Coffee has stained the lecture table

And left its avatar on my tongue.

Sketches of another world tattoo the backs of chairs

Products of boredom, cast-offs of uninspired souls

Begging to be set alight

Or cast in flaming bronze.

If only the lecturer was a tyrant

Or my neighbour, my enemy;

As in the both longed-for and despised days of my youth

When midday was greeted with a lifted heart

And celebrated with an adrenaline rush:

A meal of sport, and hormones flowing as wine.

Where is my football; that fat old sun

That bothered my eyes and fuelled my spirit’s trip?

Here there is only wood and plastic

An army of defiled tables keeping me in my cell,

Brave guardsmen spat upon by their captives,

But ensuring the would-be poet

Has only Wetherspoons in his mind’s eye as his reward.

Denying Heaven, we long for Hell

But tapping pens and Starbucks cups belong to neither

And scarcely allow for imagination.