Some of the poetry in the book…
Not Allowed
School’s the time in which I learned
School’s the fire in which I burned
I was not allowed to feel the hurt
No view for me, just desert
I sobbed inside my mental shroud
But not aloud, just not out loud
I’m not allowed to join my peers
I’m not allowed to show my fears
I’m not allowed to scream out loud
I’m not allowed to leave the crowd
I’m not allowed to cry at night
As tears just amplify the spite
I’m not allowed to show I’m weak
As that’s the feedback that they seek
To cut and cull me from the herd
I can’t afford to say a word
A schoolboy learns he’s not allowed
To feel a fucking thing out loud
A schoolboy learns he must be wood
A boy to burn as he’s no-good
Boarding school and dad has gone
He’s just 11, he’s missed his mum
He learns his life is not his own
He turns himself to wood and stone
Response is what they needed to
Inflict their pain on someone who
Is not allowed to retaliate
A dead boy walking, intestate
His feelings made a foreign land
Down all the years he’s held my hand
I’ve been Geppetto to that child
That wooden boy who’s still exiled
Whose soul was shaped, whose heart was cowed
Real men cry, but I’m not allowed
Marriage – a time in which I learned
Marriage – a fire in which I burned
I’m not allowed to be who I am
I’m not allowed to be that man
I am allowed to self control
As she sells my self and sells my soul
For what she wants and what she needs
Oblivious to the pain she feeds
I’m not allowed to defend myself
Despite the toll on mental health
Our sons are pawns she uses to
Inflict her guilt on someone who
Is not allowed to retaliate
A dead man walking, intestate
A husband learns he’s not allowed
To feel a fucking thing out loud
A husband learns he must be wood
A man to burn as he’s no-fucking-good
Circumscription
I hope I’ll find the courage
To hurt myself today
To use it or to lose it
But lose it anyway
I’d rather look at mountains
Than where I put my feet
I’d rather stand and struggle
Than settle for defeat
Once I learned to walk
And learned to walk again.
I learned to love my body
Dancing, playing, pushing
Finessing limitations
Brought pleasure from success
But creeping degradation
Is gnawing at my flesh
I hope I’ll find the courage
To hurt myself today
To use it or to lose it
But lose it anyway
I’d rather look at mountains
Than where I put my feet
I’d rather stand and struggle
Than settle for defeat
Is it really courage
Or just a daily choice
Driven by a stubborn pride
Persistent nagging voice
“Not the man you used to be”
Plunging self esteem
Bolstered by a vain attempt
To swim against the stream
While limitations lend me anger
To surf a burning back
I’ve built myself on feet of clay
Stretched out on a rack
Of personal inquisition
Am I like I claim
Or whingeing at my lot in life
With no-one else to blame
But – when I lose the courage
To hurt myself today
When a fear of venture
Outweighs the highs of gain
When I no longer look at mountains
But circumscribe my view
When I’d rather sit than struggle
And see life living through
A lens of limitations
When I lose that courage
That makes me want to try
I’ll lose much more than mountains
And a part of me will die…
A Hook for all my Fears
Youthful age, your peers your nation
Alone, I longed to join a tribe
Opened up on intimation
Of fleeting feelings, of contact made
Knowing deep it’s all in vain
Betrayed, betrayed, betrayed
Fourteen was the age for peers
That hook was glazed with outcast tears
Father’s age with sons, a labour of
With friends, a wife, a life to live
Opened unconditional love
Feelings unfurled – then came her blade
To slash the sets of all my world
Betrayed, betrayed, betrayed
Forty was the age of tears
That hook the form of all my fears
Psychotic son rewrites history
Seeks the weakness in my soul
Piercing paths so deep in me
Inserting his heart hand grenade
A IED goes off inside
Slayed and flayed and flayed and flayed
Sixty is the man he smears
The hook on whom he’s hung his fears
The done thing
The unmaking of me
Was a dead boy walking
In grief for a life unlived
The smell of rotting soul pervades his life
He pokes out his eyes
To not view what they do
Like an elephant on a rope
He plats his prison
Creates his asylum
Peers through the narrow slot
A Burka slitted mind
Peers at his peers
It’s so, so lonely inside
He’s coloured blind
Depression tinted colour chart
Hint of well crushed dreams
They tire of punishing him
As there’s no more need
Auto-punishment mode’s engaged
Conditioned, brainwashed, mind shampooed
He limps across the playing fields
To another night of torture
And another day alone
In a school full of cunts
Behind a gossamer grid of wards
Huddled in the basement of my brain
That small boy still sometimes weeps
They said “it makes a man of you”
“It never did us any harm”
It was just the done thing
It was just that
I was the done thing