Thursday, December 29, 2005
[1:03 AM]
An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum
Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.
Like rootless weeds, their hair torn around their pallor.
The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-
seeming boy, with rat's eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir
Of twisted bones, reciting a father's gnarled disease,
His lesson from his desk. At back of the dim class
One unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream,
Of squirrel's game, in the tree room, other than this.
On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare's head,
Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.
Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map
Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these
Children, these windows, not this world, are world,
Where all their future's painted with a fog,
A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky,
Far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.
Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, and the map is a bad example
With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal -
For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes
From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children
Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel
With mended glass, like bottle bits of stones.
All of their time and space are foggy slum.
So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.
Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,
This map becomes their window and these windows
That shut upon their lives like catacombs,
Break O break open 'till they break the town
And show the children green fields and make their world
Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues
Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open
History is theirs whose language is the sun.
-Stephen Spender
so there you go. now tell me if i should like this poem at all...
i don't wanna do this poem. i'll shoot myself and die if we get something like this for the As.
everyone's wrapping up their 2005 with a list of memories, both beautiful and ugly. i shall make one for myself as well. it's gonna be pretty long so i shall dump everything into a single paragraph.
2005. dreading the first three months in MI. met Ryan. wished i'd never met him. quit school to focus on my first fashion designing competition (i lost). made it to SAJC. Joel thought i looked like a hooligan when he first saw me. ran for council and danced in front of my interviewers. made the class's first aid rep with Vicks being my first patient. joined SA dance. made dance welfare head. late nights in school. Rapture, debut concert. Nas Ata Jae and i, the hits and the misses. Ata and i shared our deepest secret. two relationships in a year. eye-candy overload. i was almost the mascot for Romanis hahaha. horrendous grades for the promos. wonderful PW members. clubbed for the first time. wonderful, sinful month of december. me questioning myself if i'm still a virgin. i felt love for the first time.
all in all 2005 has been a wonderful wonderful year. everything seemed to have fit it well and nice and i don't remember having such joy in a very long time. must have been the school. must have been the CCA. must have been the people, dear friends. whatever it is, i thank God for everything and i'm looking forward to an even better year next year. we shall ace both Rapture and the A level. and the block tests and prelims as well...
you're no longer the girl i used to know. you've changed. and i don't think i can accept it. but then again, maybe i've changed too. maybe i'm no longer the guy you used to know either. people change. move on. next.