dear teacher,
it's true I could've been studying all night for this test. however, is it not the reason that we are taking this so that we can form a future for ourselves? well yesterday I decided I wasn't going to live in the future, I wasn't going to live in the past, I was going to live in the present. fighting dragons in the woods that turned out just to be low lying branches like when I was a kid, and accepting awards for amazing performances in the shower like I was an adult. from my research, I've concluded that there is no present because the present is made from the stitches of the past and the prospects of the future, yet at the same time none of that.
so, no, I didn't study all night for your test. fighting dragons and accepting awards seems like a better use of my time anyways.

Wizened, like the mountain ridges in the west,
you gazed across the desk at me, rheumy eyes unblinking,
and asked me what I wanted from life

When I answered, the blue opacity of your gaze seemed to sharpen
and pierce my soul
you clasped your hands comfortably, and rolled your ancient shoulders back
- trees rippled in the ridges of your crisply pressed shirt -
and you told me, with your well-worn voice, that you would exert every effort
to give me all the tools I needed to succeed

as you blinked, our conference ended, like the sun had gone down
I was free to leave, but lingered
your short white hair crested your brow like a fresh snowcap, you
had ravines beside your eyes, and smiled like a canyon
so I turned to go

And it occurred to me, as I left the inclines of your presence for
the flat horizons of my daily life, that I
would like to have the same peace that flowed
through your being,
it would be a healthy rain to the desert of my soul.

I longed to have the verdancy that you had - you,
forty years my senior; you put my youth to shame
but soon you would be my teacher, and
you would not let me go to waste

That always says"I don't know, can you use the bathroom?" when you're about to *** yourself

That always takes too long to explain the same thing as yesterday

That is the best teacher ever

That you just hate so much and you think they're the Devil

That smiles at you and see all you can become

That frowns at you because you're such a failure

That you don't mind being stuck in a class with on your least favorite subject

That you completely ignore because they put you next to your BestFriend

That you completely ignore because they put you next to your crush

That you completely ignore because they put you next to someone you hate so much because they're annoying as hell

That you learn nothing from all year

That know your either gonna shout to you BestFriend across the room or whisper to them next to you

That sing to themselves in class because its not their classroom

That you want to personally fire out of a cannon for not showing your amazing math work that you actually tired on because they don't like you

That you miss so much when you graduate

That you are so glad to never see again when you graduate

Splitting the atom
Dancing the pattern
Step through the abyss
Do it like this
Do it like this

Screaming the spectrum
She's burning horizons
With shimmering lips
We do it like this
Do it like this


Swallowing poisons that coagulate in my throat
Don't act like you didn't just come here to gloat
I'll bite the hand that keeps feeding me lies
I'll feed you to the flies
I'm the one you despise
I'll pull out your eyes
And I'll stitch up your lips
AND I'LL DO IT LIKE THIS
DO IT LIKE THIS

the skilled craftsman
he labors pen on page in nights silence
the names and faces of his students
vividly painted to him in small ways on each page

the girl with her flourish of drawings
in the margins of her work
a bird delicately drawn to appear to be dropping
the words onto the page
in amongst her arguments that shakespeare was a charlatan...
the young man from the morning bell
who dose not write as much as he carves and hacks
his words into the dull instrument of the page
crafting it in his way to resemble the angry face he wears within

this quiet man
teacher
he learns too
from the patchwork quilt of humanity
that passes year by year through his world
some shine brightly
others faded away into obscurity's cage
see him sitting in nights silence
pen in hand
a master craftsman at his labor of love

The Jester put on his cap and bells
For the final time, we’re told,
The Queen was set to replace him for
She said he was far too old,
‘He doesn’t amuse me like he did
Before, when we all were young,
Should I dispense with his services,
Or command the Jester hung?’

Her courtiers were gathered around,
They wanted to please the Queen,
Lord Chalmers said, ‘Suspend by his feet!’
Then Darnley: ‘No! By his spleen!’
‘Tar and Feather him,’ said Bottolph,
‘And run him around the town,
Then tether him to a stake, and light
Him up, in the palace grounds.’

The Queen thought that was hilarious,
And clapped and cried in her mirth,
‘By Jove, we’ll have us some jesting yet,
We’ll bring him on down to earth!’
‘He’s sure to appreciate the jest
For he won’t deny your fun,’
The Chancellor of the Exchequer said,
‘We’ll gather in everyone.’

While the Jester sat in his lonely room
In a dark and evil tower,
He knew that he would be summoned soon
But he didn’t know the hour.
He wondered if she might knight him then
For his services to the crown,
Or grant him a fabulous pension for
The years that he’d played the clown?

For Jesters, they are but mortal men
Aside from their clownish role,
Down under bells and motley lives
A far from perfect soul,
The jesting covers a beating heart
That is rarely ever seen,
And his was filled with a lifetime love
For Her Majesty, the Queen.

