(Not) Alone

Well, it's been a while. What with one thing and another I haven't been blogging for seven months (how?!). I guess the last post was a prose piece, so it seemed to provide a kind of natural 'break'. Time to get back to the poems though – still from the second year of uni here, and we're not done with the despondency quite yet!

This one wasn't consciously inspired by any songs or other works, unusually, but just by a bad experience: as I recall, some kind of supposed epiphany about myself while at a house party towards the end of the year. I'm not sure at all how well it holds up five years on, but it's decent enough to include here, probably. Truth be told, I'm itching to post some of my more recent work as I can really see, looking back, how my style's progressed! All in good time...

(NOT) ALONE

This caught me unawares

It hit me right between the eyes

Crying on the stairs

With a truth it’s time to recognise.

So what have I become?

A helpless waste of love with few ways out

A heart of desperation slowly coming undone

And every path I take’s another roundabout.

I shouldn’t be surprised

By opening my eyes I would have seen

This boy is always hopeful when he tries

But yet again it turns out it was just a dream.

And wishing in my head

Trying to make sense of life and love in their blur

Waking up in my lonely bed

I have only regrets for the things that always were.

Now this is how it’s going to be

Staggering round and seeking love with no more pride

It doesn’t seem I ever can be free

Something tells me the caged bird has already died.

At least I’ll never be alone

No, I have joined with all the rest

The mournful losers, round our friends we roam

And each and every time we fail love’s cruel test.

The joke’s on us, we know that well

But don’t force us to smile or our hearts might break

Each one of us hides in a personal hell.

Life’s kicked us much more than we can possibly take.

We are crying for love, with no lingering shame

With our cries merging into a heartbroken song

We are here to be pitied and not to be blamed

This grief is the only way we can belong.

I am desperate for warmth, but it cannot be found

So a loser I am and a loser I’ll stay

I will drink, I will dance, remain stuck to the ground

As I watch the last vestige of hope fly away.