Born in the late 50’s, I consider myself to be a 60’s child, having engulfed all the music and theological social myths of the ‘enlightened’ decades. All through those decades one social ‘myth’ seems to have chanted a tiresome refrain that has followed us into the new and so called ‘advanced’ century. A sad refrain, which has always disturbed me by its total pointlessness and undoubtable self-destruction.

This week my eldest daughter, who is 15 years old, goes into hospital for her fourth major operation this year, having already endured numerous operations to remove various tumours and also having been subjected to torturous chemotherapy.

Her strength and courage (which even as her father I find difficult to appreciate) is extraordinary. She has so much life within her not to be wasted. Yet every day our headlines echo the old lament of bored lives destroying themselves.

A song that has annoyed me for as long as I was conscious of it, and for which I see no reprise. Which brings me to a poem that I wrote when I was maybe 15 years of age myself. But is still as pungent to me as it was back then. I would hope that it would make just one lonesome kid stop and think.

LIQUID POWER

Do they realise?
Do they care?
Turning green,
Loosing hair.
Liquid power
They devour,
Deaths sick disguise!
Punctured skin,
They push it in,
Fairy tales this death reveals,
Lust and pain it conceals.
Death comes close
A final dose
Quickly now,
Become death`s ghost.