12 Days Before Christmas Final Poem

Stocking My Moods Near A Christmas Evening

(after Frost)

Whose moods these are I think I know.
My self is in the need to show
I may not want the stopping here
To be all there is before I go.

My little time could now be near
To stop and sense all learning dear
Between what moods of give and take
Are the darkest of this year.

I gave to all who would partake
Or even ask if it was a mistake.
The only other sounds to keep
Are lives who are yet to wake.

The moods are loving, dark and deep,
But I have one promise to keep,
And a while to go before I sleep,
And a while to go before I sleep.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

The final two poems I will be posting from Stocking Fillers come from the last ever edition of these festive volumes, the eighteenth. The first, a list-poem sonnet, is one of thirteen celebrating teachers from all subject areas - and thinking of those I worked with - and is more upbeat than previous moods [apart from the light and fluffy]; and the second, a final pastiche, is more rueful than angry, anticipating hopefully as it did - but not actually knowing - that I would be able to leave a job I loved but with which I had become dispirited.  Written December 2009, I left in July 2010.

This first is dedicated to all those wonderful and brilliant English teachers I worked with at my school, in my department, and more broadly still work with in my examining and other educational activities - Merry Christmas 2011,

Christmas English Teachers

Christmas English teachers who career on a seasonal sledge
Christmas English teachers who are as ambiguous as love
Christmas English teachers who know Godot will never
Christmas English teachers who spell Santa with a sibilance of snow
Christmas English teachers who listen to meanings as they change
Christmas English teachers who know an English emporium trades in metaphor
            and error
Christmas English teachers who will travel to nowhere they want to go
Christmas English teachers who hear Carver in the simplicity of everything unsaid
Christmas English teachers who know a line can rise and fall like now
Christmas English teachers who fight philistinism for philosophical fun
Christmas English teachers who write sonnets in the rhythm of sound
Christmas English teachers who know when to let themselves go
Christmas English teachers who understand the chimney inside Santa
Christmas English teachers who are standing out on the edge

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Mr Fergy

(after Larkin)

This was Mr Fergy’s room. He stayed

The whole time he was a teacher, at CV, till

They retired him. Decorated walls – posters now splayed –

Stand like the poor largesse of a teacher’s last will

And testament: windows look out to land

Still goal-posted; littered, Mr Fergy took

This view to be a great bird in one hand,

And in the other, words from any good poet’s book.

Behind the class door are ghosts: work in students’ bags;

The offering ‘I know the answer sir’ or an obvious lie;

A view of the far corner of the field and smoke from fags;

Then the echoes of those who would always try.

Toughing it out with teaching year after year to drown

The jabbering of ignorance egged on by

Those who, intending to build, only tore down,

His sufferance was to always ask why

He kept on plugging at the days and days,

Likewise the tugging down from this good job’s yolk.

It was always more than for the summer holidays

And Christmases when his Stocking Fillers spoke.

But if he stood and watched the December wind

Tousling memories, listened to what its blowing said,

Telling himself this was all there really was, and grinned,

And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how he lived measures his own nature,

And at his age having no more to show

Than a collection of red printed volumes should make him sure

He warranted no better than what such words bestow.

- 2008 - 

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Who Killed The Thought-Fox?

Perhaps it is the decline of winter
as a season - and I imagine now
the paw-prints at their best in a
Christmas snow - but it is more
than this: a cruel warmth
melts the habitat, and freedom to
roam has been curtailed by trips and
traps set by new hunters who know
no better. If this is acceptable
than anything else that could be
imagined to the full might as well
die too, and the murderers can come
running with their measuring tapes
sizing up this final kill.