He’d loved her since, as a little girl
She’d laughed and played in the grounds,
While he’d leapt out of the bushes there
To her squeals, and laughs and frowns,
He’d always jingled his bells for her,
And carried her in to tea,
When she was sleepy and all laughed out
After playing so happily.

He knew that he’d made more enemies
Than friends, as the years went by,
For jealousy breeds in a court with needs
And the courtiers were sly,
They took it in turns to trip him up
And to hurt, as part of the jest,
But he took new heart at the cruel laughs
By the ones who were not impressed.

He finally stood in front of the Queen
And bowed right down to the floor,
He looked for a smile on her much loved face
But a scowl was all he saw.
‘You’ve come to the end of your usefulness,
A Fool on a bended knee,
Take him outside and string him up,
Upside down from a tree!’

He hung for an hour in misery,
And then they had cut him down,
Tarred and feathered his motley’d form
And beat him around the town.
They wanted to stake and light him up
But the Queen said, ‘Let him go.
Give him a crown in a silver cup
For the years he amused me so!’

They cast him out in a farmer’s field
And barred him then from the court,
He wept and wailed in his anguish there
For a day and a night, and thought;
The slings and arrows he’d suffered from
Were now brought up with his bile,
And sweet revenge was his ruling theme,
He planned and schemed for a while.

One night he went to the palace yard
And crept down the cellar stair,
He doctored all the barrels of hock
And the fine French flagons there,
Then some time after the palace hunt
He hid in the servants’ hall,
And waited til they drank and were drunk
At the Queen’s Most Favoured Ball.

Then Bottolph woke in a barrel of tar,
And Chalmers hung by his heels,
While Darnley woke in a quivering fear
In a barrel of snakes and eels,
The Queen awoke in her stately bed
Pinned down by a giant sow,
And wearing the Jester’s bells. He said,
‘Who is the Jester now?’

David Lewis Paget

He crashed on into our dining room
Like a man convulsed with pain,
And breathless, gasped as he tried to ask,
‘What have you done with Jane?’
I stood En Guarde by the mantelpiece
And clutched at a kitchen knife,
‘Who are you, and what do you want?
You’re talking about my wife!’

He leant exhausted against the wall
And groaned, like a man obsessed,
I thought he could have escaped somewhere
That he might have been possessed.
‘I can’t believe she’s done it again,
She’s going against the plan,
I’ve told her time, and time out of time
To wait for her rightful man.’

‘See here,’ I said, with a touch of fear,
‘She’s mine, with never a doubt,
We married a couple of years ago
So I think I’ll show you out.’
‘I have to stay ‘til I see her face
She’ll remember when I do,
If you can’t stand up to the challenge, then
She never should be with you.’

He’d hit a nerve, and he knew he had
For I’d never been too sure,
For Jane had always been hesitant
When I’d asked for her hand before.
I thought there might have been someone else
Lurking behind her fan,
A former lover, she’d have no other
Now here was this crazy man!

I sat him down in an easy chair
And gave him a shot of Beam,
Then took a double shot for myself,
And stared at him, in a dream.
I tried to imagine her with him
And it shook me, without doubt,
For I could tell that they’d couple well,
Then wished that I’d thrown him out.

Jane came back home from her shopping spree,
Came in through the broken door,
And stood aghast at the pile of glass
He’d smashed there, down on the floor.
The stranger stood, he jumped to his feet
And held out a shaking hand,
‘I thought I saw you out in the street,
Don’t you know me, I’m your man!’

She held her nerve and she looked at him
As a stranger, far away,
‘I seem to recall,’ she muttered, ‘but…
‘All that was another day.’
‘Another day in a another time,
The fifth, but never the last,’
He looked at her with his pleading eyes,
Please try to remember the past.’

Then Jane went white as a cotton sheet
And said, ‘You couldn’t be Paul!
I left you last in the marketplace,
Leaning againt a wall.’
‘The soldiers came, and took us away,’
He said with the slightest tear,
‘They took us behind a barn that day…’
I said, ‘What’s going on here?’

It was suddenly like I’d disappeared
There were only two in that room,
Their eyes were locked in an act of grace
That I couldn’t share in the gloom.
‘Of course, it’s coming on back to me,
The bed in that cheap hotel,’
She seemed to blush as her eyes cast down,
And my heart had stopped, as well.

‘I’ve had just all I’m about to take,’
I said, ‘I want you to go!
And Jane, just tell me for heaven’s sake
You continue to love me so.’
The man stood up and he shook her hand
And he said, ‘That’s really an art.
I didn’t think you could act, my dear,
I was wrong, you get the Part!’

David Lewis Paget

I was sat in a Tavern in Pompey Town,
Sipping a tipple of ***,
When I watched a Jack make an axe attack,
Chop off his finger and thumb!

I couldn’t believe the blood that flowed
From the cut of that rusty blade,
But the barmaid Flo, said ‘You’ve done it, Joe,
Now look at the mess you’ve made!’

She cleaned it up with a swill of ale,
Walked off with the finger and thumb,
‘I’ll nail these up on the balustrade
With the rest that have been as dumb.’

