Amorphous Blob as Mature Student

Hands up if you have ever appeared
Student-styled in long jeans and a tee

Ready to learn whatever at University
But you are ten years older and weird

Your smile is no good, it’s ancient
It’s the gaping maw of time

Preserved in age-old watery brine
So they’re hardly going to be patient.

My hand’s up all the time anyway
I should have it tied to the light

That hones in during the night
On the things I strictly mean to say

Written up in a well-meaning hand.
This hand! The one that’s not aloft,

I mean, is constantly rubbed soft
By the scribbling of notes, as the sand

Pours madly through the hourglass.
In the first learning hour of the morn

Where the chicks, tiny and half-formed,
Squirm under their desks in class

Eyeing me with either admiration
Or chagrin, as the enormous mitt

Rises heavenward – shit!
Possibly I am hated by the nation

Or at least these nubile young,
Homework ever incomplete, they’re

Done in by booze and my hefty pair
Of hands whose work is never done.

Inmates have taken to calling me
Jesus, for the beard and upright

Hands, one imagines; they fight
To light my fag – oh, the vanity!

Holding court: “Those ten years of rout
Have stood me in terrible stead

I always want to go to bed, dead
Tired from the daily grind and clout”

A pip squeaks: “How actually old can
You really be, bearded man-God who

Came from a misty distant past, those two
Working hands a-flutter?” “Young man

I am but nine and twenty.”
Unexpected gasps all round

Since then, silence abounds
I think I’ve told them plenty.