Escape
I like to escape to my special place,
Away from here in this sad and lonely space
I want to be near a nice sandy beach and the crystal clear sea
Instead of being stuck in a large city with a lot of debris.
My special place a place where i feel safe.
A World Unseen
School boys laughing in the hall
Chasing dreams standing tall
Books and pens jokes and noise
Everyday the life of boys.
Some act tough some hide their fears
Some crack jokes to hide their tears
Behind each smile a story lies
A world unseen through busy eyes.
Gold
The sky turned gold, then let it go
The mountains showered with snow
The hills were covered in windmills
I saw a bird over there
Its body coated in colourful hair.
The World
The world is great
I look at the world and all I see
Death and destruction in a cacophony
However what is never heard
Is all the good in the world.
People dance sing and play
But never seem to get a say
All the good is drowned out.
Like water in a great drought
This is what I will tell you
The negative things in your life are few
Maybe stop focusing on the bad
And instead on the joy we all have had.
Change
Men often have to go through rough times where they don’t feel like they can express their emotions when they feel they should.
I think this is tough for men because it means they often have to go through tough times on their own.
I think there needs to be a change in society where men can feel comfortable with expressing their feeling.
Contemplation
I do not feel like I have anything
in particular to write about.
I am writing this poem
so that I can finish and go to lunch
or play games on this laptop.
I contemplated what I hate
and what I love,
but instead I feel that I struggle
to choose a strong case in either.
So I will end my poem
with the simple statement
that I believe my life is too complex
but enjoyable to write about one strong point.
Poem Without a Name
I don’t know why I’m here nor what I’m doing
I don’t know what my goal is
I don’t know what I’m set to gain from this
I don’t know why I’m writing this
I don’t know why I do what is set for me
I don’t know.
Insecurities
I dislike my height
I dislike how my hair is
I dislike how I speak
But everyone has insecurities
Everyone has issues
And there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.
We must accept the way we are because we are all perfect in our own ways
Everyone is differen
Everyone dislikes their own things,
Some people feel that everyone speaks about them
When they walk into a room.
But in reality they aren’t talking about you
No one notices your issues like you
Only you take notice
People worry about their own insecurities,
It’s only you and your head talking about it.
It is okay to be unhappy about ourselves
But when you come to the conclusion to accept yourself
You become much happier.
Nobody in the whole world is the perfect example set by humanity
But we are all perfect in our own ways.
There is only one you
You must not take that for granted
You should not try and become somebody else
But to be yourself
Because once you are yourself.
You find you happiness
You find your people
You find your things
And overall, You are You.
The Glen
I love Glen Rovers
The Glen are the best
The Glen are the most successful
The Glen are the most famous
The Glen have the most history
The Glen have produced the best
The Glen are proud to wear the crest on their chest
The Glen are going to win the county
The Glen have the best academy
The Glen are the men
The Glen have the best everything.
Life
We grew up in the hood
Life was good
Learning to live
Living to learn
Life was rough
We found it tough
What we did was never enough.
Learning to Live
Through a stormy night
Running with all my might.
Throughout the fight
The lads say but inside
They don’t share the hurt inside.
Trying to learn to live without the mask.
Never Always
You were never treated badly,
You were always liked,
You were always invited to everything,
You were never left out.
You were never left thinking was I good enough,
You were always happy with the way you looked,
You were never last picked for teams.
You were always happy to go to school,
But that was never true, for always was truly never and never was truly always.
I Will Arise
I will arise and go now and go to Whitechurch Town,
where the sun shines north and the rain never comes.
Ten glass windows in the shop full of delight
and food for the world,
my house just ten feet long,
the home for everyone for needs some love.
Chess
In chess, the pawn can become anything as long as it keeps moving forward.
It claims its new role, after the journey took its toll.
Whether it chooses a queen or knight, it doesn’t fail to remember its previous fight.
We are told to leave the past where it lies, however, it is what leads us to where we shall die.
I Hate My Brother
I hate my brother more than anything in the world.
My brother annoys me because he is loud.
My brother annoys me because he is shite at sport.
My brother annoys me because he is obnoxious.
My brother annoys me because he always argues.
My brother annoys me because he is self-righteous.
Even though I hate him, at the end of the day,
he is still my brother.
Doing Nothing
I’m not really ever sure what to do.
The annoying part is, I don’t think there is anything I can do.
If I would ever try something,
I know it would not work.
Yet I can’t stay doing nothing.
My Name is Ollie
My name is Ollie
I like to eat lollies
I like Kevin G
But he wants to be me
But he is too chunky for meh
And I’m so funky, eh?
