function PopUpWin (Location, XLength, YLength) {
window.open(Location, "Pop", "menubar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,scrollbars=yes,directories=no,status=no,resizable=no,width=" + XLength + ",height=" + YLength);
}
function NewWin (here) {
window.open(here, "new", "menubar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,scrollbars=yes,directories=no,status=no,resizable=yes,width=800,height=180");
}
var windowPoem;
str1= "Action Men
I was beating up an armchair with the tele on full blast, I was firing off my laser toy, I was feeling mighty tough, I was shouting at my sister, I wanted to play rough.
Suddenly the tele shattered and out of the screen came a dozen hulking men with guns - one said, " We like this game. Hi." Then he knocked out my teeth and bongoed on my brain. Somehow, after that, the game wasn ´t the same.
They splattered the cat all over the mat they shattered and tattered and clattered and battered WOW ZAP SPLAT they flattened the flat.
They mummified mum and deadified dad, they broke up my brother, he looked really bad. They wrangled and tangled and strangled my sister and mangled her angles in a cement mixer. A grenade got gran, I caught her hand but her head fell bright red in the strawberry jam. They disabled the table, smashed in the doors, exploded the road, thrashed on the floor: blew up and threw up, slashed up the chairs, torpedoed my teacup, crashed up the stairs, butted the budgie, pot-shot the parrot, bounced me on their boots till I cracked like a carrot
then they mowed the lawn, with machine gun fire (the dog crawled out with its paws held high), and I sat in the slaughter, I started to cry and one heavy growled with his fist in my eye "It's fun to meet fans who like violence and pain - since you like it so much we'll come back again." ";
str2= "Adding it up
One tomato and one tomato make two tomatoes Two bananas and two bananas make four bananas Four jellies and four jellies make eight jellies Eight feet and eight feet make sixteen feet Sixteen feet in heavy boots stamping on eight jellies, four bananas and two tomatoes make a horrid mess ";
str3= "Alexander
King Alexander, third of Scotland, really loved his wife a lot and always tried to hurry home - (This was long before the phone was thought up by another Scot called Alex, so the king could not just call to say he'd been delayed by work, bad weather or a plague)
So, one night in 1286, the king (who'd got stuck in a council meeting in Edinburgh) got on his horse and, with a few friends of course for kings are never left alone, set off to ride back to his home to have his dinner with his wife across the Firth of Forth in Fife.
A storm was rising. In the rain they crossed the river. No train was due for some six hundred years so a boat took them (the ferry piers are still there) and on the other shore remounted and rode on once more - travel in those days wasn't easy, I'm sure that they were sore and queasy.
But Alex wouldn't hesitate: he'd been king since he was eight, survived rebellions and plots, defeated invaders and got back the Western Isles - he was not going to let bad weather stop him getting home in time for tea. So on he galloped, recklessly.
It's not so far to Aberdour, perhaps it took them half an hour, but after that the darkness fell and soon none of the men could tell where they were. But the horses knew and so they stumbled on. Just a few miles before the castle at Kinghorn, his queen, his dinner, a warm fire and dry clothes, the king's good luck ran out. In the dark fate struck.
His horse went the wrong way, and with him on it, tumbled off a cliff.
Both dead. And in that moment history changed completely. That one wrong turn led to war, to Wallace, Bannockburn, the Bruce, the Stewarts, all that came to be. And Alexander never got his tea. ";
str4= "Amazing
This is the maze that our class visited: as we queued to go in our teachers said 'Please stay together, we'll be very cross if anyone wanders off and gets lost'
This is the gap in the prickly hedge that Miss Take walked into and got wedged. We heaved, we shoved, but without any luck she wouldn't leave the leaves - so we left her stuck. (Some hours later the fire brigade came and hoisted her out with a fifty-foot crane)
This is the bend Mr. Ease strode round and disappeared as if the ground had swallowed him. There was nothing there it seemed he'd vanished in thin air without a sound. It was very weird - all we found was a pen and bits of his beard.
This is the centre circle of grass where Miss Laid arrived with a few of her class but each path they took to leave that spot led them back to it again. It was not until a month later that rescuers reached there by which time the children had eaten the teacher.