But Joe sang out when he’d had a drink
‘It’s better than being a tar!
I spent three years, under the lash
On His Majesty’s Man o’ War.’

‘They ‘pressed me when I was still a kid
And treated me like a dog,
I suffered scurvy and couldn’t work,
The answer to that, was flog.’

‘They flogged me around the Southern Cape,
They flogged me a-ship and ashore,
Whenever I thought that I might escape
They dragged me onboard for more.’

‘And Cap’n Foggett’s abroad tonight
With his cut-throat parcel of rogues,
Impressing the able-bodied men,
They’re lining them up in droves.’

‘For Nelson’s lying abaft the lee
With barely a half a crew,
He needs more men for the ‘Victory’,
And that means me and you!’

‘In every tavern they’re moving in,
In every alley and quay,
At first they offer the King’s shilling,
To war with the enemy.’

‘But the Frenchies rake with the carronade
That will rip the flesh from your bones,
And the decks run red from the men who bled
Impressed from their wives and homes.’

‘They say he sails on the tide tonight
So they’re doing a quick Hot Press,
Even a gen’lman walking late
Won’t meet with their gentleness.’

‘A cudgel whack on a squire’s head
Then dragged to the bilges, free,
They’ll never know ‘til they all wake up
That they’re headed on out to sea.’

‘That Nelson’s got but a single arm,
He’s got but a single eye,
If that’s not enough to be alarmed
By God, then I wonder why!’

The Press Gang came to the Tavern door
But couldn’t come on inside,
They tried to sell me a Man o’ War
But Joe had made me decide.

I took a gulp of Jamaica ***
And I steeled myself to the task,
‘The Press are waiting outside,’ I cried,
‘Just hand me that rusty axe!’

David Lewis Paget

When Alison left the bath to run
It ruined the parquet floor,
It spilled on out like a waterspout
And ran right under the door,
She’d gone back into the bedroom, so
The spill continued to run,
Across the landing and down the stair,
‘Now look what our daughter’s done!’

We couldn’t dry out the parquetry
It swelled, and loosened the glue,
Then bits would lift and would come adrift,
I didn’t know what to do.
Then Barbara said, ‘It’s coming up,
We shouldn’t have laid it down,
I’ll go and choose some ceramic tiles
At that tiling place in town.’

I said that I’d lay the tiles myself
But Barbara would insist,
‘We really need a professional
For a job as big as this.’
I shrugged, and let her get on with it
I never could win a trick,
So the tiler that she employed was one
Ahab Nathaniel Frick.

I’d seen this tiler about the town
All hunched, and wizened and old,
His wrinkled skin was like parchment in
Some leathery paperfold.
He wore a hat with a drooping brim
So the sun never touched his face,
A puff of wind would have blown him in
To leave not a hint, or trace.

‘Are you sure that he’s up to this,’ I said,
‘He isn’t the best of men,
He’ll probably get on his knees all right
But never get up again.’
But Barbara shushed me out of there
Was keeping me well at bay,
She wanted to prove what she could do
In laying the tiles her way.

I didn’t get in to see them then
‘Til the tiles were laid, with grout,
Nor see Nathaniel Frick again,
I supposed that he’d gone out.
I stood and stared at the new laid tiles,
Their pattern was in the floor,
And Barbara, waiting proudly said,
‘What are you staring for?’

‘There’s something a-swirl in those tiles,’ I said,
‘Some pattern you didn’t mean,
The way that he’s put them together, well
There’s a sense of something unclean!’
I said the tiles made an evil face
And showed her the curving jaw,
The squinting eyes that could hypnotise
And the cheeks, so sallow and raw.

She said that she couldn’t see it then,
That I must have twisted eyes,
I wasn’t wanting to hurt her so
I tried to sympathise,
But the monster’s face was set in space
And it wouldn’t go away,
I dreamt about that face by night
And I saw it, every day.

At night, the face seemed to snarl at me
When I passed it in the gloom,
And I worried that it was set right there
Outside our daughter’s room,
Then Barbara thought she heard a noise,
An intruder in the house,
And tipped me out of the bed to chase
The night intruder out.

The moans began in the early hours
And the groans came just at dawn,
Then Alison came into our room,
‘There’s a shadow on my wall!
A man with a broad-brimmed, floppy hat
And with squinting eyes that gleamed,’
I said, ‘That’s it,’ when she had a fit
And our darling daughter screamed!

I went on out to the lumber shed
And I brought a mattock in,
While Alison jumped in the double bed
As the tiles set up a din,
A wailing, groaning, squealing sound
That would raise the peaceful dead,
I raised the mattock and smashed the tiles
Just above the monster’s head.

The tiles rose up with a mighty roar
And shattered, scattered around,
As a shadow from underneath the floor
Rose up with a dreadful sound,
It hissed, and made for the stairway, leapt
And it almost made me sick,
For fleeing out of the open door
Was Ahab Nathaniel Frick!

David Lewis Paget