The crunch of the cans
as you step on the pain,
quietly
Your innocent smile faded,
then crushed as you
become what you thought you’d never be
An image of youth destroyed
with a crash and your
fragile heart broken with it
There’s no going back now,
once you’re in you’re in
Don’t waste it, they say
have fun
but stay safe, don’t be stupid
How? How do I do both?
Visions are shattered like glass
as our hopes
and dreams become drunken
nights of slurred words and
sorried beer regretted like
the sips from a ***** bottle
Mistakes of a night you
enjoyed but the next day
fail to recognise or remember
the person you were. Pretending,
we all are. Sticking together
in this fight of crying and
laughing and confusion of
who we are and why
Intoxicated tears on each
others shoulders
weeping about how it came
to this. This is our age, our life
Streams of liquid which will
make us okay. It’s okay,
right?
Clearness and purity which
we’ll never be, the transparent
glass reveals our souls
without discreet deception
of a stable mind
Some enjoy it, some don’t
But we can never know
Because it’s all a mask
‘I love you’ uttered in
a battered corridor behind
the secrets carried
on our backs. Heavy,
distorted, many memories
and problems of the
mundane mind,
ruined by a screen that
shows nothing but jealousy
and grief but we bathe in it
like the water we drink
At the end of the night
we return to bed and
the room spins
The other liquid will make
us okay
In the day the sun is bright
and some prefer to be alone,
others can’t. The endless
reliance on friends as
families crumble
We follow a rhythm for
guidance, until the song
ends
And then home again.
The smell of smoke clings
bitterly to our clothes like
the habbits we maintain
We try but can’t escape
It. This is youth. Stuck
is what we are. Frozen
in the cold. The warmth
of the home that few of
us have is only comfort.
If we’re not loved it’s not
home so some escape
to anothers and are torn
seeing what’s not theirs
You fail to understand
fail to see
what really lies beneath
the exterior of annoyance
and trouble
Open your eyes
this is dark
We cause trouble because
we are troubled
I wrote this poem when I was 16. This was a year ago and things have changed. But I still believe youth is self-destructive and for better reasons than being 'naive'.