This is the gate where we left the maze without any teachers to lead us astray and counted ourselves as we boarded the bus and went back to school with no trouble or fuss. ";
str5= "The Amorous Teacher's Sonnet to His Love
Each morning I teach in a daze until the bell that lets me hurry down and queue with pounding heart to wait for you to fill my eyes with beauty and my plate with stew. Dear dinner lady, apple of my eye, I long to shout I love you through the noise and take your hand across the shepherd's pie despite the squealing girls or snickering boys. O let us flee together and start up a little cafe somewhere in the Lakes and serve day trippers tea in china cups and buttered scones on pretty patterned plates.
Alas for dreams so rudely bust in two - some clumsy child's spilt custard on my shoe. ";
str6= "And for my next trick
Out of his hat he pulled a hen that laid a shining egg, and when he broke the egg with his white-tipped wand it became an eye in the palm of his hand.
And when this eye had looked around he swallowed it without a sound.
At which, the hen, with a polite bow, put on the hat, and exited stage right.
And everyone clapped - though my sister said she wished it had been a duck - for the magician stood there in the spotlight all feathers and beaky head going cluck cluck cluck ";
str7= "Arithmetic
She takes ten and divides it by three: it breaks, hard-edged, echoing.
She divides a wet sky by a high window, she wants to add a radio, take away the teacher. The day isn't working out right.
She's given up caring about correct answers. That makes the sums easy. So easy it bores her.
She measures the drawn-out length of the lesson against the chipped edge of the desk - and still finds it's too long till the bell.
She counts up her friends and subtracts her enemies. Now that's interesting
but difficult, difficult. ";
str8= "The Ascent of Vinicombe
He took his bag off his back and strapped it to his chest. I think this is the start of an adventure, he declared, and so it was. With great care we roped ourselves together, then slowly, cautiously, we fought our way up the ice-cliff, He led. of course, shouting warnings and encouragement as he sprang from boulder to boulder, dodging avalanches. It was hard going. There was no shelter from the bitter wind and only one lamppost strong enough to bear our weight. We paused a moment then pressed on, any delay was dangerous. Without warning the pavement would split, opening horrid pits, crevasses crammed with writhing snakes or hairy mammoths. Despite it all, we struggled upwards, risking a traverse of the slippery railings, until we hauled each other, wild-eyed and wind-beaten, across the glacier of Kersland Street. It was then that, with amazing speed, he slipped his coat off and hung it cape-like from his head, announced his possession of super-powers and flew, arms outstretched, up the lane towards his school. ";
str9= "Assembly
I don't want to see any racing in the corridor. a gentle glide's what we expect in here; not that I mind a little heavy-handed fear but you high spirits must slow down.
And I've had complaints that some of you slip out at playtime. Let it be quite clear that you stay in the graveyard till you hear the bell. The chippy's out of bounds, so is the sweetshop and your other favourite haunts. I'll stop your little fun and groans: there'll be a year's detention in the dungeons for anyone caught chewing anything but bones.
And we'll have no more silly tricks with slamming doors, at your age you should be walking through the walls. And it isn't nice to use your loose heads as footballs or vanish when your being spoken to.
And finally, I really must remind you that moans are not allowed before midnight, especially near the staffroom. It's impolite and disturbs the creatures - I mean teachers - resting in despair and mournful gloom. You there - stop wriggling in your coffin, I can't bear to see a scruffy ghost - put your face back where it was this instant or you won't get to go howling at the moon.
Class Three, instead of double Shrieking you'll do Terminal Disease with Dr. Cyst; Class Two stays here for Creepy Sneaking. The rest of you can go. School dismissed. ";
str10= "At the zoo
The lions have dug deep burrows, the snakes have coiled up in despair, the crocodile has lost his smile, the rhino is running scared.
The hippos are wearing crash helmets, the camels have clumped off to grump, the leopard is looking rather sick his spots have changed to goosebumps.
The panther's turned pale with fear, as white as the arctic fox, the elephants are trying hard to disguise themselves as rocks.
