WARNING: REFERENCES TO SELF HARM AND SUICIDE
Mental health is a topic very close to my heart, and not only do i have my own issues, but my twelve year old son too. There is simply not enough provision for mental health, especially child and adolescent. This poem was inspired by a documentary that was on a couple of weeks ago. Broke my heart. NB My son is not suicidal, he has anxiety issues, but many kids are.
Enough
When you’re twelve years old and you’ve had enough
Of this sickened, filtered, twisted, rifted
Motive shifted, Kardashian tit-lifted world
When days are knocking on the doors of empty houses
Gazing through windows of opulence
But at night you’re there again, sleeping rough
In this maze of mental health
In this haze of giving up cos life’s too fucking tough.
So a pill’s a pill
So what if you knock back a death sentence?
What if you let your soul bleed and your tears spill?
And the pills slip down, down
Emotions drowned, regrets not making sounds
Years of heartache and sadness driving your pain to the ground
Pain to the pill to the pill to the pain
Who gives a shit if you sit here and cry again?
No one dares to see you, sane or insane
Hurtling along like a broken bowling ball
in the pre-teen child psychiatry lane.
When you’re twelve years old
And suicide is the coat you covet
And you wear the hat of a depressed diplomat
Playing self-harm cricket with a knife and not a bat
And with each hurt comes another scar
And with each hurt comes another scar
And with each hurt comes another scar
And twinkle, twinkle little scar
I see your tears, I see your fears, I feel your pain from afar
So why doesn’t anyone
Fucking help me?
Is it those poison ivy girls again?
Do their tongues clack their tickety-boo nonsense?
Churning words of insults cursed,
Jealousies
Wickedness in unrehearsed dramas
They know how to hurt the hurting
And the hurting know how to hurt.
You are worth so much more
If your strength would rise up and thrust a fist
through the floor
Of their house of sticks
Then maybe the sticks and stones would break THEIR bones.
When you’re twelve years old
And you’ve had enough of the merciless world
But the world hasn’t had enough of you
And you’re trying to lose your feeble grip
But the world keeps clinging on
And you’re exhausted and your soul is void and blue
And you wish everyone would just fuck off
Just fuck right off
And you could do this suicide thing
You could finally see it through.
But the world hasn’t had enough
Of you
©2020 Sarah Drury
Sarah Drury 