PART I

Grey clouds, grey trains
Endless tears, endless rain
Birds in flight up in the sky
Man in flight, she waves goodbye.

Cold day, warm bed
Fish are swimming in her head
The pain is leaking through her eyes
Another fragment slowly dies.

A little older and it’s her turn
A little colder but still it burns
Push it down don’t let it show
Nobody must ever know.

Protective figure, figure of fear
Figure of speech, her figure is near
Consternation keeps her thoughts straight
A broken mind from an unbroken wait.

They break the silence with a whisper
A sharp knife is enough to whisk her
Away from everything, away from joy
They stab her heart as they would a toy.

Naked light on her naked frame
The ravening darkness she fights in vain
Feeds off her, chews on her insides
Neglected, fading: she chooses to hide

PART II

What is childhood?
Childhood is not innocence.
Childhood is not innocence, for innocence
Is the absence of evil and pain,
Any child who’s survived childhood will for evermore divine bane.

Childhood is not freedom.
Childhood is not freedom, for freedom
Is a confinement we create ourselves to feel safe,
Childhood is not a borstal, but a realm where each child is a waif.

Childhood is not an an achievement.
Childhood is not an achievement, for an achievement
Fills you with a sense of purpose fulfilled,
Childhood unmercifully drains you; empty, I am ready to be filled.

So what is childhood?

Childhood is children.
Childhood is children for childhood is sorrow,
As are the children who feel it.
However,
Childhood is also a bright unique joy,
As are the children who feel it.

I feel the grief as I feel the shine,
As do all these pained radiant siblings of mine.
Their faces beaming, my spirit’s dreaming,
My heart is screaming:
Bursting, as childhood rips its seams
Nothing here is what it seems.

Childhood is the one who raised me
Through our shared adventures he razed me
Just to build me up again
Into the person you now today see.

He will always be a part of me,
Just as grass will always be a part of Earth
Until it slowly dies, along with I
And he
And all his mirth,
Goodbye.

And it is while- still living in that bubble-
I’m stumbling along on the uncut stubble
Of grass like the peeping ghosts of children buried hundreds of years before
Or more

That I realize :
These souls could not be suppressed by this sod,
For the soft soil could not suppress all these souls,
Just as I could not suppress him.

I start to forget him.
First his welcoming touch, next his sweet, sweet smile
Then his sweet smell, and all of this while
I am forced to quell
The flurry of thoughts barricading my mind
Only a few are left behind.

And when I thought he was finally gone
He’s back.
Haunting me, like the infinite tiny phantoms
So now, a thousand colours of infancy
Burst through the cracks
That have scarred me with time

Don't step on these cracks
Don't fear him afresh,
For now he is in chime
With you.

We are presently as one
For now and forever,
Two sinking souls in a sea of suns
Nothing now has yet begun.

PART III

I was afraid of him, my childhood, long before
That is no longer the case any more,
For now a greater fear
Eats me up; I taste its treacly flavour:
It is near.

Too big, too bad to address
Too wired, too watchful to vanquish
Too dark, too daunting too let rest
Only here to fill me with anguish.

And as the shadowy voiced echoed out behind me
Drawing me back,
I turned around; my heart furiously speeding,
My entire being slowly ceding,
My voice, inaudible, pleading,
To know what torments it bears.

“Do you not know who I am”, it asked
“Fate?”
And the creature almost smiling,
Almost beguiling
Me, as if reconciling
Us, turned to me and spoke softly

“No, I am you”.