The turtles are sheltering in their shells, the seals have submerged out of sight the giraffes are giggling nervously the tigers tremble with fright
The birds of prey are praying today they've disppeared to the last feather, all you can hear from the herd of red deer is knobbly knees knocking together
The keepers are locked in their office, only one brave cockatoo shrieks out a final warning: 4b have arrived at the zoo! ";
str11= "Bacteria
There are tens of thousands on each one of us - tinier than the tiniest fly, so light we can't feel them. Yet there they are - like plump cows or sheep, the colour of thin milk, wandering across the broad fields of our skin between the huge reeds of our hair, nibbling. And I like to think of them there so calmly browsing, cleaning me up. It makes me feel like a farmer, or more, strangely, like the land itself, a world, to have so many creatures keeping alive on me, so many creatures that think of me as home. ";
str12= "The ball talks in its changing room
I'm the star really. I'm the one the crowds have come to watch. I don't let it worry me. Before the match they check me carefully, make sure I'm really fit. After all I have to take more pressure than the rest of them. And then it's the usual jokes about there being more hot air in the commentators than in me, and the ref puts his arm around my shoulders and says he hopes I'll have a good game, no need for a substitute, and off we go to lead the players out. No time for second thoughts once we start: I'm in the middle of it all the way with everybody shouting for me, cheering as I dodge around the tackles, or slide out of reach of players who just want to put the boot in. The crowd is all for me, willing me on, praying that I'll reach the net, and when I do, roaring with delight. I take it as my due. The lads are alright but, when all's said and done, Desmond, they'd be nothing without me. ";
str13= "Bess's Bath
With pails of hot water the ladies in waiting run up the stairs. The courtiers sniff at their scented pomanders, the ambassadors laugh they think it so weird: for the third time this year Elizabeth Tudor is taking a bath.
In the royal bedchamber the queen sits in state in her steamy tub, she's removed her red wig to rub her head better with ring-crusted fingers and scrubbed the white powder from her face to reveal care-worn wrinkles and smallpox scars.
Through teeth blackened by sugar she starts to whistle and says in her heart: I may not have Mary Stewart's looks (or her neck), but she never sees soap, and Philip of Spain may be filthy rich, but today I'm the cleanest monarch in Europe. ";
str14= "Blow out
I just knew there was bound to be trouble when the teacher came into the room for his nose pushed in before him as big as a bouncy balloon, so red and raw so swollen and sore, as ready to burst as a bubble.
He'd a huge hanky clenched in his fist, as wet as a teatowel; no, wetter, and he sniffled into it a little but it didn't make anything better. 'Chuldun,' he said, 'I'b ah code id by hed.' We told him it couldn't be missed.
You could tell that he wasn't well pleased. Then he opened his mouth, but what he meant to say never came out for his face twisted up in a knot and he snuffled and snorted he struggled and fought it but he just couldn't stop it, and sneezed.
We watched as if caught in a dream as the vast twitching lump of his nose swung back and blasted straight at us with the roar of twenty tornadoes: he blew out with a boom that rocked the whole room - I could hardly hear myself scream.
It was all in the papers next day: NOSE EXPLODES - DISASTER STRIKES SCHOOL KILLER SNEEZE WIPES TEACHER OUT FIVE STILL IN HOSPITAL and a photo showed our desks in the road and the hole where the wall blew away.
But they never said one word about what I remember most - the snot splattered all over the ceiling and dripping and slipping in clots as thick and sticky as cream, but yellowey-brown or green; that fell in great gungey blots in hair, down necks, on faces, soft, slimey, squelchy and hot gobs of slobberey goo that set hard like glue so clarty and tough it took a whole month to scrub off -
I wonder why they left that out? ";
str15= "The bluebottle pantoum
The bluebottle is buzzing round the bathroom as angry and irritated as I am listening to its crazy one-note tune. The window's open. Go on, scram!
As angry and as irritated as I am, I'm trying to be helpful - look here, fly, the window's open. Go on, scram! Stop droning on and use your eyes.
I'm trying to be helpful - look here, fly a little to the left, then up. And please stop droning on and use your eyes. Do I have to beg you on my knees?
A little left, then up and out. Please. I'm getting close to a murder most foul. Do I have to beg you? On my knees my hands are clenched upon a heavy towel.
I'm getting close to a murder most foul listening to its crazy one-note tune. My hands are clenched upon a heavy towel. The bluebottle is buzzing round the bathroom. ";
str16= "Broken
That vase with the flowers: she dropped it in the kitchen. We heard the surprisingly small crash and then that word also slipped, or leapt from her lips, and broke her rule, smashed on our ears. As we turned she was standing stiff, shocked at the mess made by the word splattered around her room. At first she could not lift her eyes but when she did they met ours burning helplessly and then the tears burst
fragments of glass, of water, of memory, of heart ";
str17 = "The Boozle of Bam
Up in the attic the Boozle of Bam is trying as hard as a boozle can to discover why someone, wherever he goes, sticks out a tongue or wrinkles a nose or turns away with a pointed look or hides their head in a boring book.
