Cuspidor

The small headmaster's good advice
Availed me not, I did not take it.
My father's hopes of scholarship
Went unfulfilled,
I did not seek it I resolved to sample life
And let Uncertain Future
Determine for my idle mind
If it had need for study.
Here, there and everywhere.
I carried on with clerking.
Trying many diverse ruts;
House and office, camp and ship.
Eventually, beneath the world,
I came against a man
Who always sought to get his flock
To study if they can
I said: Perhaps next year I will."
He thundered: "Do it now!"
Oh! I can hoar him still
What a bloody cow.

With no excuses good enough
To thwart that devil's aim
I trod the hated path that leads
To part-time madness.

Seven weary years I've spent
Climbing to and from
The Edifice above.
Seven thousand times I've felt
Frustration twice as deep
As that which snarls those tender lips
Whose peas Jail from the fork
An inch away.
Frustration at the guilty thoughts
When talking to a girl,
Not studying.
Frustration at the cruel shame
Of wasting intellect
On arid fact.
Frustration at the lack of time
To do one little thing
I wanted to.
Frustration which builds up,
Creates, and feeds upon
Its rotten self.

And I have felt life pass me by
While I delved in a book
To read the why's and what's of life
Instead of living it

Some characters who lectured
Could make sex seem dull,
And one so umhh'd and gabbled ahh
He made no sense at all.
But some of them were very good.
Both bald and hairy kind.
And even in my feeble mind
They planted seeds of thought.
(That is when I was able,
When making notes, to listen.)
After many lessons
I've wanted to consult
The spouting oracle
But this was seldom feasible;
Too many goons too little time.
And I have always wanted
To read each listed book
But did not have the price,
And if I tried to borrow them
I found them on reserve
Where they were little use.
With my own home to go to
I could not spend the night
In the grim and smokeless silence
Of the library.

Therefore those seeds have failed to grow
Beyond the fifty mark
Each subject's interesting depths
I've left untouched.

On wise and witty lecturer
Was quite delectable,
Hair as brown as nutmeg.
Eyes both green and blue.
For her there was but one good spot
Where we all wished to sit
The middle of the foremost row
In line with her left breast.
What, I wondered was nor line
In everyday affairs.
Belinda's brazen branch of love?
Or Tilly's subtle aim?
Had she suffered with a Nigel
Like the disappointed Chloe?
Or surrendered to a Kiwi
On the top of Ngauruhoe?
With what bold experience
That she had felt or done.
Did she compare the literature
Of metaphysic Donne?

What was it that she lectured
While I thought of all this?

The goons, Ah the goons.
Paper-Licensed hooligans
Who, we are told.
Make college life.
The cling, and the clang
As keen young mind
Whets keen young mind
(Like footballs touching in mid-air).
The cut and thrust of bright ideas,
(How did you do last year?
(What do you take this year?
(Have you done that essay?
(Have you got that book?
(Who is that big Sheila?
(Don't you think she's grouse?)
Once I hoard some goons decide
To go and Ban the Bomb
Some said why, and some why not.
But no-one did say how.

Such were my fellow travellers
At the evening swill
Upon that goddamned hill.

And now that I.
Like a Scotsman at Hadley Wood
Have lately come into the
Sunshine 01 a fuller life,
I look appreciatively
Into the clear brown eyes
Of my Golden Kiwi,
And I see I've learnt
That is of use,
Viz:
Not metre rhyme, nor sense.
That poetry needs must have

L. M.