Member Poem

In the yard, where I would spin round
until I fell over, where the dust
of a million conkers filled in the cracks,
they walk round with zimmer frames
or sit in their wheelchairs under thick tartan blankets.
Were they never let out, then,
those miscreant kids, like Richard O’Keefe
who peed in a classroom?
Did detentions mount up
till the school turned into a borstal
a prison, an old people’s home?
Do they still go back to their rooms
and scribble out words that no one will read?
“I will not talk back to the staff,
I will not talk back to the staff ...”