Classroom One
Jack Ohms, August 2009
Be grateful to your enemies
people who have done you down;
poor teachers
bad parents
disloyal friends.
If you’ve listened well enough
you will know
they didn’t let you down;
but taught you
what they should have;
just
what you needed to know
fair seed time
Jack Ohms, August 2009
I’m trying not to claim it as my own,
but damn,
it’s a habit I’ve followed all my life;
bricking other personalities into the side of my head,
the double doors open
letting all the good grain flow in;
spewing out again as genuine home-grown product
from:
parent,
school friend,
new bicycle,
movie hero,
(downloading another icon)
the curve of a good wooden boat
a bar hero
a long-hair
an old wise one,
sitting in a room alone for years
among fading Nottingham lace,
fine bone china fancies,
yellowed clippings of the war dead;
a lake poet,
eccentric,
a sculpture
– for god’s sake –
not realising
my life’s turned away from my own source
to become a liturgy,
a pissing of priests;
not knowing
or even daring to know
my own roll…
…left unexposed on a dark-room shelf;
the broken glass not glinting in the sun,
the seed pod ungerminated
sperm dry
and the ears of deaf corn, swaying in the marbled grey storm
unexposed.
From central England, Jack Ohms now lives in Eastern Finland where he no longer works as a ceramics teacher, but bums along on the dole and occasional part-time employment schemes, giving him time to write. His work appears in Gloom Cupboard, Opium Poetry, the Laura Hird Showcase and Audio Scribblers.
