Day 25

As, like, is

"A school is a factory is a poem is a prison is academia is boredom, with flashes of panic.” —Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One

We almost clocked in at registration,

As close to a factory as we would get

In the days of unemployment, of empty industry.

Certainly in photos it looks as if

We were made on an assembly line

Of unflattering 80s hair 

And questionable sapphire kohl.

They'd put the finishing touches 

To our unformed faces later,

bring us up to standard, uniform.

The prison part was new-build

and squat, not porridgey Victorian -

No gothic here, just old stained concrete

And a baking freezing perma portacabin,

Carpet like sparse astroturf. The barbed wire 

Keeping us in was time and time to learn.

Academia was the English teacher who drank

And the ones we said who couldn't, taught

Though now I know how difficult the job is, 

Poor warders of knowledge.

And yes, the boredom, yes , the sudden panic

Of wrong hair, wrong words, of endless fitting in ,

Of tests that endless,  gave results by which 

we were judged and handed down our future.

Have I forgotten the poem?

School starts and then it ends 

With year shaped stanzas inbetween.

If you were lucky sometimes it rhymed

You'd be reciting metaphors in your best voice, 

spelling like some magic the lesson of your life.