- 2006 -

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

I don't know if anyone has followed/stuck with these? Only two more days to go. The poems, especially pastiches, did over the years become increasingly dark! From the tenth Stocking Fillers onwards to the final eighteenth, I did start writing prose pieces - not reproduced here - where I tried to be more humorous [satirical], though even these had the angry edge of a teacher intolerant of largely external forces impacting on internal reactions. Whilst Christmas time should be one of celebration and relaxation - indeed, placed their historically, socially and culturally to provide that annual psychological need - in the teacher's world it also came at the end of the longest full term. In looking to revisit and find just a few more lighter ditties to put here, I was bemused to find that as early as 1995 I had become aware that writing at this time of year made the more negative slant inevitable:

Time Of The Month

Bright Yuletide iambic pentameters
Must needs be composed in calm September.

The first Stocking Fillers poem I ever wrote did take a tilt at the light:

Logic

Everyone knows

Santa drinks
Fanta and his

reindeer have ginger
beer, but

Rudolf knocks back
Smirnoff

which explains the red nose.

Well, I tried! Here's another of the apposite fluffy variety:

Snow's

whiteness
its cleanness
the coldness
and softness
the lightness
with fullness
its roundness
and flatness
the calmness
the wholeness
its richness
whiteness

snowness

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Why So Pale and Wan?

(after Suckling)

Why so pale and wan, oh teacher?
   Prithee, why so pale?
Will your plans not make each learner
   Look up to your travail?
   Prithee, why so pale?

Why so full of hooch, ol' teacher?
   Prithee, why so full?
Will, when teaching well surrenders,
   Abstinence not dull?
   Prithee, why not just give bull?

Quit, quit for shame! This will not do:
   You cannot be smarter.
If of itself teaching will not do,
   Nothing can be tarter
   Than a Christmas contrived starter.

- 2004 -

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Anticipating A Summer Song

(based on an early English lyric)

Summer is i-commen in,
   Loudly sing cucu!
Groweth targeted results like we bloweth wind
   And spring'th the League Tables nu -
      Sing I'm Cucu!

Teachers bleateth after lamb,
   Low'th after the lowest too:
"Bollocks!" is shouteth, "Fucke youeth",
   Merry sing cucu!

Cucu, cucu, well singeth thou, cucu -  
   Ne shite thou never knew;
Sing cucu, now, sing cucu,
   Sing cucu, sing cucu, nu!

- 2003 -

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]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Upon The Circumcision

(after Milton)

Ye flaming Powers and winging Politicians bright
That erst with dictate and triumphant wrong
Pass on the baton to Morris' care,
So sweetly sung your Joy of Reform along
Through the silence of our suffering blight;
Now mourn and be sad to share with those who bear
Your fiery effluence, and the distilled tear
That makes up all our morrow
Burning in the depth of sorrow.
She who with all New Labour heraldry whileare
Enter'd our world, now bleeds us as if to please;
Alas, how doomed our skin,
   Sore, doth begin
      Our pleasures to cease!

- 2001 -

[NB Estelle Morris was the then Labour Secretary of State for Education and Skills]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Education Sonnet

(after Shakespeare)

So oft have I invok'd thee for my Muse
And found such crass assistance a dark verse
As befits this teacher's ink I must use
Till under you my poesy must be terse.
Thine lies, that are dumb to those who could sing,
And heavy ignorance in the closed eye,
Preach jaded feathers to the learned's wing
And give hope a Labour's travesty.
Yet be most proud of that which you defile
Whose influence is thine, and torn of thee,
In your own works thou dost but feed the guile,
And Arts with thy two-faced graces must be.
    But thou art all your Art, and dost by chance
    As chanced by learning, live crude ignorance.

- 2000 -

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Horrid Homophones

Santa was never allowed
To say "Fucking Merry Christmas" aloud.

A bestial Santa says "Hello Dear"
To his very special deer.

Another beastly Claus
Gets out his Xmas claws.

Santa had a broken heart
Discovering his 'special' was a hart.

- 2000 -

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

 

- 2000 -

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

 

- 2000 - 

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode VI

(after Coleridge)

My pensive colleagues! thy weary heads reclined
Thus on thine arms, most soothing sweet it is
To imagine each sat beside a Cot, any Cot o'ergrown
With flowers, and no thoughts of a targeted hurdle
To leap, just musings on Innocence and Love
And watching of clouds, that late were richly alight
With their vocation, and mark the rising stars
Serenely brilliant (such should Teaching be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the sense
Snatch'd from yon school-field! and the playground so hushed!
But the inner murmur of what we distantly perceive
Tells us of defiance.

