Ode to Orangefield High School

I wrote this piece around 2014, and is part of a series of poems called ‘Diary of Poems’ that reflect my meanderings, musing ang melancholic thinking from when i was younger, echoing how i felt, especially because i found it difficult to express myself and speak out and be assertive, due to so much fear imposed upon me.

Ode to Orangefield High School
(From a diary of poems)

What love was there to exalt, to be seen in a pupil lifted?
By actions that sit in judgment
What hymns? They must have alluded me
As I walk, an English man being made aloof
As a public enemy, yes I am English
I am a mongrel with Welsh and Northern Irish blood
And Ulster Scots descendants
I don’t speak your blood written words
My song sheet is of peace

What is it I hear? Is that the children playing in the playground?
Or is it just the sound of the seagulls with their cries
Of once a place, once a cry floating unheard
Once… This once upon a time
Once pecking and nibbling from scattered chips
Or left over, dumped at the side of the bin
The very thing that we call Liberty, is our prison
Like my blacked sin my skin colour was not a red neck
Neither black; but a white limey. Discarded with the blacks, Jews,
The Polish and the Romanians.

When it vanishes, it will all be in my head
Brick by brick taken down
With a bulldozer
It will all be in my head
The bullying, the crying
The sighing wails of an English man.
These walls they call teaching
It runs its old patches of running rain water
Gathered over time
Darkened with time

Is it prejudice being knocked down?
Arrogant in stagnant orange;
Though I cry for the orange men
My great uncle, an orange man’s tears;
But o, I am English
I did not know the sash in its brutality
Just the tears of Catholics and Protestants.

The local militants just terrorised fear into people
Protection money, protecting us from what??
Our own kind, of another planet.
For “if you don’t pay up, or else.”
Rapes, and drug dealings to children
They thought they were big men;
But they were people that hid behind terrorism
“My Da’s in the UDA, and I’ll get him to knack ya ballicks in!!”

Where is this, to those who have no one?
There are no angels that govern Ireland
Angels that stroke the puddles surface
In a wind-blown line,
It’s empty words as if there was good intention
As I wrote line after line after line after line after line
After all, as a teacher reminded me “it is just part of growing up.”

My school of bed or truancy – a bed of dreams
The things we dream about is freedom in the distance
Were girls liked me
What would move us?
Extra classes or the detention room
That soon became a habit with my lateness
Or not turning into school at all.
Not that anybody noticed or cared of trouble stricken pupils
Though I walked with my head down
Drawn into myself with a beautiful dream

That kept light in the dark, in the dark
Of being dark; not ‘Donnie Darko’ at the edge of reason
Spelling out confusion
Of a tape that we all would have loved to rewind
To maybe find some other way,

But in the passing of time, we can think
Of a rewind button
But my choice does not mean that it will affect others
To change the course. As it may just turn out the same way anyway,
As if we could change the heart of others?

The strength and energy had to be there with a sane mind
Could I give a fuck about pre-tense and past-tense?
That Gerald Dawe’s experience of a thankful attitude –
Of a different experience of Van Morrison with his music.
Who moulded them, taught about dreams
And words of a better place?
Or to sing the blues?
Surely it was their heart.

It was then I dreamt, a schoolboy’s sweetheart
Never much, could I be near, what fear would there be?
If she had found out how I felt,
Even trying to be the bad boy
Leaving from detention early so she would see.

When I was too scared to do PE
To wrap myself in feminine fantasies
Waiting to be awoke
Did I lose my voice with a sore throat?
A hall I could fill with lines
Printed more times than Bart Simpson
My wrist, in a panic I wrote
Touch, tender, I had to finish
I was quick I’ll tell you that;
But not the quickest
Stiff and aches of my hand after I hand finished.

Football was for tough guys with a political agenda
Never passed as a friend
Just an outcast’s dream as the ball passes by
I think I might be a ghost that still treads these corridors
A ghost that is haunted by people
Memories will always emerge and wash ashore
As driftwood that drifted through school
The assembly hall the old parquetry floor.

Where to find its odes and glories of former days
Gerald Dawe and Van Morisson
Years gone by; would they have stayed?
Pre-tense and past tense of a thankful attitude
What foundation did it lay?

Incidentally, I refused to sing the sash when they asked me too.