Just Where You Left It... and Other Poems. David Roche

      The dinner ladies patrol the scene

      With Gestapo-looking features.

      They’ll spot any food that’s left on your plate

      And report you to the teachers.

      So the people who are legends,

      And the ones who set you free,

      Are the Food Escape Committee;

      “F.E.C.” to you and me.

      We’re not talking here about everyday feats

      Like faking certain allergies.

      Or scraping eggs behind radiators

      And aversion to the calories.

      We’re talking total heroes here,

      The ones with real worth.

      The sort who’d dig the tunnels

      And then disperse the earth.

      Boys like “Goose” McGinty

      With a Brussels sprout in his locket.

      Or ones like “Mad Max” Redmond,

      Who hid bolognese in his pocket.

      Or Josh “White Laces” Russell

      With spaghetti in his shoes,

      And his pencil case containing

      Hidden beetroot for the loos.

      But the ultimate name we all revere,

      With his smuggling of fish pie,

      Was Ben “The Mole” Carruthers,

      Who hid the lot inside his tie.

      Never was so much smuggled out

      By the few who ate so little.

      They fought for menus “a la carte”

      And for doughnuts with jam in the middle.

      “We want puds with custard and cream.

      We want lychees rather than leeches.

      We know our expedience will improve ingredients

      And we’ll fight them on the peaches.”

      The Poetry Recitation

      My palms are sweaty, my mouth is dry.

      There is the stage. I ask myself why

      Do I have to do this? It’s not fair

      To force scared boys to read up there.

      Standing alone, when it’s your turn.

      No text to read, they make you learn.

      The first boy up is a nervous wreck,

      Just stood there on the burning deck.

      Parents to right of him. Parents to left of him.

      It’s all too much and the room starts to spin.

      The next boy comes on. Will he be all right?

      “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright…”

      “That’s much more like it,” the audience is thinking.

      The poor boy spots that his father is winking.

      His mum starts smiling and nudges his brother.

      “I did this at school,” says the amnesiac mother.

      “In fact, I’m sure that I won first prize.”

      Matilda told such dreadful lies.

      The next one’s modern and nobody knows it.

      They can’t comprehend but nobody shows it.

      They prefer verses they learnt as a child:

      Iambic pentameters, not text running wild.

      “Dulce et Decorum Est…”

      The old ones really are the best.

      I’m next.

      And I’m scared.

      There’s parents and teachers and sisters and brothers.

      The judge seems quite nice but then so did the others.

      They’re always just so damned condescending;

      They like your beginning but prefer your ending.

      “Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo.”

      (I’m desperate for the loo-oo-oo.)

      I’m up on stage and I know I don’t know it.

      I can’t even remember the poem or poet.

      I’m unable to start - my mind is quite hollow.

      If I get the name then the rest just might follow.

      Was it Kipling (Rudyard) or Byron (George Gordon)?

      Was it T.S. Eliot or W.H. Auden?

      “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky…”