Up in the attic, on his throne of blood and dirt, the Boozle is feeling terribly hurt - he swaffles and snaffles and scoffs till he's sick but nothing he does can do the trick - for boozles may bam and boozles may bong but they never ever admit they're wrong.
He scratches his ear with a rusty fork and mutters and putters and sneers and snorts. He yells, 'Boozles Rule!' and 'Boozle is Boss!' but inside he's feeling lonely and lost and his angry wee eyes keep jerking around, terrified of the tiniest sound.
Up in the attic on his throne of dirt and blood the Boozle is washing his hands in mud, and spitting out gobs of half-chewed money he snarls to himself, " Something's up, something's funny, not ha-ha but odd - and why this should be really bamboozles a boozle like me
for dark-suited gnomes in bowler hats, fat-faced cream-covered company cats, toads who're seen in extremely high places and rats with suspicious violin cases all shove fat envelopes under my door that rustle of fivers as they slide on the floor,
and they all say `We're doing fine, Boss' so why are these others getting so cross? " And he fell asleep with his mouth wide open. A spider, crawling spidery cross his chin, startled by the sudden snoring din, flipped, lost its balance, fell right in.
Up in the attic, in his slobber-stained coat with a spider weaving a web in his throat and his smelly fat feet in a bucket of slime, the Boozle is happily dreaming of crime - while the damp dust shudders on his sacks of gold he snores like an elephant with a bad cold.
But down in the celler where the poo make the sweat that the Boozle uses to keep his hair wet, and out on the street where they stand and wait for the leftover pennies that fall from his plate, there are grumbles and rumbles and even shouts about how much he eats while they go without ...
But each of us has a bit of greed and greed is all that a Boozle needs - for though some say they'd like to knock his house down and others, that they'd run him out of town, too many want what the Boozle's got - the golden grime, the silver snot
and would really like to gey greasy palms and play with power, never mind who they harm, and stick their snouts in the honeypots and mess with money while everything rots and deny others bread, so long as they've jam: that's why no-one's got rid of the Boozle of Bam. ";
str18= "Butterfly, Trinidad
The old butterfly had been around the house for days, sucking sugar and bumping into walls, but now she has reached the garden and her huge body straddles a cracked orange in the grass.
Her turtleshell wings are erect, even in dusk the sharp black eye mocks its watcher, but she is too rigid: there is no flicker of interest or fear as we approach and quietly leave, not being relatives, before her actual collapse and wake
which will happen in its own world in the moonlight under the orange tree when the butterflies come, blue as death, to hover gleaming at the jungle's rim. ";
str19= "canal
All day he sat at the side of the canal, like a closed dockyard, his rod motionless above the dirty water. All day, and nothing came. He pretended to ignore the cyclists, the shouting children; his eyes watched only the water. He thought - the fish are so large, so well-fed they ignore my bait. He thought - the fish are so few, so tiny, they can't swallow the hook.
As evening came, he imagined a fish as large as himself connected by the line, a thread, but balanced; nothing moved. He imagined it gape-mouthed, impassive, its slack mouth and fixed eyes the mirror of his own. Curious, wanting to confirm his vision, he leant forward - and with a deft flick the fish hooked him and he was pulled in a smooth curve to the suffocating water. ";
str20= "Cat
I have walked on the wall and have put my eye on the world and it had better behave itself.
I have slouched under the bushes and have made the lumps of feather-covered cat-meat jump up and down waving their uneatable bits and squeaking stupidly
I have found slow wriggly things in my earth and have pulled them with my claws but they are not much fun and they are not good cat-meat
I have sat on the flowers, to watch the big animal that brings me cat-meat dig holes in my earth but it was not looking for the wriggly slimy things that are not cat-meat
It is not as intelligent as a cat, it does not use it's claws to dig and has nothing to put into the hole except a stalk of something.
Then it goes. I smell the stalks and since they are not cat-meat I stand on them, and dig in my earth to make it more as I like it
and the big animal is back. It is jumping up and down like the feather-covered cat-meat and waving its uneatable bits and squeaking stupidly
It is more useless that I'd thought - for all the jumping and waving it has not managed to leave the ground and float to the tip of a tree
if it did not bring me cat-meat I should certainly eat it. ";
str21= "Change
For months he taught us, stiff-faced. His old tweed jacket closely buttoned up, his gestures careful and deliberate.
We didn't understand what he was teaching us. It was as if a veil, a gauzy bandage, got between what he was showing us and what we thought we saw.
He had the air of a gardener, fussily protective of young seedlings, but we couldn't tell if he was hiding something or we simply couldn't see it.