                                  That performance-related Loot
Placed naked in the seducer's casement, hark!
How by the derisory political breeze caress'd,
Like some toy maid half yielding to her payer,
It pours such sickly-sweet upgrading, as must needs
Tempt to expose the wrong! So that now, its strings
Professionally swept, the long vocational notes
Over conscientious surges sing and rise,
Such a soft floating teacherly sound
As twilight planners and markers make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales of honest lesson plans,
Where Melodies round eyelid-dropping hours,
For every child, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, relying on one another's wings
O! the one Life within school and at home,
Which defies money's promotion and becomes all,
(A slight in £££££s, a £££££-like desire to slight),
Rhythm is in thought, and joyance everywhere -
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love such a job as one filled;
Where the breeze is self-induced, and surrounding air
Is Music paying the preferment.

- 1998 -

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode V

(after Pope)

What dire offence from politicians springs,
What mighty changes rise from trivial things,
I sing - This verse BLUNKETT, a Muse is due
Because, although blind, he must have a view
Of how recent events cannot bring praise
When all about him the gloom still lays.
  Say what strange motives, for heaven's sake, could compel
A well-bred Socialist to assault with such hell
Teachers who have as yet their happiness unexplored
(A little like Hague as to a recently departed Lord)?
In decisions so bold, can such little men engage
In others' bosoms this quite mighty Rage?
  As if through curtains there shoots a ray
Of fleeting sun, this is what we want to say:
Now lap-dogs, give yourselves a rousing shake
And like sleeping tossers, decide to awake.
Thrice ring the mental bell, beat head against the ground,
And let us hear a more sagacious sound:
Blunkett from his Tory-like downy pillow prest
Raises a head from such balmy, barmy rest
And thus summoned from the ministerial bed
His morning-dream hovers inside an enlightened head.
  New fairest of mortals, show a distinguished care
To distribute largess like the Inhabitants of Air
To everyone. If this be but one Blunkett thought
Let the Nurse Blair and Priest Brown see it brought
By treasury Elves in moonlight shadows seen -
A whole-profession token of spendable green
(Or whatever colour gives money powers)
So like golden crowns it's our heavenly flowers.
Hear and believe! thy own importance know,
Not bound any longer by narrow thoughts below
Like secrets from a learned pride concealed,
But now have real care and concern revealed.

- 1998 -

[NB David Blunkett was the then Labour Secretary of State for Education and Employment]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas

White-sound
of snow;
a huge yawn of the sky-mouth
that shouts wind and ice
like knife-slice
and hammer-blow:
winter warms for Christmas
in its cauldron of cold.

A fox nudges snowflakes
with his feather-soft caress of nose.
He dream-drinks each
to the icicle sharpness of both eyes
and enters invisibly
this white-world
in a fire of red fur-glow.

All melts.
All is one.
All merges in the
stall of this moment. Snow again
falls and
falls and
falls.

There is a man, iron-strong,
walking in this moment.
His snow-crow hair is like a scarf
around head and neck,
black-white/white-black,
and he moves in the wind-hover
like a ghost.

When he speaks the hills tremble.
"This is Christmas," he intones
in an earth-tremor voice,
holding in his hand the scent of fox
like a glove: fur-warm, snow-soft,
shrouding bones.

White-sound
of snow
and this man in its cauldron of cold.
Fox is still watching,
indelible paws never growing old.