I’m low on health bits
So I need to take the medkit
Cuh is blowing up my phone
But they trynna steal my aura
And I’m trynna be my own
And I’m in school wearing my fedorah
And somebody’s under the table
And I’m not in the mood for any fables
I’m trynna be like Jeshu
But he’s like ‘frick you’
He’s trynna steal my sprites
So I’m a gonna show my might.
This is Where
This is where we’ve lived all our lives.
This is where we watch where we walk at certain or to avoid certain streets because of the stories we hear.
This is where people play sports
just to “fit in” or to be normal.
This is where people move across the world
to leave this country to get away from the people of this country.
This is where people suppress their own ambitions
to not seem weird.
Learning
We grew up around boys,
Laughing and joking and finding our way.
Now I am 15 but still finding my way, learning to be a man,
and not what society project men to be and desire to be.
To Wake Up
To wake up in anguish about the cruelty of our world and its ingredients is a bitter taste that all lifeforms must endure,
To wake up and smell the flowers and know that some will never be seen or loved,
To wake up and know the inevitable feeling of loneliness and woe that men will forever endure from inhuman experiences,
To wake up and watch women and bastards live self-centred and unsustainable lives, eradicating any hope of peace and unity,
To wake up and watch people ensue violence and work to ruin what others have worked so hard to flourish,
To wake up and know that some will eternally feel numb to being belittled simply because no one has done it to them,
This is what diminishes dreams and make some want to stay asleep.
All the Things
I think about all the things I hate
All the things I want to bait.
But above all a few stand out
The birds that make me want to shout,
The cold days in spring
and all the overly hot places I’ve been.
The food that tastes just like gruel
and the dark evenings that are so cruel
Above all the thing that winds me up
Is early mornings getting up.
A Boy’s First Lessons in Love
At an age when the world was new,
He met a girl and felt things true.
A glance, a smile, a passing stare,
And suddenly, she was everywhere.
Too young to know what love could mean,
He built his dreams on what he’d seen.
A little hope a racing heart,
Not knowing how it felt to fall apart
His first hi his first goodbye,
His first time wondering why not me
Why did she laugh, then walk away
Why did her feelings change each day
And I Heard Him Say Nothing Ever Promised Tomorrow, Today
Nobody owes you anything so don’t expect checks
He said “you gonna make it big” like body builder that flex
So promise me this, when you stack them racks you gon repay
Boys who wanted to walk in yo steps
Stay true to yourself, don’t get lost in the wealth
Try and play the game like J Cole himself.
Can I get a deal and give back to the ville
Can I run away from 50 mil like Dave Chappel
Matter fact will I ever get a deal or a dollar for my mind
Will Jay Z pay me for my ryhmes.
Truth be Told
Nothing’s ever promised tomorrow today,
It’s just that it might be the only way,
People always say they’re fine,
But they’re still tryna get off the sideline,
Thats right truth be told,
All that glitters is not gold.
Teenage Life
Teenage life is crazy, with homework every night,
Trying to look cool but my hair won’t sit right.
Mum says, “Clean your room!” I say, “In a minute!”
Then I scroll on my phone like there’s no end to it.
My alarm goes off at seven, but I’m still fast asleep,
Teenage life is chaos, with no time for sleep!
Always
The illuminated walls as the stage calls
My heart drops asthough it is made of cinder blocks.
With heavy heart my voice booms
The microphone looms as I stand ready as I always have been.
Pat the Cat
I had a cat
His name was Pat
Pat the Cat
Pat had a hat
A cat in the hat you may ask
Yes he was Pat the Cat who had a hat.
I had a fish
Trish the Fish.
Pat the Cat got hungry
Trish the Fish got the ick
Pat the Cat who had a hat ate Trish the Fish who got an ick.
Cork
Cork is an amazing town almost like a place where you could never frown
The sky is always clear a place people could never fear
The people are bright making the pressure feel light
The county is adored people could never be bored.
Truths
Expectation fills the air.
“It is what it is” said in passing.
Every problem swept under the rug
of the mentality that we must bear the storm
and remain headstrong.
The silent battle between a friend
over who’s the better man
and the secret jealousy of his success
that you hate but still bear anyway.
A joke that fills a room with laughter
but has you wondering about how truthful it is
while the one who made it wonders did they go too far.
But nothing is ever said after,
for it was only a joke.
This Moment
The sun goes down behind the hills,
The air is cold, the world is still.
The golden leaves fall to the ground,
As silence slowly spreads around.
The sky turns pink, then dark, then grey,
Another quiet, peaceful day.
