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Sunday 17 June 2012

Back then


No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
At the time you need to know
At the time that you really need to know

How to stop those voices shouting
How to stop the calling of the shrink
How to count to ten or twenty
Or even just to stop and think

No one tells you
Except that you ought to know
No one tells you
Except the tears just have to flow
No one tells you
Except for sure that by now you know

How to stop the nagging doubting
How to drop the stalling mink
How to count, wait, hesitate
Wait a short while longer take a drink

Back then back in childhood
Back then back in teens
Back then back a young man
Back then with dragons with queens

No one tells you anything
Anything that you need to know
Anything that you really need to know
Somehow just a simple breakthrough

Then again a massive step
Then again a massive step

If you've ever been in love
Or lost a close one
Or lost a limb


Well to think that none of that would matter
To think that not a single thing matters
Not a single thing at all

How to stop the voices shouting
Wonder if  it's worth the thought
How to add the noughts together
To any single thing less fraught

So damned easy just to write it
To compensate with chance
Or the intellect almighty
Of imagined circumstance

What you need to truly feel it
Touch it right there on the nose
Deep down in the spine

Hear the book words breathe it fine
Pay the teller to tell her lies
Pay her with the fives and dimes

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
No one tells you

Tells you what you need to know
At the time you need to know
At the time that you really need to know

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
No one tells you
At the time that you really need to know



This poem is from the collection East of Lincoln Central available now on kindle - click on the text for details