My Poem ‘All about Me’

I asked a friend who I should write about next,
and they said that I should write about me-
and then I started to think about what people know about me,
what my friends know about me, what those who I have loved,
and who love and have loved me, know about me,
and what I know about myself,
that I haven’t told anyone else before
that still remains a mystery.

My family know the day I was born,
where I was born, and where I grew up;
my friends know where I went to school,
who my teachers were,
and who I was in my developing years;
my close friends know what I like, what I love;
my best friend knows what I am thinking about all the time,
and knows the road I walk every day,
and knows the direction I am going,
and knows what makes me smile, and what brings me to tears;
my muse, my love, the voice I hear all the time in my head,
the one I dream of every night, knows me better than anyone
and knows my heart’s desires, and is with me every second
of every day, and who wants everything to turn out for the best
for both of us, and is my inspiration, strength,
and my future, every step of the way.

I was born on the 21st of April, 1981,
on the maternity ward of a village called ‘Marston Green’.
I grew up and still live in a village called ‘Meriden’
in the Centre of England, and surrounded by the most beautiful
and inspiring scenery, fields, and forrests, I have ever seen.
I went to high school at ‘Heart of England’ school
in ‘Balsall Common’, where I first fell in love with English
and literature, and where I had my first crush
on a girl called ‘Helen’.

When I left school, like most of my friends
and like anyone of the age of 16, braving the undiscovered
and new horizons of an unknown and scary bi wide world,
I didn’t know what I wanted to do, nor who I wanted to be-
I had no definitive direction to go in but forward,
but where that would take me I did not know,
but I knew that only one person would be the only one
to give me what I needed and who would be the key-
and that person was me.

I could never have predicted what would happen in my life.
No one could ever have told me what I would see,
what I would feel, what I would write.
I could never have wished, or ever have guessed,
that I would have been truly blessed every day
by something, or someone, that was both my day
and my night light.

So, is there more to say about me?
Is there a secret that has yet to be uncovered
and admitted to the world?
Why of course there is!
But what that is, both you and I will have to wait and see.

This is the last page of the last chapter
of this edition of my book, before I begin a brand new chapter
of a brand new book, and on the first page I will begin
the first poem of the next chapter of my life
and my journey-
I already know that it will be filled with so much
of what and who is in my life now, and always will be;
but I also know that my new book will be full, infused,
inspired, interlaced, with new muses, and new musings,
new dreams, new experiences, that could only have been possible
because of everything that has always been and is constant,
and will never change-
but I know with complete certainty that what is to come
and what I am going to write about
will be about things beyond my imagining,
and, unlike this poem, wont be all about me.

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My Poem ‘Growing Younger’

Sometimes you think you know the beginning of something
before you know the end;
sometimes you think you know with every certainty
what you are going to do with your life.
When you are a child it is so simple to imagine,
to anticipate, and see the good things that you want to happen to you,
and to you they are not just thoughts that you write in a diary
or a journal, and they are not just the dreams that you share
with your best friend.
When you are a child every first step that you take is an adventure,
and you just do what you feel in the moment,
and you say what you think in an instant,
and everything is possible,
because you haven’t yet been told that the most important thing
to do in everything you do is to try.
There are no disappointments,
at least there shouldn’t be as long as you remember,
even though you are a child, that as long as you still have yourself,
your mind, and your heart, and something to believe in,
and someone to believe in you;
and as you grow older, if you stay true to what feels right
and what your first instincts tell you,
you will one day look back with a smile,
and wonder how unbelievable it is that the moments of your life,
like the years, have gone by so fast-
so much so they feel like they have flew.

I am always fascinated by what the first thought is
that someone remembers of their lives.
My first clear and recognizable memory
is of my first day of primary school,
and being late that morning for some reason.
I am always in awe by what a child says,
no matter what it is, because they never have no end of things
to say about everything, and because they are surprisingly
articulate, knowledgeable, open, and right.
My first day at school was when I first said ‘I’m sorry’
and I gave my first gift to my teacher for being late-
it was only a box of chocolates,
but I do remember her telling me that is was alright,
and her saying thank you to me and to my Mom-
it’s so strange, because even though that happened so long ago
it feels like yesterday,
and at that moment, and at that time,
my mind, body, and senses, raced and lived truly and wholly
in the moment, and I didn’t fixate or even realize
there was such a thing as a horizon.

