Middle school poetry

[igenlode]

Middle school poetry (ages eight to eleven), transcribed with difficulty from a pencilled notebook rapidly becoming illegible.

Not my most shining years, I think; it starts off juvenile and tends to the pretentious, although at least I was precocious in my timing. To judge by the effusions of fanfiction.net, most people go through this stage in their teens...

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The rails are humming:
A train is coming.
The rails are singing:
Another train's bringing
Thousands of people
All out for some fun
And back they'll come again
When the day's done.

(I do actually vaguely remember that one!)

Walking in the country lanes
In between the hedgerows
Strolling through the flowery woods
'Mong lots of lovely flowers.

Hear the skylark singing
High up in the heavens
See the sheep all running
With the tails swinging behind.

(That dates it -- they all have their tails docked nowadays! Also... 'mong. Ouch.)

If you could fly
In the sky
Just like the birds
Ever so high
You'd sing and you'd dance and
You'd kick and you'd prance
While people standing by
Would say 'Oh My, Oh My'.

Once I met a lady,
She carried a purse in her hand
And in it as she said was
Money to buy the whole land.

I asked the price of the purse
She replied it was only a pound
So I bought the purse from the lady
And used it to get myself crowned.

There were two little people and their names were very odd.
One was named Church Steeple and the other was named Dodd.
Church Steeple was the older. Dodd was very small.
(Even though Church Steeple was not really very tall.)

Corrupt Verse
Oh, the grand old Leg of Pork,
He had ten thousand ribs,
He walked them up to the top of the hill
And made them cry 'His Nibs!'

When they cried, they cried,
And when they yelled, they yelled,
And the Leg gave a prize to the very best man
And the worst was promptly expelled.

(Actually, a lot of these sound like songs or chants; I think I used to make them up while walking along. Some things never change...)

Look hard at a candle
Then look out at the Sun
See how very much brighter
One is than the other one.

Give yourself a shower
Then look out at the rain
See how very much wetter
One is than the other, again.

I'm a little doormat
You know I'm very small
No-one ever treads on me
They can't see me at all.

The letters only flutter down
Not drop upon my head
And tucked inside the cosy floor
I've got a comfy bed.

Rubber, rubber, dance about
Follow me and sing and shout
Rubber, rubber, come and play
For I've nothing to do today.

You'll have an egg
In it they'll[sic] be
A chocolate chick
And a Christmas tree.

White are the feathers on a goose
Brown is the fur on a moose
Good is the dog that's let loose
And old are my walking shoose!

Irish Pig, Irish Pig,
Standing there so black and big,
With the clover on your side
Tell me, what's the cause of your pride?

(I remember that black pig; it was a plastic souvenir moneybox someone gave me, and I suspect the 'clover' was actually an Irish shamrock printed on its flanks. I wonder what became of it?)

Eggs and pickle,
Eggs and pickle,
Lying on the floor
Did you really
Think it [would] be
On top of the door?

(I suspect this commememorated some disaster at the dining-table :-p)

We're the Captain and the Mate
If you're a reprobate
You should watch out -- we're in port
You'll be doing what you ought
To be doing -- in chains
With no shelter when it rains,
Tomorrow.

As we march along
We sing this song
We're the Captain and the Mate -- for
You've done wrong!
Our crew may not be large
But they're scaring when they charge
As you'll soon indeed find out -- for
In we barge!

The Captain and the Mate (and their trusty ship the 'Beauty') were my swashbuckling alter egos for many years of my youth; the pirate fixation goes back a long way ;-)

I'm Policeman Condicular
And I'm very particular
And I'm going to arrest you today
I'm Policeman Condicular
And I'm very particular
I shall not let you get away.

I'm Policeman Condicular
And I'm very particular
And I'm going to truncheon you today
With a piece of a chair
That happened to be there
'Cause I lost the proper one while I did play.

I'm Policeman Condicular
And I'm very particular
And I keep a good watch over you
As I walk on my beat
Up and down the street
With the sole coming off my left-hand shoe.

PC Condicular was another character who attained repeat status in our games, for which the first verse of this song may have held some responsibility! However, the second verse almost certainly reflects some particular episode in which my brother hit me over the head with an improvised object :-p)

Cucumbers and marows[sic]
That's what's for sale-o
Radishes and potatoes
Will rain down like hail-o.

Daffodils and snowdrops
All done up in posies
Delphiniums and pansies
And sweet little roses.

