The Class, or Her Room

Red door, like dried blood, with a stainless steel meet-hook for a handle
Blue carpet like arctic sea, white walls like in a mental asylum
A set of beige door and brown bodied lockers to the hind left
They are almost like wardens out of the corner of your eye

The tables, meanwhile, have metal legs painted brown
And could be used for bastinado rods if need be
The table tops are laminated dirty beige
A brown base of could-be tanned skin on regurgitated chipboard

Three rows of them and a pin-board of psychedelic pain at the back
On the either side, four rows and another of lockers at the back
Her varnished desk at the front like a ropeless rack
And the dirty whiteboard of frontal lobe torture behind it

Smart board not-so-smart to my right by one seat
White face and black frame and tray with wipe and pens
Black, blue, red, green
A cabinet of mysteries to its right, a table on the left

The feeling of being imprisoned is impounded
By the white painted bars across the white painted windows
More bedlam with our green jackets
As we overlook the car-park and open canteen back door

I called that place, her room
A torture chamber for the mind, the horror room for literature
But it is history now, terrible past, like Auschwitz
But like it, you linger, a bad taste, a nightmare
Mrs J. P.