Tag: invisible times

John by Mike Jenkins

The sting of the fumes
and petrol had bloodshot his eyes
so they looked like an alcoholic’s.

‘Sir’ was a word he’d abolished.
He only stooped to tend a car.
He saw bosses come and go
with fashions. In all weathers
he took his time.

His cap at a witty angle,
breaktimes we’d crouch together
secret sharers of the showroom.
Our ideas travelled further
than any of those pampered
cars could ever go.

His Valleys voice rising
to mountain-air elation –
falling to chatty river-flow.
He spoke of the Depression:
How he’d trudged on blistering feet
grey miles, a mirage of bread
becoming real ahead of him.

Some months after I’d left,
an old workmate, cool as coins,
told me of his fatal heart-attack.
A chosen son, I walked
at his own funeral pace
from the garage towards
a rusting distance I’d never attain.

by Mike Jenkins
from Invisible Times

Additional information: Mike Jenkins (born 1953) is a Welsh poet, story writer and novelist writing in English. He taught English at Radyr Comprehensive School in Cardiff for nearly a decade and Penydre High School, Gurnos, Merthyr Tydfil, for some two decades before that. At the end of the 2008–2009 academic year Jenkins took voluntary redundancy. He now writes full-time, capitalising on experiences gleaned from former pupils. He continues to live in Merthyr Tydfil, and has done so for over 30 years. He is also the father of former Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Sayed (née Jenkins) and journalist Ciaran Jenkins.

Advertisement

Canine Graffiti by Mike Jenkins

 Some loopy boy wrote 'FUCK OFF'
 in firm felt-tip on the white back
 of a nippy-as-a-ferret Jack Russell.
 
 Senior staff spotted it while it shat
 in the midst of a modern dance
 formation – leotards snapped!
 
 (When they weren't busy piercing ears
 with sharp instructions, or spiking hair
 with swift backhand cuffs,
 
 they did have time to snoop on lessons
 which exceeded the statutory decibel rate.)
 They set off in pursuit of the errant dog,
 
 skilfully hurdling its poop in the process.
 They chased it into Mathematics
 where it caused havoc by lifting a leg
 
 45° towards the blackboard's right-angle.
 Then through the Audio-Visual concepts room,
 across the film of Henry V, making Olivier's horse
 
 rear and throw the bewildered actor.
 It hid behind a smoke-screen in the bogs,
 sniffed out bunkers in the coal-bunker.
 
 For hours it disappeared and Senior Staff
 suspected a trendy English teacher
 of using it as an aid to creative writing.
 
 Finally it was duly discovered
 by Lizzie Locust (Biology), necking
 with a stuffed stoat in the store-cupboard.
 
 Now you can see the distraught Headmistress
 scrubbing form bell to bell in her office,
 a small dog held down by burly, sweating prefects.
 
 
 by Mike Jenkins
 from Invisible Times

Additional information: Just in case some of the words don’t make sense because they’re British words, or slang and euphemisms specific to the South Wales Welsh-English speaking region, here’s a quick breakdown of some of them:

Loopy: strange, odd, crazy, affected, etc.

Felt-tip: a marker pen, usually a cheap one meant for kids but it can mean the bigger ones too.

Nippy: to do something in a fast, quick, spritely, etc, manner e.g. ‘I’m nipping over to the shops do you want anything?’

Shat: the past tense of the verb ‘to shit’. It’s not a proper word as far as I’m aware and ‘shit’ is more or less used as it’s own quasi-infinitive in most cases i.e. ‘he shit himself [yesterday]’, ‘he has [just now] shit himself’, ‘he will shit himself [if he eats that]’.

Backhand cuffs: backhand hand motions or in this case backhand slaps to pupils or backhanded admonishment due to frustration at not locating the dog yet. That thing where teachers take out their frustrations by speaking passive aggressively towards pupils out of a sense of personal frustration (when it’s nothing to do with said pupils) as I’m sure we have all seen in our schooldays.

Snoop: spy, eavesdrop, etc.

In the bogs: the ‘bogs’ are the toilets… because, at least in my experience, there would be mysterious pools of water on the floor by about 10AM each school day and you could never be certain if they were sink water shaken off of hands or bodily fluids… the smoke screen in the bogs being that it’s where pupils would go to hide when smoking as is no doubt universally the case.

Bunkers: ‘bunking off’, ‘doing a bunk’, etc is the act of not attending class. Skipping class, skiving, but it can also mean playing truant as well though here it’s just the former. The play on words being that people skipping class are in a room intended for storing coal thus both are commonly referred to as ‘bunkers’.

Store – cupboard: A room where school equipment is stored behind a locked door. Usually a small antechamber between two classrooms or a smallroom leading from one classroom like an en suite bathroom but filled with shalves of old textbooks, random items and a prime location for pupils or members of staff to neck on with each other.

Necking: to ‘neck on’ etc involved kissing but implies a more salacious aspect such as groping, french kissing, fondling, etc. Usually done in a place intended to give some privacy but usually easily discovered such as behind the bike sheds or in a storeroom cupboard. ‘Necking on’ being a term often ascribed to teenagers at a party experimenting with such aspects of intimacy.

Prefects: In my experience sixth formers doing something for their school leavers certificate to have extra ‘good citizen’ points when applying for university. Not the Head Boy or Head Girl but given tasks by staff and running or representing various matters for the student body. Compare them to the ‘student council’ in anime for a more commonly known version of this type. I guess though on the whole it’s just teacher’s pets, the (within the school) social elite or those who are already prone to social climbing and a lust for power even at this early an age.

Among Shoals of Stars by Mike Jenkins

Each night the sea

tires of its slopping and slapping

and ascends the limestone staircase

of cactus-sharp stone.

 

It lies down

where sky has been,

waving away the blue

and only hooded clouds

show its occasional restlessness.

 

Bright fish with mouths

that globe, look down on me

and the breezy whish-whish

of sea-weed is the needled

branches of every pine.

 

I see the lights

of planes as they are out

trawling for dreams.

The moon spills milk

which I drink in,

before I too lie down

to sleep among shoals of stars.

 

by Mike Jenkins

from Invisible Times

Industrial Museum by Mike Jenkins

For Adrian Mitchell

 

Hello and welcome to our industrial museum.

 

On your right there’s a slag-heap reclaimed…

a hill… another slag heap…

that one shaped as a landing-pad

for bird-like hang-gliders.

 

Notice the pit-wheels perfectly perserved

where you can buy mementoes

of the Big Strike and eat authentic cawl

at an austere soup-kitchen.

 

There mummified miners cough and spit

at the press of a button

and you can try their lungs on

to a tape-recording of Idris Davies’ poems.

 

That rubble was a 19th century chapel,

that pile of bricks an industrial estate.

The terraced houses all adorned

in red, white and blue as if royalty were visiting.

 

See how quaint the wax models

of women are, as they bow in homage

to polished doorsteps, the stuffed sheep

at the roadside give off a genuine odour.

 

by Mike Jenkins

from Invisible Times