BIRTH OF AN ALIEN
Part Three – THE SCHOOL OF DOOM


A rebel prepared
for any cause
I traversed many
scenes but never found

my niche. I knew
from early teens
what I must be, but first
I must break free.

Eager to break the bonds
of school (a kind of punishment
for being young)
I dreamed my time away.

Moving from one school
to the next, never quite worked my way -
fell foul of alien traditions.
Compelled to join a company of snobs –

(a secondary punishment, once removed,
for my eleven-plus success) -
teachers just failed
to understand the differing curriculum

from one part of the country
to the next; dismissed me
as unworthy of attention
when I couldn’t understand

their different scheme of things.
They made me hooker
in their rugby union game,
when all I knew was soccer

not the queer toffs routine -
no-one attempted to explain
the rules and I became
a victim, kicked and ground


down. The previous absence
of a swimming pool
ensured I never learned to swim,
except against the tide -

they held me under
at the deeper end, then failed
to understand my trauma –
a baptism through drowning.

Loving to play with words
I soon lost patience
with the drill of prosody;
where words for me

had always throbbed with life,
they squeezed out their last breath
and bound them in a shroud
of grammar. Music

to me was singing,
but others in the class
had learned to read
a simple score -

the music man interpreted
attendance at a different school
as ignorance, my forte thwarted
by a different scale

of learning, and a tyrant’s whim.
And these were meant to be
the best years of one’s life?
Even school trips, had I been able

to partake, were way beyond
my parents means; in fifties Britain -
skiing had never been a part
of our lifestyle scheme,

not even part of any dream –
I made excuses, skulked
in the background
as if ashamed of being poor –

I never left these shores.




Malcolm Evison
15/16 May 2009