Exams.
We sat in a silence and scribbled some stories, past worlds and past words and failing, faltering memories, and don’t you dare look up and
waste your seconds, counting moments from the clock and cursing
quietly, because no one’s supposed to hear your silent suffering,
creativity stifling,
make sure your pens are black!, and your grip on them is tightening, how
long now before the facts are out of your head, don’t
whisper to your neighbour memories of the figure who is now dead,
and sitting on your chest and your mind and on your tongue, look
write as fast as you can! otherwise the label will stick, you’re
dumb and slow and thick and where is the
future you wanted?! if not in the exam papers stacked at
the front of the hall, or back in the class
room, revising and revising and revising repeat repeat
you don’t want to repeat the next year, do you?!
So shut your mind and don’t gaze at the sky, the summer will swallow you up and your feet will never fly, might fall to the ground,
but that’s acceptable, you tried your hardest
strain on your back, and the teachers smile and wonder about exam grades, but the pens always run out, and cares become heavy, and you’re memorising, not learning, crying but passing, one kind of intelligence, and that’s all they’ll measure you for-
one type of measuring tape, and tape across your mouth, gagging you for
the future, this’ll help where you want to be! with their eyes shut tight to what their students are feeling- suffering and choking and silently dreaming…
and we’re trying our hardest, to ignore our true feelings.
- GCSE History: This thing happened because of that thing, which lead to a number of other things.
- Me: Oh, okay, I think I understand thanks to the clear lay-out of facts and useful images. Thanks, textbook!
- A-Level History: This thing happened but we're not going to give you the direct reason, although some guy thought it was because of this, though later he was disproven because of some other guys, because apparently it happened because of that other thing, but then later it turned out that those guys weren't totally correct because we have to consider a number of other things which we're not going to tell you about either, and then apparently some other things may have happened because of this thing but really it's debatable because the guy from earlier said that it was for this whole other reason and really we're not willing to argue, but the important thing is that we used citations.
- Me: WAIT WHAT AM I READING WHAT WHERE IS MY DICTIONARY WAIT WHAT WHERE ARE THE PICTURES WHY ARE THE SENTENCES SO LONG WHAT ARE FULL STOPS HOW DO I WHAT DID I JUST READ WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE
