Boy, Interrupted (Part 1)

 

Boy, Interrupted (Part 1)

 

Vikings at Eagles surging on a boy’s world,

see they’ll shear your curls, tell those growing girls

how my teacher smelt of cough drops, 

wrinkled prunes, cockleshell heroes, aniseed rocks,

what taught was nothing much learnt and not a lot,

she's wielding the shears your mother lent her,

puts you on her tight sweatered knee, tells stories,

of magic kingdoms, magic nails, magic rings,

there’s, after all, something magic in everything.

Hermes, we’re all balanced on top of the world

and, hey, 'look at me, Ma, look at me',

but that stuttering pistol’s shaking in his grip,

while Filipina are flooring warm wet water trips.

Kid in carriage, his glaciered face out the window

swelling in smug grin on the stopping train

between here and here, ahead cut clean off the cuff

she's pounding the other way and only stems remain,

bleeding sap upon her Côte Sauvage’s ball traps.

No longer in need of watering, sometime sane,

toting misfired pistols aimed at miswired brains,

screaming at white chalk black boards in boredom:

here’s to pretty shells planted in neat rows,

here’s to Mary and her garden green grows,

here’s to jagged pack ice in blood soft snow,

here’s to stoned hopscotch born still unborn,

here’s to boy interrupted and here's daggers drawn.