As we get older, we unfortunately do forget.
In this day and age our lives seem to revolve around numbers
that we feel compelled to constantly remember,
so we can do what we have to do,
and so we can get what we want to get.

The world has changed so much since I was a boy.
I have seen technology, opinions, countries,
cities, sky-lines, people, language,
and what children and adults are constantly being told
what they need in their lives and what they should think-
whether it is an expectation, or an image,
because it is what everyone else has in the form of a
new disposable and unimportant,
but seemingly vital new toy.
But the world is change. Change is the nature of life,
and the life-blood of the entire universe.
When things change everyone know that they must adapt to survive,
and to me that is why change is a gift to be cherished
and relished, not a problem or a curse.

The more we live and the more we experience,
the more our lives blossom in ways that know
and don’t have to imagine when we are a child,
because we feel it in ourselves-
just as we know and feel the change within us,
and sometimes that can make us want to break free
and run wild, unrestricted and unconfined,
and because we are still discovering who we are
and who everyone and what everything is,
nothing is out of reach or not aloud.

What I rediscover and realize more and more day by day
is that I don’t see myself the way I sometimes feel
I am supposed to see myself,
because I see how others my age look at me
and look at themselves,
and because most people these days are so used to
being told what they should think, feel, like, dislike, say, and do;
I suppose I am the opposite of that and I recognize
that same freedom of expression and identity in so many others that I see-
people who just want to be a person and not a number,
even if that number is their age.
I find that if you live free and embrace every hopeful moment
it shows in every part of you,
and to everyone around you it really tells.

As birthdays come and go;
as the days begin earlier, but feel shorter;
as I realize that life is more about who you know
sometimes more so that it is about what you know;
as I realize, what I used to not ever think about
and simply act upon when I was child,
that the feeling of the moment is more important
than worrying about what hasn’t happened yet,
and may never happen.
I realize that even though in counting the years
that I have been alive, breathing, thinking,
and feeling on this planet,
I may appear or seem to be getting older,
I am in fact in spirit doing the opposite of that-
because I truly feel that I am growing younger.

My Poem ‘First Day’

That feeling in your stomach is unmistakable,
that pounding in your chest is hard to stop,
that cloud between your ears is slow to clear,
but when you finally arrive and start your job
on your first day it doesn’t take long
to find your feet and feel comfortable-
whether your job is in an office,
in a restaurant, in a factory,
at an airport, on your feet, behind a desk,
or being their to help and assist
lots of different customers in a shop,
it doesn’t take long for your natural gifts to take over
and for all the butterflies that have been fluttering
in your stomach to disappear.

You never forget the first day of your first job,
you never forget how much that first day
becomes a blur of many different emotions
that if you let them all get the better of you
it wont take you long to say you are never going to learn
all that you have been taught and told,
and you will probably even want to go to a corner and sob;
but if you don’t do that, if you don’t give up
even after making the first ten of the many
natural and necessary mistakes that you and everyone always make,
the more you will gain confidence and feel at-ease
in what you are doing, and in your own abilities,
and you will come to the conclusion
that what at first you thought was hard
and incapable of being learned
is actually a piece of cake.
The more you do something the more it becomes second-nature to you,
the more you work at what you know, the more comfortable you become,
and every time you start back at work after a day off
it will be like stepping back into an old pair of shoes.

For some people their first job is the job they have always wanted;
for some people, especially those who have just left school,
their first job is just the first step up a hill
to where they are supposed to be;
for some people their first job is their passion
and the thing that they do that they love
and have dreamed about doing since they were a kid;
for some people their first job is but the seed
that will one day grow and bare the fruit that will never stop
providing for their family, and feed all the branches that stem
and grow from you into your life’s tree.

Your first day of school is always the day you want to forget;
your first day of college or university
goes by so fast and you may not remember it all,
because your mind feels like it is traveling
at a thousand miles an hour in a supersonic jet;
your first day of work is like you are acting out
and saying the lines of an actor in a play;
your first day is the day you should try your hardest to remember,
because it can only get better afterwards-
so remember, your best day, in whatever it is that you do,
is always going to be your first day.