Apr 4
". . .here
Buckle! AND. . ."
I have( somehow )
escaped( don't ask me how )
the ritual of the head
plunged down the toilet bowl
this the welcome to
secondary school
and flushed
their laughter and their power.
They have bidden their time
well
and although I believe
I have outfoxed them
....they have outfoxed me.
I tremble on my spindly
12 year old legs
surrounded by the sneering
pack.
They hang me from
a coat peg
laughing with great glee
as I try to free
myself
but can't.
I like a living coat
refusing to be clothes.
Then they tear
page by page
my poetry book
to pieces.
Pages like paper bees
crushedcrumpled at my feet.
They make me eat
Hopkins.
I spit him out
gasp for breath.
My tongue rebels AND
I fling Father Hopkins at them.
They recoil in astonished
amazement.
" I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding. . ."
The words sting them
into stunned silence.
This is not
how it should be.
My jacket tears
I fall at their feet
my voice soaring
now above them.
They run from the beauty of the words.
I pick, one by one, up
the fallen pages.
". . . and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and **** gold-vermillion. . ."
The bell rings
for Maths.
*
I was a sickly kid and pretty lousy at school. Told I was not good enough to do the English Higher paper but that didn't stop me reading the stuff. There was a great TV schools programme on that I would tune into and out of this the great Brendan Keneally would walk forth from its tubes and proclaim THE WINDHOVER.
With his voice and passion for the poem I was entranced and made a fan of all things Hopkins. Years later I meet him casually at a bar where we happened to be having a pint together. I told him this story and all those years later I had the pleasure of him recite it to me once again in the flesh! It was a magical moment. We batted the lines back and forth to each other and plunged into the beauty of the lines.
The last time before that I had met him and his wife at the Grapevine Arts Centre in Dublin. I was a mere sapling then and just beginning to read poetry aloud. I was a country bumpkin and had to run for a bus and as I ran and as they waved goodbye to me I turned the corner of North Great Georges Street AND....fell on my ****! Oh the shame of it!
I used to belong to a poetry collective that hawked a broadsheet around pubs. My poem CRAZY LONELINESS HIJACKS MEMORY OF A BEAUTIFUL GIRL was the hit of the day and Brendan liked this very much. But my one moment of glory was reciting Hopkins with him in a crowed noisy Dublin poem...I had come full circle.
Buckle! AND. . ."
I have( somehow )
escaped( don't ask me how )
the ritual of the head
plunged down the toilet bowl
this the welcome to
secondary school
and flushed
their laughter and their power.
They have bidden their time
well
and although I believe
I have outfoxed them
....they have outfoxed me.
I tremble on my spindly
12 year old legs
surrounded by the sneering
pack.
They hang me from
a coat peg
laughing with great glee
as I try to free
myself
but can't.
I like a living coat
refusing to be clothes.
Then they tear
page by page
my poetry book
to pieces.
Pages like paper bees
crushedcrumpled at my feet.
They make me eat
Hopkins.
I spit him out
gasp for breath.
My tongue rebels AND
I fling Father Hopkins at them.
They recoil in astonished
amazement.
" I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding. . ."
The words sting them
into stunned silence.
This is not
how it should be.
My jacket tears
I fall at their feet
my voice soaring
now above them.
They run from the beauty of the words.
I pick, one by one, up
the fallen pages.
". . . and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and **** gold-vermillion. . ."
The bell rings
for Maths.
*
I was a sickly kid and pretty lousy at school. Told I was not good enough to do the English Higher paper but that didn't stop me reading the stuff. There was a great TV schools programme on that I would tune into and out of this the great Brendan Keneally would walk forth from its tubes and proclaim THE WINDHOVER.
With his voice and passion for the poem I was entranced and made a fan of all things Hopkins. Years later I meet him casually at a bar where we happened to be having a pint together. I told him this story and all those years later I had the pleasure of him recite it to me once again in the flesh! It was a magical moment. We batted the lines back and forth to each other and plunged into the beauty of the lines.
The last time before that I had met him and his wife at the Grapevine Arts Centre in Dublin. I was a mere sapling then and just beginning to read poetry aloud. I was a country bumpkin and had to run for a bus and as I ran and as they waved goodbye to me I turned the corner of North Great Georges Street AND....fell on my ****! Oh the shame of it!
I used to belong to a poetry collective that hawked a broadsheet around pubs. My poem CRAZY LONELINESS HIJACKS MEMORY OF A BEAUTIFUL GIRL was the hit of the day and Brendan liked this very much. But my one moment of glory was reciting Hopkins with him in a crowed noisy Dublin poem...I had come full circle.
