When I was a teenager, I didn’t just go through a dirty poetry phase, I also went through a standard poetry phase. Though this one lasted a bit longer, since it seems I was writing bad poetry up until my early 20s.

The reason I know this is because when I went through some old stuff at my parents last year I came across my poetry book. This, of course, is an A4 book filled with all my best poetry written out nicely. It even has a print out of a Dylan Thomas poem on the front. Because I have like… intellect.

I guess it was a way of expressing myself during the tumultuous teenage years, privately of course, because most of these I never shared. Most of it is amusing, much of it brings back bittersweet memories of a time I’d almost forgotten, and then there’s that tiny percentage that actually carry something more intense. Because every now and again, reading certain parts would expose a surge of leftover pain that still actually stings, in a distant far off kind of way that is the past.

So what better thing to do with this tragic writing I discovered than share some excerpts so you can enjoy the main themes of my teenage life:

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