At first we noticed there were often scraps of leaves on the floor where he had stood. Later, thin whisps of thread like spider's web fell from his jacket.
Finally we grew to understand the work. And on that day he opened his jacket, which to our surprise seemed lined with patterned fabric of many shimmering hues.
Then he smiled and sighed. And with this movement the lining rippled and instantly the room was filled with a flickering storm of swirling butterflies ";
str22= "Choices
She doesn't choose where she lives or the school, the uniform but she can choose small things:
which bus to miss, how to hang about for the moment to slip down corridors and stairs
to try to become invisible, not there, to dodge sneers and shoves, taunts, threats, the torment of the toilets, the playground.
She doesn't tell her parents, she chooses not to tell her teachers. Why?
Come on, we all know why. Think of when you were afraid and powerless. Think what you chose. She chooses silence
and the cuts and pills, later, she will choose them as well. ";
str23= "Cinquain
Cinquain sounds medieval: a casket to contain besieged castles, jousts, knights both good and evil.
1263 cinquain
Vikings in dragon ships, Hakon's hard horrid guards: Scots and storms smash them on the shore by Largs.
1349 cinquain
Rats, fleas, boils and black spots: Death scythes through the country, no walls are strong enough to stop disease.
1388 cinquain (found poem)
" Raise my banner, call my war-cry, let neither friend nor foe know that I am fallen " - Douglas!
1415 cinquain
Arrows darken the sky. As if maddened by flies the horses throw their armoured knights to die. ";
str24= "Citizen of the world
when you are very small maybe not quite born your parents move for some reason you may never understand they move from their own town from their own land and you grow up in a place that is never quite your home
and all your childhood people with a smile or a fist say you're not from here are you and part of you says fiercely yes I am and part of you feels no I'm not I belong where my parents belonged
but when you go to their town, their country people there also say you're not from here are you and part of you says no I'm not and part of you feels fiercely yes I am
and so you grow up both and neither and belong everywhere and nowhere much the same both stronger and weaker for the lack of ground able to fly but not to rest
and all over the world, though you feel alone are millions like you, like a great flock of swallows soaring or faling exhausted, wings beating the rhythem of the wind that laughs at fences or frontiers, whose home is itself, and the whole world it moves over. ";
str25= "Clanky Franky
In Clanky Franky's garden flowers clatter in the breeze and rusty leaves come rattling down from aluminium trees. But it's a quiet garden, he oils it every day and greases the hinged branches so they don't creak when they sway. He dibbles with a high-speed drill in beds of polished metal to plant bright stalks of stainless steel then screws on every petal. He solders on brassberries, he tightens up each nut, his grass is green - but copper so it never needs a cut. No dirt, no weeds, no nibbling bugs - it's so easy to maintain, but like any other gardener Franky loves to complain of the rubber cats and plastic gnats and most of all the rain ";
str26= "Colosseum Comprehensive
They learn subtraction of limbs, division of guts, the practical geometry of sword stabs and cuts;
they study the argument of thrust, science of net and spear, the handicraft of killing, philosophy of force and fear;
on each public holiday the class exam arrives and afterwards the janitors sweep up the fallen, waste of lives ";
str27= "Comicosaurus
Here's a jolly dinosaur, he likes to tickle you, and tickle, tickle, tickle till your face turns red and blue.
His laugh is loud and merry, even if his breath smells bad, but he keeps it up for hours and hours and drives you deaf and mad.
Then he pulls your leg a bit (he likes his little joke) and snaps it off above the knee and shoves it down his throat.
So even though it laughs a lot and has a charming smile, you'd be mad as a hatter to stop to chatter with a massive flesh-eating reptile. ";
str28= "Corridor
I'm standing in the corridor with my back against the wall just outside the classroom door, I don't like being here at all, shuffling, muttering it isn't fair all I did was pull Lily's hair
It's lonely out here, it's boring away from my pal's silly grin, and I want to hear the story - perhaps I could sneak back in and anyway, it isn't fair all I did was push John off his chair
How long is this going to last? What are they laughing at now? What if the head should come past and give me an awful row? I keep telling myself I don't care it's not right, it isn't fair all I did was throw a rubber at Claire push John off his chair pull Lily's hair and swear ";
str29= "desk
It was stuffy in the classroom. He put his hand inside his desk, feeling for a pencil. It was cool in there, he let his hand swing aimlessly around. The space within seemed vast, and when he reached in further he found nothing, could feel no books, no ruler. His hand floated as if in a bath of shadows, airy and refreshing, not at all the same place that the rest of him was in.
