Poem: What they will do.

They will teach you how to be someone else,
It’s easy to play at make believe, to hide under the bed with the monsters.
They will hold up your deepest shames and fears and tell you that they are true,
And you will go on your knees and thank them for it,
Wrap yourself up in lies upon lies, call them your prayers and swallow them,
They will give you a spoon full of sugar and applaud your efforts.

You will learn how to fit in with their vision of the world, God will love you more,
So it will not matter that hating yourself eats at you or that mirrors mock you.
You will be lonely, but you will not remember that it does not have to be that way,
Your body will belong to them, the purest of pleasures corrupted as sin.
They will take from you all of the joy and love and life that you could have had,
And leave you empty, unable to vocalise what it is that you have lost.

There will be no part of you they will not corrupt, you will believe it is for your own good.

Poem: Rain

It is raining outside, the sun catching in the drops
Creating a glistening difference in the mundane.
From this vantage point I can see the city,
Alien in a blanket of coloured umbrellas.
Water gathers in the gutters, mixing with spilled oil,
Creating swirling rainbows on the ground.
Just for this moment, still and soaked through,
It is easy to watch and remember what we forgot.
Soon everything will be washed clean and waiting,
The past drying out in Summer puddles.
Hopeful, amid small hurts and happenings, we realise
That the world is very beautiful, despite everything.

Poem: It Does not do,

It does not do to dwell on dreams
And live in make believe,
To take others truths as certain things
And forget to question these.

It does not do to wish on stars
And be defined by dying light,
To allow ourselves be shaped by fantasy
And not be what we might.

It does not do to cling to lies
And use faith as blind defence,
To be afraid of the great unknown
And surrender common sense.

It does not do to ignore the truth
And mythologise reality,
To bind ourselves in code and creed
And not wish to be free.

It does not do and yet is done
And we feel safe in empty trust,
To make sense of a nonsensical world
We each do what we must.

Poem: Things we won't do now.

We will never go out at one o’clock in the day and drink until the pub closes,
Stumbling home to cold Chinese food in your house.

We will never have a ’do nothing day’ and wander around town, penniless
Looking at pretty things that we do not have the money to buy.

We will never have another fight about something thoughtless
That one of us said to upset the other.

We will never decide that it doesn’t matter and laugh at the reasons behind it
Over cans of cheap beer and cigarettes.

We will never get in trouble again, for not being able to keep
Any of the secrets we are told from each other.

We will never gossip shamelessly about everybody that we know
For hours and hours on the phone.

We will never get stoned and lie on the floor, listening to music
And singing along tunelessly.

We will never dress up in suits and traditional white dresses,
And make forever promises to each other.

We will never have even one more second where we are together.