- 1998 -

[Written in memory of Ted Hughes who died in this year]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode IV

(after Arnold)

   Had we but World enough, and Time
This joyless Blair were no crime.
We would sit down, and think slowly which way
To make his parliament more au fait.
He by the River Thames' side
Should'st humility one distant day find: I by the Tide
Of Clyst would complain and complain. I would
Barrack him ten years before the Flood:
And he should if he please refuse
Till he walked again in Socialists' shoes.
My vegetable garden should its metaphors grow
Vaster than Millennium domes but much more slow.
An hundred years should go to raise
My fists and on his forehead graze.
Two hundred pummels on his hairless chest:
But thirty thousand to the puny rest.
An age at least to every part
And the last age should reveal him as The Grand Old Fart.
For Blair, Sir, you deserve this from the State
Nor would it reward you yet at any higher rate.
   But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot flapping near:
And yonder all before us Schools will be
In Deserts of vast Insipidity.
Thy intellect shall no more be found;
Nor, in number 11 (despite the move), shall sound
My echoing of being wronged: then Worms will eat
That long preserv'd Tory policies' Repeat:
And Blair's faint Honour turn to dust
And into ashes all my disgust.
The grave's a very final place
But not where we should bury Education in disgrace.
   Now therefore, while his youthful hue
With a few strands of manicured hair still seems new,
And while the suppressed Socialist nearly transpires
At every mention of the poor with aroused Fires,
Now let us do good while we may:
And now, like we mean what we say
Rather at once the Time devour
And begin to use what the people gave him: Power.
Let us roll all our Principles, and all
Our Convictions, up into one Ball:
And tear up Tory Blueness with rough strife
Through the School Gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will once again make Learning fun.

- 1997 -

[NB A year that resonates for socialist teachers like me at the time who hoped New Labour's election  would herald much needed reform and good sense in education after years of Tory terror. It didn't. Labour merely reflected and actually made worse those Tory policies that started to kill the job, and which Labour made terminal. So, poems at this time and from here on in became even more despairing and cynical! Won't sound like good Christmas wishes for readers here following this nostalgic revisiting. There might be a few more light and fluffy interludes, but no amount of baubles and flashing lights can disguise the falling needles.....]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

SNOW -

1. Snowperson

There is no reason to object
to the politically correct

even if it is a silly decision
to use such a neologism

2. Snowballs

He sat
naked
in the snow
with his
testicles
so very,
oh so very
cold.

3. Snowflakes

Providing all of the recommended
minimum daily requirements
of ice crystals,
these need to be eaten with
chocolate milk so that each flake
can be seen floating at the top of a
bowl and in a tiny xocolatl lake.

4. Snowboard

riding
gliding
riding
sliding
riding

on ennui

5. Snowjob

Bill and
Monica
enjoying
winter

6. Snowberry

In summer it's naughty;
in winter it's haughty.

8. Snowmobile

But can you imagine
how it could fall
if it wasn't able to move
at all?

-1998 -

[No. 5 was a clue to the year!]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode III

(after Arnold)

Go, for they call you, Shephard from Westminster;
   Go, Shephard, and untie the battled knots:
      No longer leave thy shattered flock dismal,
   Nor let thy bawling fellows fill their throats hot
      From full glasses, drunk as if that is all
         It takes to administer;
   And your tired men and women need a rest,
      And only the white flags are seen
      Waving across your initiative-pocked battlescene;
         Come, Shephard, and again renew the quest.

Here, where past reapers planted their hate,
   In this darkened corner where Ministers leave
      Their coats like a shed skin and pass on the bruise;
   Where only a new sun and morning can bind the sheaves
      Of hope, then here can come back common sense to use;
   While to our ears from beyond our sway
      The bleating of fellow flocks is borne
      With distant cries where the reapers left them shorne -
         All the echoes from so many of those days.

- 1996 -

[NB Gillian Shephard was the then Tory Secretary of State for Education and Employment]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

A Film Cliche Christmas

You say Christmas dinner is ham?
Frankly dear, I don't give a damn.

Santa picks up his sack,
turns and says [in silly English] "I'll be back."

From a Ridley Scott cut:
Christmas presents exploding from the gut.

You say Christmas dinner is a cat?
You dirty rat.

- 1996 -