He put both hands in, let them drift deeper, this way and that. It was more than empty, the inside had no sides. His hands never reappeared through some unexpected hole. He lifted the lid quietly a little more. A waft of soft air cooled his face, the same as on summer nights or under leafy trees.
He bent his head down to the gap. He looked inside. Dark as deep water, deep as a clear night sky. He smiled. He put his head inside. "What are you doing?", asked the teacher. But he didn't hear. He slid his shoulders in, and then before anyone could reach to stop him, he bent from the waist, kicking his chair back, and with a muffled cry of pleasure dived. For a split second, as the room filled with fresh air, we watched his legs slide slowly down into the desk and disappear. And then the lid fell back, shut, with a soft thud. ";
str30= "Doggerel
See me free dog strutting down the street nosing in the bins for a takeaway to eat - got myself a bad name messing up the back lane can't keep my nose clean sniffing out the rude scene.
House dogs have their leads yard dogs have their chains. I'd rather be a free dog and run hungry in the rain.
See me rough stuff bag of skin and bone call no one master call no where home - grubby paws, sharp bite, dodge the law, start fight, I don't care what man says this dog will have his days.
House dogs beg and whimper yard dogs cry all night. I'd rather be a free dog and live the way I like. ";
str31= "Dr. Frankenstein Explains
All the way through school it was the same: " Don't be such a cissy, Frankenstein, you're a big boy now ... "
And so they'd pull me, coaxing, mocking, from the only games that gave me any pleasure.
Boys, I was told, make machines, are inventors especially of things that fight and kill; girls get first the dolls and then the babies to hold and watch with love and wonder.
So they pushed me into science - You're a boy: learn how things tick, be logical, ambitious, no more cissy games: if you become a man you can be anything you want.
I thought about this. I became a great scientist. I thought about this. I wanted to sit in a quiet corner with a child I wanted to feel the warmth of life continuing.
My labour has finished, or just begun. I have, in man's way, become a mother. Here is my child: isn't he beautiful? ";
str32= "Drawer
Don't open Miss MacDonald's drawer or put your hand inside to get your confiscated lollipop catapult or cyberpet.
Behind our toys, the broken chalk, snapped pencils and bent paper-clips something strange lurks in the dark - we're just not sure of what it is.
We've seen Miss slip in crumbs and crusts, orange peel and apple cores, we've heard low growls, soft thumping and the scritch-scratch of sharp tiny claws.
But when we ask her what it is, Miss smiles - " It's a dinosaur: don't you believe me? Keep your fingers out - my pet likes to eat them raw." ";
str33= "Dustmen
We count the days by shops and alleyways, each bend and length is measured by our shouts, and know the houses by the state of their backgates the people by whatever they've cast out.
Close to the end of things we heave the reeking bins from paving stone to shoulder with one rising turn and with the harsh wry humour of gravediggers we mock the maggots shaken from the metal urn.
In the maze of broken brick and antique slippery slabs where wild potatoes flower and charred tins rust like hunters we know creatures by their leavings and view them more with interest than disgust.
Into the wagon's wrecking jaws I've crammed a three- piece suite, a bedstead, a piano, a dead dog in two bits; slummy goes into the sack, but for a modest fee we'll crush anything to nothing and drop it in the pit.
And every week twenty more tons press on four collar bones: what you throw out lightly falls heavily on us who bear your past away and bury it; you who'll become worn bones and spoiling meat, old clothes, handfuls of dust. ";
str34= "Elephant
is very Huge is ELEPHANT and BIG and BULKY andeversoeven PonDerOus: and he thinks he thinks but he doesn't know what he thinks he thinks for very Huge are ELEPHANT THOUGHTS and Weighty and Large but soft underneath; and he thinks he thinks it's time for hay but he doesn't know and that being so he squirts water over his big left shoulder and thinks of a Very Huge NOTHING
is Very Huge is ELEPHANT is Hugely ENORMOUS (and slightly gormless) ";
str35= "Er
Seen it in the toilets written on the wall who does what and how with who
but I can't believe it's all truthful, honest or correct - especially the bit on you
screaming in red felt-tip among the sneers and boasts - tried to scrub it with my sleeve.
