Open your paper, pick up your pencil –
Baton of silence.
Numbers now secrets you can’t calculate;
Can’t get an angle.
Pencil and tooth tick a rabbit rhythm,
Puts lead in your head.
Try sugar in place of inspiration
While the clock eats time.
A hard boiled help, a saccharine saviour;
But a noisy choice.
Wait for a chair to scrape above the sighs,
Crackle one open
Then be still. The gradient of your face
Acute. Suck silence,
Calculate your crunches and be careful:
The approaching click
Of the examiner: heels on gym floors
Echo in rows. Eat. Work.
Solutions take a shape, taste of lemons,
A burst of sherbert.
Sweet inspiration, with a citrus doubt.
Rub out the errors:
All you have to do is fill in the small squares
With the right answer.
