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.