Class Clown Conspiracy

I walked the school halls

without a care in the world

not one care, until

I witnessed the ‘Girl’ 

who’d murder me,

I remember the smell,

it was edgy,

youth in the 80’s,

Benson & Hedges 

mixed with a cocktail 

of teenage regret,

homemade mixed tapes

chewed up cassettes, 

the loose girls

with their school shirts 

unbuttoned to suggest 

their breasts

we’re viable assets,

always hung with 

the hard lads from 

the year above,

she was the fox

I was the rabbit

she was my bad habit

I couldn’t relent

 

following her scent 

like a lame hound,

the dinner bell would sound

we’d pass after class

along the path

to the youth club,

and with a youthful shrug

she’d reject my fumbling

and the modicum 

of courage I could yield,

this exiled me

to the playing fields,

it’s where the losers 

congregated

where showdowns

we’re propagated,

wigged out tomfoolery

sports day rivalry,

showboating for

all to see

 

the class clown

purposely falling

on his face during 

the relay race,

the odds were stacked 

against us 

in more ways than one,

adulthood was coming

for us, crawling 

through the long grass

crosshairs fixed

firmly on our backs,

homework 

never worked,

you had the gangs,

the skaters grinding 

the library handrails,

the cool lads and their 

slags parked 

in their cars up 

by the prefabs,

the foot soldier

vultures sitting 

on the town bench

eyeing passing prey

 

“don’t walk that way 

whatever you do”

 

outside of school 

there were no rules,

no whys? it was

lord of the flies

only the strongest survived, 

or so I thought,

the weak handed 

themselves over to the tribes,

the smart kids skived

keeping their heads

below the parapet - Notoriety?

I didn’t care for it,

Oh! how I pined and cried

for the girl that murdered me

it’s as if her psychopathy

was her biggest attraction,

I was an easy assassination,

right up there with JFK                                

and the ‘magic bullet’ conspiracy,  

a single shot took seven chunks

out of me, the Zapruder film

showed inconsistencies 

that will go down in history 

as one of the most brutal

public executions 

never to hit the newsrooms