I stand and watch the fading light,
And wish this moment could last all night.
Boys
Boys are strong, protective passionate and brave,
confident, unemotional and told to shave.
They are told to be attracted to pretty girls,
Gift them treasures, gold, diamond and pearls.
Forced to pay for everything and buy them flowers,
Treat them like a princess and call them for hours.
Ditch their friends to go out with their ‘beurs’
Visit their parents and get house tours.
You get completely ignored if your under 6,2,
If you can’t bench 100kg then its over for you.
If your jawline cant cut a carrot, then bye bye,
If you’re muscles aren’t big, you’ll be passed by,
Your chances are low if you aren’t god-like,
Wait for your chance and you’ll see the sight.
Once it arrives, just shoot your shot,
Eventually you’ll score, your girl will be very nice.
The Forest
A river flows through the green
The prettiest place I have seen
The water shines off the sun
Life in the forest is quite fun.
I Wish
I wish we could all be ourselves
and not be judged.
In a world of equality
we could be free to be whoever we want to be.
We could drop our masks
and let go of the act,
enjoy ourselves and don’t look back.
I wish we could fulfil this dream.
Problems
I wish we could talk about how we feel
and problems in our lives.
Without being laughed at
and made a joke of.
Small things can have large impacts on people.
Being able to simply talk to people in school
about a problem
and not appearing as a soft person
would be very valuable.
Things That Annoy Me
When you were going to eat something and you go to eat it and its been eaten by someone in the house.
Coming home to see your room cleaned or rearranged and you cant find things you need.
People in public spaces or shops who suddenly stop dead in their tracks right in front of you to look at their phone.
Lost 2nd years blocking the hallways.
A charging cable that only works if you position it at one exact specific angle and stops the second you breathe near it.
People eating and chewing without their mouth closed.
A Good Soul in a World of Evil Women
For the one who kept his heart in a world that made a weapon of its own.
I was born with a heart that knew no war,
In a world that kept its knives behind the door.
Where love wore perfume and deception wore a smile,
And every gentle gesture hid a motive all the while.
I met women with the moonlight in their eyes,
Who spoke to me like angels, then fed me beautiful lies.
They knew exactly where the broken pieces lay,
And touched them with such tenderness
I mistook the pain for a place to stay.
Oh, what a cruel thing it is to crave a little peace,
To give someone your everything and watch your worth decrease.
To offer someone shelter when your own roof’s caving in,
Then discover you’ve been fighting wars
They never meant to help you win.
I have loved the ones who never knew the meaning of enough,
Who wanted all my softness but despised me when I grew tough.
Who held me like a promise when they needed somewhere warm,
Then left me standing in the rain
As if I had become the storm.
And God, how they could smile.
As though they hadn’t watched me drown.
As though they hadn’t built the sea
And pushed my head beneath the sound.
As though the tears I swallowed whole
Were nothing more than pride,
As though a man could bleed to death
With all his wounds inside.
But here’s the thing about a soul
That suffers and survives:
It learns the difference between love
And the things that merely imitate it in our lives.
I used to think that being good
Meant letting people stay,
That if I loved them hard enough,
Their darkness would give way.
I thought my patience could redeem them,
My loyalty could make them true,
That if I gave them every part of me,
They’d give me something honest too.
I was wrong.
And there is grief in that admission
That no language can contain,
For the hardest truth is not that people hurt you—
It’s that you let them try again.
It’s remembering every warning
That your heart begged you to hear,
Every time you called it lo
The Future I Look to See
The bais call me a faggot,
Ya it’s said quite a bit,
but it’s not true, doesn’t define me,
The future I look to see.
I’ll try not to let it hurt,
Try and make it out the dirt,
Trust me I will win, they won’t,
I’ll keep going, even if they tell me don’t.
Prince
From the lonely road
I saw a toad
who reminded me of my past
I am a prince at last.
A Good Soul in a World of Evil Women
For the one who kept his heart in a world that made a weapon of its own.
I was born with a heart that knew no war,
In a world that kept its knives behind the door.
Where love wore perfume and deception wore a smile,
And every gentle gesture hid a motive all the while.
I met women with the moonlight in their eyes,
Who spoke to me like angels, then fed me beautiful lies.
They knew exactly where the broken pieces lay,
And touched them with such tenderness
I mistook the pain for a place to stay.
Oh, what a cruel thing it is to crave a little peace,
To give someone your everything and watch your worth decrease.
To offer someone shelter when your own roof’s caving in,
Then discover you’ve been fighting wars
They never meant to help you win.
I have loved the ones who never knew the meaning of enough,
Who wanted all my softness but despised me when I grew tough.
