Blog 15 October 2008-10-16

 

The following is a poem written by a fourteen-year-old boy shortly before he committed suicide. The relevance is that NLP-plus are running a one day workshop on Self Harm at the Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury on 22 November (details on training page) and suicide can be a consequence of this sad phenomenon. 

 

Please consider the words carefully and if you have anything you would like to add on this fascinating subject please feel free to contribute.  If you are a carer, schoolteacher or counsellor anyone wishing to broaden awareness and understanding this workshop is a must.  If you have been affected in anyway and would like to contribute we would also like to hear from you. I know not the source of the poem so apologise for not being able to credit it. I am also aware of grammatical errors and strange punctuation but I have copied what I believe to be the original version as faithfully as possible to preserve the authenticity of the author and their message.

 

BB

 

He always wanted to explain things but no one cared so he drew

 

Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn’t anything

He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky

And it would be the only sky and the things in him

That needed saying

 

And it was after that he drew the picture

It was a beautiful picture. He kept it under his pillow and would

let no one see it

And he would look at it every night and think about it

And when it was dark and his eyes were closed he could see it still

And it was all of him and he loved it

 

When he started school he brought it with him

Not to show anyone but just to have it with him like a friend

 

It was funny about school

He sat at a square brown desk like all the other desks and he

It would be red

And his room was a square brown room like all the other rooms

And it was tight and close. And stiff.

 

He hated to hold the pencil and chalk with his arm still and his feet

Still flat on the floor, Still, with the teacher watchibg and watching.

 

The teacher came and spoke to him.

She told him to to wear a tie like all the other boys.

He said he didn’t like them and she said it didn’t matter.

After that they drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt

about morning.

And it was beautiful.

 

The teacher came and smiled at him.

‘What’s this?’ she said

‘Why don’t you draw something like Kens’ drawing?’

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

After that  his mother bought him a tie and he always drew aeroplanea and rocket ships like everyone else.

 

And he threw the old picture away.

 

And when he lay out alone looking at the sky, it wasn’t big and blue, and all of everything, but he wasn’t anymore.

 

He was square and brown inside and his hands were stiff. And he was like everyone else. All the things inside him that needed saying didn’t need it anymore

It had stopped pushing. It was crushed

Stiff.

Like everything else

 

 

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