| Christian Booty UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: to view this poem in a larger typeface, go to View on your browser, and click on Increase Font or Text Size. Although He Had Tried To Apply Himself… Although he had tried to apply himself, there were invisible boundaries, they said. Forced by his mates, his dad and his aunt, this job was supposed to be a bloody dream! Those same dulled boots, those clownish shoes, two sizes bigger to allow for growth. But if his lumpish feet should ever fit this job, the rest of him certainly couldn't. Each virginal morning marred by page three girls and Man U scores in black and white. He clattered his McVities biscuit box on the damn van each time he climbed in. He sat in the half dark of a comical tin hut, clumsily assembled to protect from the rain. Beams of light leapt through holes as the van negotiated corners and he could see trees. Reluctantly he dropped into the mud and drudged to number 4 hut; he was on cutting today. "You should have seen this fucking tart" Rob shouted, the rest was lost to machines. A First Year History Class at Bedale Comprehensive School "The exiting bullet ripped flesh and organs alike," Mr. X told us, jealous that he had never seen it. Carefully he diagrammed the exit wound with a jagged, chalk line, the details in black and white but I think that we would have preferred grays. "Gentlemen, this was a bitter war," he said, in a bitter, bitter voice. We learnt that the bullet compacted upon entry and then blew the rest of the soldier away. "They weren't much older than you boys are." He shouted, though we knew them as our grandfathers and the old bloke who sold poppies outside Tesco each remembrance day. Somehow, even in grainy black and white we could perceive sallow faces and tell the blood from the mud. "Thousands would die to advance a trench 10 feet," he told us, as his unsteady hand traced a line. We knew thousands of Lego bricks or thousands of reasons for things but had yet to figure out thousands dying or why Mr. X always smelt like Rum. He never returned next term and our history moved backwards to Colonial empires and distant places with British flags. With alcohol breath, Mr. X told us the bitter truth of things but instead we just read from the text and learnt, without his experience, just what Houghton Mifflin said. The Slimy Shower Curtain Puffy eyes Morning breath Flip-flop feet Directionless Door squeak Window slide Car noise Outside Puddles splash Cubicle Strange flies Inside Slimy curtain Push aside Sixties lever Clockwise Gushing water Numb heat Slimy curtain Near feet Needles poke Skin alive Noxzema In eyes Dense steam Curtain billows Wearily Eye follows Bend down Wash toes Slimy curtain Moves close Pantene lather Rinse hair Curtain pastes Nightmare Peel curtain Second skin Repulsion Yet again Turn lever Extra hot Cleanse Not leave a spot Rush of cold Dripping certain Goddamn Slimy shower curtain
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