Who held me like a promise when they needed somewhere warm,
Then left me standing in the rain
As if I had become the storm.
And God, how they could smile.
As though they hadn’t watched me drown.
As though they hadn’t built the sea
And pushed my head beneath the sound.
As though the tears I swallowed whole
Were nothing more than pride,
As though a man could bleed to death
With all his wounds inside.
But here’s the thing about a soul
That suffers and survives:
It learns the difference between love
And the things that merely imitate it in our lives.
I used to think that being good
Meant letting people stay,
That if I loved them hard enough,
Their darkness would give way.
I thought my patience could redeem them,
My loyalty could make them true,
That if I gave them every part of me,
They’d give me something honest too.
I was wrong.
And there is grief in that admission
That no language can contain,
For the hardest truth is not that people hurt you—
It’s that you let them try again.
It’s remembering every warning
That your heart begged you to hear,
Every time you called it.
Things That Piss Me Off
The price of chicken rolls these days
is ridiculous.
I mean my mum questions me
when I ask for a tenner for lunch
because she obviously relates to when she could get lunch for 4 euro.
Now for a tenner
I’d be lucky to get a chicken roll,
a drink and a pack of crisps.
It’s mad.
Simple Things
I wish we could talk about how we feel
and problems in our lives.
Without being laughed at
and made a joke of.
Small things can have large impacts on people.
Being able to simply talk to people in school
about a problem
and not appearing as a soft person
would be very valuable.
The Traveller
Standing in awe of the traveller so strange
His declaration breaking the ego they held so dear
The idea he cries out is the idea of change
That which holds the most fear.
In the crowd the vicor cries
Years of thought you summise
With a single line of thought
“Gott ist storben” you have brought.
The King
I am king
I always win
Don’t speak till it’s time to say checkmate
When I’m king I feel no weight.
Songs In My head – A Rant
In first year, I was very shy, too shy to approach other lads, and so for the first few weeks I found lunch miserable.
In my head there were a set of reasonable behaviours that I could express, and there was a set of ways that I acted naturally, and those two sets didn’t meet, the venn diagram looked like a pair of glasses, and so I stood still, but even then I was afraid to stand still, embarrassed by my embarrassment.
So what did I do?
I listened to music, without headphones or Spotify. I listened to songs that didn’t exist anywhere but my head.
I used to cry all the time as a child, but testosterone has a way of dulling your emotions, and your own perception of your own emotions, but when I made up songs in my head, the tears came easy.
The lyrics were not set in stone. Instead, there were a fluid that filled the vessel of my internal monologue.
These songs always exist in the back of my mind. They sometimes start off as actual songs, then get mutated by my lived experience. Other times, they come to me, waking up to the weight of the world in the morning, or to the beat of my strokes when swimming.
The songs are sometimes louder, or more vivid when I feel upset over something. I can never write these songs down even though I play piano, since they exist purely as emotion, and to write them down would be like finding the age of a tree, I’d have to destroy it.
I do always have them with me though.
The Swim
Saturday, 5 am. Warm bed becomes cold in the time when clock sounds, moving side to side to not fall asleep again, the hardness in opening your eyes which are staring into the light of your room.
‘Oh shit’ you think, ‘I have to go for the win.’
Finally your body starts to move, hardly but still moving, taking a cold shower and eating food, leaving home at 6:15 to drive for 2 hours.
Reaching the destination and with barely opened eyes walking to the trailer. There it is, the boat on which I will take 1st place, or the boat of the biggest fail.
But here you go, the race, the warm up and at the start, taking some strokes for the start, and the star time is started.
20 fiercely taken strokes are just the size of ant compare to a 3 km race as a human. The next 20 power strokes are about 300m away, but it’s still the encouragement of coming first. Here you go to he turn, and the following 20 power strokes, and another 20 power strokes.
Every inch of the body is in motion that gives you power for next power strokes, and here you go, last 600m, but what a coincidence the rigger got loose, but anyway I will do it.
And the last stroke, the rigger is falling, and I am at the finish line swimming under the boat.
School
School is many things
It is a place where people learn
A place where people talk
Where people have fun
Where people are bored
The idea of school is up to you
We Are…
We are passionate about sport
We are looking forward to lunch
We are not interested in lessons
We are waiting to play playstation at home
We are excited to go out in the evenings.
Like a Ghost
Men hate the truth when it mirrors their pain,
They hide their tears like shelter from rain.
They crave to be held, yet push love away,
And swallow the words they’re too scared to say.
They long to be known, yet fear being seen,
They bury their hearts beneath pride and routine.
