R D Laing

POEM FROM "KNOTS"

What an interesting finger
        let me suck it

It's not an interesting finger
        take it away

Monica Lewinsky (aged 10-11)

I AM A PIZZA

I am a pizza
I can be a delicious lunch, dinner
or breakfast, if you're weird
I have a great deal of toppings on me
I am a round and flat piece of dough with lots of toppings
I make your mouth water
I'm very good to eat, but I'm fattening!
I make you say 'Yum yum'
I am a pizza

Rupert Loydell

MEMORIES FOR AMNESIACS

I like being told what to do,
the music I should be listening to.

One student knows far more than I
and is glad to voice his opinion,

another wants to reinvent hip-hop
and give up smoking without any pain.

Fantastic voyages are to be had
by intentionally going nowhere:

I can fold time and space,
be whoever I want to be.

Frontiers and countries keep moving
without warning, walls keep tumbling

down. My daughter's favourite phrase
is 'when I was a baby I used to...'.

She invents a past she can't remember,
paints pictures to hang on memory's wall.


THE MAP OF HEARING

Was it the hum of the printer
or music he could hear?

Nothing had changed except
his relationship to the room

and noise that seemed
to come from nowhere.

Cabin fever, perhaps, or
signals from outer space,

the house full of tones,
unabridged equations and

out-of-balance sound,
broken wires scrawled

across the map of hearing.