts back from his studies and grimaces at a friend.
The girl gazing along the row admires his boyish face,
The frown lines from thinking have left a shallow trace,
So she whispers across to him that he needs to smile,
And he grins at her and stretches, adds annotations to the pile.
I observe him from the whiteboard,
Feel a rush of maternal pride. Young, strong and full of hope,
The world is open wide.
Then emotion clutches at my throat, sins forefathers have done,
A hundred years ago he'd have been,
In the trenches with my son.

Why write a poem?
Write a tweet instead.
Goes the internal monologue running in my head.
Why write a poem?
Go and do some work.
Getting out the fountain pen is an excuse to shirk.
Why write a poem?
Nobody cares.
Spend your time on snapchat racking up the 'flares'.
Why write a poem?
Heaney's been dead for years.
Can't read Mid Term Break without it reducing me to tears.

Your blood is the same as mine.
Red, type O, superstitious.
We both prefer not to spill it but hold it preciously.
Clutched to our chests in fragile vessels.

Your blood is the same as mine.
It flows through our veins and that of our children.
It warms their cheeks and it anointed them when they came mewling into this world.

Your blood is the same as mine.
I read about your losses and I feel them in my bones.
Mother to mother, our blood the same divided only by water.

I'm a Rock and Rock teacher and I'm really dead cool,
I wear a leather jacket as I'm swaggering to school,
I like what I teach and I teach what I like,
A roar across the playground on my motorbike.
I let the kids call me by my first name,
My mum called me Gertrude (which is a bit of a shame),
I love Sid Vicious so I call myself Nance,
And put safety pins in my PVC pants.
I talk about Shakespeare or as I call him Bill,
I put wicked street art on my windowsill,
I follow no rules, I do what I choose,
I pierced my lip, I've got tattoos,
I'm fighting the system, I'm hip and I'm rad.
It's a midlife crisis and it's really quite sad.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Wind blowing down the chimney, went and got his fluffy slippers,
Got home very tired from work, he cooked the children's chicken dippers,
Remembered his mum's birthday and ordered her some flowers,
He doesn't mind me reading weird sci-fi books for hours,
Rolled over and tucked the duvet when his *** stuck out in bed,
I didn't fancy noodles so he ordered rice instead,
When I cook the dinner he gets the biggest chop,
He always packs the heavy things in his bag at the shop,
Love's not about roses or expensive diamond rings,
It's all about the day to day million little things.  
When we go to sleep at night our hands must always touch,
I never thought I'd find it but I love him very much.