Diagrams scratched on the door explain the body thing but miss out what worries me the most
my awkward silence when we meet tongue-tied in the corridor: no words on the walls suggest
ways to be friends - and before any touch of hands or lips it's words I'm groping for. ";
str36= "Experienced
I asked them, what are your hobbies, what job would you like to have? William says he likes collecting stamps and he'd like to be a postman. John's hobby is watching trains he wants to be a train driver, Lucy's a really keen swimmer, she wants to train as a deep sea diver. Claire likes examining bugs and plants, she hopes to become a scientist, and Jack says his hobbies are eating sweets and fighting and he's going to be a dentist. ";
str37= "An experiment
For this you will need a goldfish bowl, a ball big enough to almost fill it but also squashy enough to fit easily inside, some water, and, unfortunately, one small fish. Now take these to the largest, emptiest room you can find, and placing the bowl at its centre, put in the ball. Then add the water, carefully, to cover. Darken the room, turn out all lights but one. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now slip the small fish into the bowl, so it can swim between the ball and glass, round and round the narrow water. Does the fish hope that the whole room could be flooded? Does it wish that there was another bowl, another fish, in sight? Round and round, round and round, in the dark room, under the one strong light, in the only water there is, which it hopes is clean, because it must have water and this water, trapped between the rough surface of the ball and the edge of vast waterless space, is where it has to live, whatever its dreams may be.
Now you can try this experiment. You sit down and watch the fish. And watch the fish. And imagine what the water means to the fish. You imagine the water drying up or spilling out. Imagine the water filthy or poisonous. You sit and watch, and when you feel the time is right, when you feel you understand this moving round and round with a small world in the one and only possible place you bow to the small fish and go outside and look at the sky and breathe in deeply. Now how does the air taste? ";
str38= "Fishing
daybreak. they come from the houses, the small wooden houses, like rafts, like arks
& from a boat's dark hollow they unravel a mass of strings; a shawl to wrap the chill waves in, a hammock to rest the uneasy dreams of water, a tattered handkerchief to trap the silver tears beneath the waves eyebrow
& they drag it across the sand like a dead seal, they walk into the water wearing all their clothes
& now they form a semi-circle in which some of them are swimming, & now they close the circle & their first and last stand on the shore & now they all are pulling, pulling, pulling as if the whole weight of the sea is in the net & now they all stand in the shallows & the breakers below their knees seethe with white water & flashing shiny fish
& that last heave has seperated the foam from the fish that touching the shore twist in the dry current of the air becoming pearl, shell & metal shards, as helpless, as fleshy as ripe fruits, but without the promise of seed or stone, completely dead
a small boy lifts them one by one from the sand spread like a jeweller's counter, threads them together in giant earrings, through their mouths
into the boats' lee the fishers pull the net, pick up their bunched trophies, go back to the houses
palm trees caught in a net of light, the almost tideless sea. a faint shadow of silver splashed upon the sand ";
str39= "Fishy Stories
There was a bright teacher from Torquay who went to fight sharks in the North Sea. When asked why he had, he said " 'Cos I'm mad and it's safer than teaching 4c. "
***
An eager young teacher of boys is unhappy away from wild noises. Each Friday at five he drives off to dive into work with a school of porpoises.
***
Each night after school, Mr. Block fished from an octagonal rock. He baited his hook with an oblong maths book and caught a triangular haddock. ";
str40= "Flood
The rain fell all night, beating on roofs as dark and hunched as hills, cascading uncontained into the street in wind-curved waterfalls.
All night the rain fell, kept falling. This morning, the street's a river: cars founder and sink, while buses crawl laden as ocean liners,
raise bow-waves so swollen they break booming across the pavement where tossed at the tide's rising mark seaweed tangles to litter;
and under the hedges and gates fish shoal in the gleaming shallows, and further out, through the channel marked by wave-slapped traffic-lights,
dolphins leap lampposts, and whales surge and sound in the deep roads. ";
str41= "Flowers
Flowers are soft, they smell of aunties, weeds are better - no one shouts if you pull off all their petals or stamp them flat into the ground.
Grown-ups are funny about their garden, they don't see it like I do - "Such lovely flowers ", they say, when really it's a jungle where toy soldiers hide.
