1983 School Magazine

MICROSCOPE

The cloud I see is a grey splotch of paint

UPON OBSERVATION OF AMEDEO MODIGLIANI'S PORTRAIT IN MATHS CLASS Hey King of the Bohemians, Prince of Montparnasse Your long-necked woman with her pupil-less eyes, stares down in sorrow, transcending the mundone dealings of our clqssroom maths. She is an emblem of the human condition in her purple orange ochre threqds. The space around your school marm is annulled, she herself radiates he own organic spatial dimensions. Do you place this woman in aframe of referencefor purity? Do you roise her high, with your brush ond browns, because you are below? You are below in the madness, with black cape, hashish and the loyer who carries her live ducks in baskets under her arms, linked with yours. White ducks, that purity is real: but their eyes and hers, they too are below in the madness of life. The body has risen, white feathers to the sky, and hers to the precocious squqre which seeks to sap meaning from her eyes, and leave them vacant. But the eyes, they present you with dfficulties, look st the satire you heap into th eyes - yourfolly as well os hers exposed. Maudlin womsn - he has made you like the mirrors at which I stood transfixed, wotching another flesh, oh yes it seemed mine, my clothes, but the image was elongated, qnd the longness blored ot me, ond the child that was me shied away, hating the distortion. And now you bring it before me agoin, now it's constant - the imagefixed, it no longer relies on me for a form to toy with. You'ye embroidered thot glass, the mirror. She appears solid, but the lines are indistinct, and her form vibrates and she becomes the figure in the mirror that was gross and rotund, the one which stuffs my mouth with cotton. She becomes the opposite. Fickle, maudlin womsn. And I laugh. At you, ducks, madness, eyes and purity and the trashiness of my thoughts on a print. Painter of people, who pointed. a thousand paintings in your head, because whqt wqs the use of pointing on convas, when nobody will buy. And now your print hangs solid in my classroom, your school marm brings to reality your csnvqsses alive in your mind alone, snd the mirror images alive in mine. "Take your eyes off the print obove, please Susan, and lower them to your Maths book", Lower them, go below to the madness of: close eyes, won't look, hand on foce, open book.

smudging and dripping slowly but eating away that giant Egyption beast, your smile and the mind. An acid poison - The infiltration, and we dissolve . . . J. Gardiner IIH

ONCE HER OYSTER ,

The wbrld once her oyster, Now her enemy. Pqrents once idolised, Now detested. Everyone out to beqt her. Life out to cheqt her. Alone. Afraid. . . Childhood had fled, Adolescence replaced it. Killing the magic, Destroying the hope. Leaving cold ashes - Memories. The tears lingered on . . , Ill fortune they said; All part of lde. Just o phase. Not to worry, they said. It will poss, With time. Just give it time . . . Elisobeth Lynn II Gibson

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