Tom Dylan

For My Teachers

This is a poem for my teachers,

the people who almost

knocked my love of literature

out of me with a 

black-board duster

 

Who were bigger bullies

than any of my class-mates,

who would always report

 that I could do better,

even though I was trying

my absolute best.

 

This poem is for those teachers

who thought it more important

that we walk in the right direction 

down the correct corridor 

than what we actually learned in class.

 

This poem is for the teacher

who spent most of the lessons

drunk, taking hits of whiskey

in the stock-cupboard,

before teaching us last year\'s

syllabus by mistake.

 

The teachers may have ruined

Charles Dickens for me,

by throwing the book at us

and telling the class to have it

read by the end of the week,

 

But Shakespeare and stories

and poems, they are still mine.

My brother still cannot hear 

Seamus Heaney without having 

flash-backs to horror days at

high school.

 

This poem is for my old head-master

who on our last ever assembly, as we were

about to venture out into the adult world,

still addressed us as boys and girls,

and without a shred of sentiment.

 

Today I read books and poems,

and attempt stories and poetry

of my own, and all this is

in spite of, not because of

my teachers.

I might actually write about it 

one of these days.