Leaves are alright, you can kick them and make smoke signals when they burn; but what I like best in a garden is trees to climb, fat slugs, and worms. ";
str42= "Friend
It was in his pocket. He admitted it. But when they looked, they could see nothing. Turn it out - they said. He did. The pocket hung from his jacket like a floppy ear. His hands were empty too. There was fluff in his fingernails. Liar - they said, you don't have one, you made it up. They laughed like knives; but he didn't mind. What they couldn't find was safe, they couldn't hurt it. The others were also pleased; they thought they understood, had found out, his lie. When they let him go, he put his hand back in the pocket, and his fingers first made, then stroked the unknown shape of his friend. ";
str43="A Garden for Dracula
Beyond the gloomy hedge a thin mist lies as fine and sticky as cold sweat on disfigured statues, gaping pits, walls lurking in a tangled mass of cobwebbed ivy.
No wooden stakes in this garden! and the unpinned roses trail in the mud between cracked gravestones where something smells very rotten and the slow drip of dark water is menacing and sudden ...
who knows what their roots are tickling? their curved fangs wait for you to trip - be careful, be careful where you tread! Their flowers are like thin lips that long for blood, the white roses are hungry, the red have fed. ";
str44= "A Garden for the Hulk
Green. It has to be green. Not the dull shade of holly and ivy but bright as new buds, powerful as young shoots, fresh grass. Green everywhere, not a flower, not a blossom, not an inch of brown soil.
And there he is hidden like a gigantic greenfly, can lie on his huge back and pretend to be the spring. His mighty green muscles rippling like the grass his fingers like sturdy shoots his head a small bush fanned by its own breeze.
But only for spring; in summer, in brown autumn and bare winter, he has to stay human, powerless, controlling the green force of his temper. ";
str45= "Getting Heavy
big in his boots he met a weighing machine dressed as a punchball.
I tell your weight, it said and so he hit it with his heaviest punch.
the machine stood still and thought about it. seven stones lighter than me, it said at last
falling on top of him and crushing him flat. ";
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function picker(sp){
if (sp==1){poem(str1, 'Action Men',600);}
else if (sp==2){poem(str2, 'Adding it up',420);}
else if (sp==3){poem(str3, 'Alexander',480);}
else if (sp==4){poem(str4, 'Amazing',500);}
else if (sp==5){poem(str5, 'Amorous Teacher',440);}
else if (sp==6){poem(str6, 'And for my next trick',460);}
else if (sp==7){poem(str7, 'arithmetic',460);}
else if (sp==8){poem(str8, 'The Ascent of Vinicombe',640);}
else if (sp==9){poem(str9, 'Assembly',520);}
else if (sp==10){poem(str10,'At the zoo',440);}
else if (sp==11){poem(str11,'Bacteria',440);}
else if (sp==12){poem(str12,'The ball talks in its changing room',440);}
else if (sp==13){poem(str13,'Bess s Bath',540);}
else if (sp==14){poem(str14,'Blow out',480);}
else if (sp==15){poem(str15,'The bluebottle pantoum',440);}
else if (sp==16){poem(str16,'Broken',460);}
else if (sp==17){poem(str17,'The Boozle of Bam',560);}
else if (sp==18){poem(str18,'Butterfly, Trinidad',480);}
else if (sp==19){poem(str19,'Canal',540);}
else if (sp==20){poem(str20,'Cat',500);}
else if (sp==21){poem(str21,'Change',520);}
else if (sp==22){poem(str22,'Choices',480);}
else if (sp==23){poem(str23,'Cinquain',460);}
else if (sp==24){poem(str24,'Citizen of the world',500);}
else if (sp==25){poem(str25,'Clanky Franky',420);}
else if (sp==26){poem(str26,'Colosseum Comprehensive',460);}
else if (sp==27){poem(str27,'Comicosaurus',460);}
else if (sp==28){poem(str28,'Corridor',460);}
else if (sp==29){poem(str29,'Desk',560);}
else if (sp==30){poem(str30,'Doggerel',420);}
else if (sp==31){poem(str31,'Dr Frankenstein Explains',460);}
else if (sp==32){poem(str32,'Drawer',440);}
else if (sp==33){poem(str33,'Dustmen',560);}
else if (sp==34){poem(str34,'Elephant',420);}
else if (sp==35){poem(str35,'Er',420);}
else if (sp==36){poem(str36,'Experienced',420);}
else if (sp==37){poem(str37,'An Experiment',560);}
else if (sp==38){poem(str38,'Fishing',520);}
else if (sp==39){poem(str39,'Fishy Stories ',420);}
else if (sp==40){poem(str40,'Flood',440);}
else if (sp==41){poem(str41,'Flowers',440);}
else if (sp==42){poem(str42,'Friend',540);}
else return;
}