My friends! There is hope again, it is new this time,
Please make me analyse it or verify it not
Or losing it might happen.

I hope that really it is me that's wrong
I have been all along
I needn't worry any more
What's the use in worrying?!
It never was worthwhile!

So I'll just get on with enjoying life
After all - what's the use in worrying that the
Wallpaper in the DSS is poorly below the mark,
Oh how happy I'll be from now on,
If I don't worry about the debts piling up,
The crumminess of my hostel life,
My inability to work, or play,
Oh great! How great my life will be,
I could stimulate myself a little, not too much
By reading something light for free in the Twickenham library
I could take in some air and really look this time at the flowers in the park
I mean, 26 years of looking at them is not enough time to
Become jaded, oh happy day

You know what they say - you can't change the world!
So change the way you look at it
How blind I've been!
All along I could have been happy during those awful times,
The subtle ignoring from friends, it really needn't have bothered me,
Oh and how could I have been so wrong to myself
For in my mind conjuring up ideas that it's what you achieve that counts
As far as being popular and worthwhile goes!
How wrong I am!?

J. Bolton

Oh oh oh! Your enthusiasm is beyond me, it is unstoppable,
I am nothing compared to you, all of you. (patients too).
Like you, I, have for the time, been trying to stop analysing
All the reasons why we do things, why we do them.
But when I stop analysing, you start to again you really do,
Or so it seems to me.

What then do we have in common - Miss secretary, Baker, doctor, key-smith etcetera?
Not a lot, not much at all, perhaps we both share anger.
When you feel yourself to be alone or different from the others
It's not like me, when I do I hate myself, but when you do you shine
From strength to strength you go, always with a new move to make in hand.
I am out of moves, there's nothing hidden within me now,
No secret Ace to play, no I was wrong when I thought I was lucky & gifted.

My friends and enemies on the subject of my hidden gift - kindness,
It seems to be my worst enemy, an enemy within me
It's pushing me through hours and days
I'm sorry that it angers you, me being kind,
I see that in your face, well in return,
Your lack of kindness and wrongly assumed pride for every asset and skill
Which you think you have gotten somehow,
They make me ill, day in day out,

Where is love?

J. Bolton

Subway Train.

I sat unannounced in a subway bar
I felt uninvited, unwelcome, unsure
Looking in the windows of each passing car
I saw faces staring straight ahead in the yellow/white light, with just a
couple of shady people looking for a fight.
The question in my mind was I could have been dead for all they cared: and
anyway what would they have done about me?
All the commuters seemed so stiffened, as if this last leg,
Was in the job description, or in the case of the shady ones well they
looked like bouncer-gangsters. I suppose that is what they were.

The train shuttled through, followed by a ghostly wind,
I bowed to my feet and shot a prayer through my mind as I heard a slow-drawn
Footstep scrape the tarmac at my right.
The leaning man was tall and thin, his bulging eyes met mine,
And as my heart froze, the walls seemed to boom outward expanding in the dark.
The perspective light-lines down the passage had become much longer than when I entered this tomb,
Filing downward to the black stone stairways where it murmured 'this way closed'.

As I tottered to my heels, under legs cold and feint,
As my hot heart raced, for a last-reprieve-escape,
My damned eyes met with a scrawl on the wall they weren't just letters and that's all,
In a third flash of fear my buckling mind and body tried to bear,
The specific warnings painted grossly in graffitti everywhere.
Head down amongst all foes and ready to drop, I made the subway passed the
stairs and then out into the cold straight-through-me airs.

Heads turned, necks craned toward my panicking rushing gait,
To see, this struggling homeward waif with terror all about,
Hope grew a little as the yards under my trembling ankles passed,
Yet neon signs don't comfort when cutting fear is in your mind.
Somehow I got home, on the town's night bus,
although they looked they hadn't seemed to touch.

The terror of the night and it's cruel hosts in black
Are always in my mind whenever I suffer an attack.
But I look back fondly on some days of my youth,
When a walk was just a walk that's all
And a field was empty and the time didn't matter
I just can't remember what I was thinking back then.

J. Bolton '99.

A poem that almost rhymes

I wish I was nice, through and through,
I wish others Knew,
I like going on
And on and on
and I like pizza sometimes too.

I see quite a lot of people in the run of a day,
(And I bet none of them know I'm as loony as an egg,)
I think at lightning pace,
But its all a waste,
I never know what to do.

I want a new word,
I need a new name,
To make me feel brand new,
But I am me,
And always have been,
I just need to find you too.

I want to stop the Earth spinning,
Right now would be fine,
And let the tired and sick wake up,
The busy would be dizzy,
My name's not Lizzy,
And I never said it was anyway.

Then when we all got used to the still world,
And we all got in tune,
Maybe we could start it anew,
But we'd have to take a vote,
And hopefully that would take hours,
And if I had my way we'd never reach a decision about it,
But just cough a lot and say 'Hear hear, I'm mad don't you know?',

Then, when everyone had got bored of the vote,
We'd agree to get the Earth spinning again,
But only as a trial procedure,
And on the count of quite a lot of dinner beforehand,
And that's it!

Julian

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