They say they don’t care, when they care the most,
And fight their own feelings like a ghost.
We Are Much More
I’m taught to hate mechanical creations, spokes and wheels and whires.
Strung up to dry and burn and degrade, us boys lose colour, get faded and hard.
We band in groups, huddled penguins in a storm, each soothing ourselves that there’s nothing to mourn.
And there’s nothing to mourn when emotions, ignored, lie asleep like a violin no one plays anymore.
We believe we’re above the divine art of feeling, to groan and to have terrific thoughts that send you reeling.
It affects our sight when form far off, mountains without depth and rivers run dry are all to take in.
Admiring a sunset seems like a sin, we lose our dignity when we forget to take in a dewdrop or budding of a couplet of flowers.
Worse off are boys blinded by thorns who won’t open their eyes cause they can’t take pain anymore.
All I can see from the lads all around. Some flesh, wiry mesh that tightens your eyes to squeeze what soul is left.
I hope that no one ever looks at a ledge and believes that one jump will stop bad thoughts in their stead.
We’re not flowered marble thinly wearing countertops, we are much more than the sum of your thoughts.
I Hate the Way
I hate the way the school system works
I hate the way we are suppressed as students
I hate the way its weird to be normal
I hate the way I have to fit in
I hate the way we are treated as a society
I wish we all had different qualities excepted by others.
Decisions
We are the product of billions of lives.
We are the result of millions of decisions made every day, by people all over our interconnected world.
Decisions to be headstrong.
Decisions to get the trim, to drink the drink, to be one of the lads.
Decisions that’ve been made time and time again.
Decisions that might even feel like they’re our own.
We are nothing in the ocean of culture, of thousands of years of expectations, in the sea of who we should be.
But if we are nothing against these expectations, then what have we to lose?
To lose by choosing what we wear, choosing our hair, choosing how we talk, how we walk, how we be.
To make our own decisions.
To make our own selves.
To make our own world where our own sons make not our decisions, but theirs.
We Are…
We are white socks paired with black runners,
We are untucked shirts and loose ties,
We are skin fades and grey pants,
We are the same but different.
We are tall and small,
We are strong and weak,
We are fast and slow,
We are all unique.
The Life of a Teenage Boy
We are white socks and untied top buttons,
We are scribbles in copies and missing homework,
We are the gaseous exchange of brags and lies,
We are the choices we make to help us fit in
Choices to be kind or tough,
Choices to fit in or stand out,
Choices to be us or who we should be,
Choices that control the actions we take
Actions that will make or break someone’s day,
Actions that will make us popular or not,
Actions that make us the punchline or the comedian,
Actions that make us “us” or “him”.
I Hate…
I hate the naivety of the world
I hate the grouping of boys
I hate the confidence of some
I hate the self centered-ness of most.
Masks
Everyone wears a mask
Everyone decorates differently
Some masks stand out, praised and judged
Some do not, some are safe, some are so similar they cannot be told apart from every other masks in the sea of masks
Some masks are more transparent then others
Some are clear
Some are solid
Some are translucent
We all choose what parts of our masks are clear, and what hides what’s beneath
Some know they wear a mask
Some do not
Some wear more than one
Some wear a mask for so long they don’t know what’s beneath
Some aren’t sure what mask looks most like what’s beneath
Some are
Is it better to wear a clear mask or a solid one?
I’m not sure.
Me
I like playing sport and going outside,
I love food and going for car rides.
I like spice bags and wedges
I dont like fish or sausages.
I love being with my friends,
I hate when the day has to end.
I love laughing and being funny,
I hate when the day isnt sunny.
Unique
We are all different and unique
Nobody smells the same
Nobody looks the same
Nobody acts the same
Nobody should change themselves to fit in with others
Seek
When you’re not fed love on a silver spoon,
You lick it off knives unaware that the warm taste is just your own blood.
Blood is circulated around the body by veins, closest to the surface and the outside world.
When you are not given love, you seek it from everyone,
And not everyone wants the best, they want you to bleed.
Nobody Asks
Nobody asks if a man is okay,
They just expect him to get through the day.
He hides his pain behind a smile,
While fighting battles all the while.
He’s told to be strong, to never cry,
So he buries his feelings deep inside.
He’s expected to provide and stand tall,
But who holds him when he starts to fall?
He wants to be loved, not just needed,
To feel appreciated, not always depleted.
Because behind every man who says he’s fine,
There’s a tired heart struggling inside.
A man is human, he hurts too.
He needs love and understanding, just like you.
He’s more than his money, his strength, or his pride.
Sometimes the strongest men are breaking inside.