12 Days Before Christmas Poems

All Doom and Little Freedom

(after Ted Hughes)

A school's dark term shrunk to verbal barks and the clank of a ruckus -

And who is listening?
A tangled web, tense for a clue to the few who touch.
A pale face lifted, no frills or trimming - fear
to tempt a first reading to a tremor.

Now we are going home in the pain there, stooping under the wreath of someone's
                                                        indelible breath -
a stark shiver in our blood, trying to unfold the blur,
challenging to kill words in that ilk.

'Doom!' we cry suddenly, 'Doom! Doom!'

The buffoon has leapt back like a con-artist gazing fazed at the workers
that point at him un-amazed.

- 2002 -

[NB Written post-Ofsted inspection]