Poem - Psychotic Teachers

I went to school in Omagh, Co Tyrone, Ireland run by the Christian Brothers, they were poorly named.

Brother Doherty taught Irish and he had a bad habit of throwing a wooden duster (blackboard eraser) ...not a nice experience in your teens.

The other was Brother McFarlane, he was worse, he taught English and his favourite trick was to physically lift you by the hair or else walk casually down the row and then punch you in the side of head when you were least expecting it. I wrote at this time but lost any spark of love of literature that was in me.

Passmore was a lay teacher, he taught geography, he was just a psycho.

brothers doherty & mcfarland plus peter passmore

Psychotic psychos pretending to be teachers

Teaching fear

Teaching loathing

The sadistic pleasure plain

From the punch in the side of the head

The duster on the skull

Being hoisted by adolescent sideburns

Or them charging down the row at you

The sense of relief from the sacrifice of friends

Thank god it’s not me this time

Raging roaring belligerent bullies

One good thing they’re all dead

Many of us have outlived them

Oh the lost opportunity to spit on their graves

Geography, Irish and English

The subjects sodomised

The knowledge of faraway places

The pride of our personal tongue

And the expressiveness of poetry

Buried in a school yard

Dug up now and used on them

like a rusty palette knife

smearing an incongruent colour

on the pristine canvas of their lives

……the poet’s revenge

Note:

..if you have never read Charles Bukowski you are missing something...

He would have gone back and evened the score....

Drax