There was a young Princess of Spain
Who went for long walks in the rain
When they asked "Why do you do that?"
She replied "In the evening I sit on a mat"
For she hadn't got much brain.

(Apparently I hadn't quite got the hang of the limerick format at this point...)

The golden sun shone in cloudy grey sky
'Midst tracery of branches so dark
Tinting the heavens with yellow-streaked blue
Against which the trees reared bare and stark.
It was cold -- a thin layer of cloud covered the sun
Yet the light shone through golden and clear
The singing birds cast no shadow on the ground
But no-one was abroad to hear.

(Reaching for higher things... and failing, alas.)

The air is moist:
Drips hang on the trees
The remaining snow cannot last.

The air is scented:
Likewise the warm breeze
The ice is melting fast.

The misty sky
Has a pearl-grey look.
No slush can be seen today.

It seems the earth
Woke up and shook
And the winter flew away.

Now, that attempt was much better; a more adventurous rhyme-scheme, less pretentious language, and a natural scansion without artificiality.

The end of term, and nearly noon
The voices hold full sway
Merry chatter fills the room
And end-of-term-ish play.

A wooden parrot on a rod
Homework done in class
No-one doing what they should
Unless teachers are walking past!

Covers folded for Merit Awards
Magazines plain to see displayed
A leaver's shirt being signed by hordes
On the table laid.

The end of term, and nearly noon
The bell rings for lunch at last
Two more hours -- and then hardly too soon
Then school like a bad dream will be past.

The other strand of my poetry: what would become the ballad style (with quite a bit of improvement!)

Awe-inspiring thunderheads in brilliant sunshine
Flat looming bases and foaming white crests
Frothy white wave-tops in deep blue sea
Filling the sky with their rearing grey heads.

So huge and motionless they might be in a paperweight,
Seeming within touch because of their size
Mushroom clouds of coconut, hovering skywards,
'Streets' of edifices stretching away.

A couple of interesting ideas there -- the unexpected image of a glass paperweight, and the phrase 'hovering skywards' (deliberate playing with language, I think, rather than lack of comprehension).
I remember being very struck by learning (when reading up on unpowered gliders) that clouds were in fact described as forming up in 'streets', although the consequent scare quotes might have been better omitted here ;-p

Time is floating, drifting, gliding,
the world is flying to its command.
Time going sluggishly, swiftly, happily,
regulating all the clocks in the land.

Is Time a line or an indefinite article?
Do we travel straight ahead for the rest of our lives?
Time is mysterious, alluring, deceiving,
Being questioned, eluding answers, as the hours fly by.

Time is in a bird, in a horse, an Aborigine,
Time is in the earth which feeds them all,
Yet even still, the earth is an era in Time's eternity,
One little ripple on Time's great shore.

Time is impersonal, harsh, enmeshing,
Sentencing all living things to die
Time is weathering, envaluing, sentimentalizing,
But Time at last will destroy after doing this.

Quite a jump from 'Policeman Condicular'! It's amazing how quickly children grow up in a few years.
Alas, I was not aware of the meaning of the phrase "an indefinite article" (schools didn't believe in English grammar in those days), with the result that I can't help wanting to shout out No, it isn't: Ed. when I reach that line :-p

'Envaluing' is an intriguing coinage, but what in the world did I think I was doing with that lame last line? It doesn't even meet the established assonance/rhyme scheme or the loose metre; it's just, as they say nowadays, a total fail :-(

END OF TERM
End of the day
End of Rockingham Chase.
I'm not sad
I'm not repining
Look at my happy face!

Leave the old firm
Go my own way
Maybe I'll regret it later on
I'm so glad
My face is shining
Brighter than it ever shone.

Looking ahead
Never behind me
Sealing all the memories away.
I'll look back after
When Time has taken
This unhappiness in its own way.

Until I'm dead
These memories will bind me
Dragging me back to that time
Mocking laughter
Opinions mistaken
Rain and a misty clime.

("when Time has taken this unhappiness [in its own way]" is an interesting twist on the all too predictable "has taken this unhappiness away", which makes that verse much more powerful)

I remember going down the drive on that last day of school, having left the establishment for ever, and making a solemn vow that I would never let myself forget just how horrible my days at that school had been, and never let myself be betrayed into hazy nostalgia; this poem clearly arose out of that some resolution.
As it happened, I was wrong about the 'until I'm dead' part; I no longer think much about what happened back then, although I was left with a longstanding fear of children. However, I didn't know when I was eleven that there were things that could happen that hurt much worse, and that one could resolve not to forget in an entirely different way :-(