Letter to my 16 year old self

LETTER TO MY 16 YEAR OLD SELF.
 

What exactly is it I would tell my younger self? 

Looking back with the knowledge I now possess.

I'd say it's time to make that choice Bernie. Which way will you go?

Those voices within urging you no longer to acquiesce.

You're 16 going on 46 and that was old then.

Don't go with those who would suffocate you in obedience.

Your inheritance was a huge fissure running right through you

Which has left you with the debatable gift of prescience. 

Every parents' evening you could write what teachers would say.

"Keep your son away from the likes of Johnson, Kearsley and Platt."

You would be forced into going along with what they wanted.

But then, in school, you'd choose to forget and pinch J.P. Leigh's hat.

There was nothing nasty, it was teenagers having fun.

All you read, heard and talked about was sex, drugs and rock and roll.

You all wanted to be part of that - fat chance living in Leigh.

Stuck as it was in the fifties still cutting hair round a bowl.

I'd be telling you "make the most of the year you turned sixteen."

You should be feeling blessed that you are living through such great times.

England won the World Cup, the Beatles changed music forever.

Youth challenged, rebelled, exposed the administration's fault lines.

Bestie was about to lead United to the promised land

But a seriousness underpinned everything you did.

Your battle was within, nature winning out over nurture

Casting off the cloak of blood line pressures keeping you a kid.

You were aware that everything worth something is transient.

Hendrix would be dead in four years, Lennon shot dead in fourteen.

You wanted those you admired to carry on with their protests

Not to join the landowning rock gentry, almost a has been.

I'd warn you that even your family isn't meant to last 

That those you should be closest to will be those who let you down.

Be careful of those who would seek to be friends or maybe more.

People hide behind the metaphorical masks of a clown.

But what you needed to realise more than anything else

Was that underneath the grease and spots was someone attractive

Look in the mirror, see beyond the reflection coming back.

Even more beyond those you have spent your first 16 years with.

The holiday in Italy should've been your realisation.

From amongst those teenage boys Ornella Verago chose you.

Your time spent together was resented. The last night you kissed

Then the lights went out but the road was there to a life anew.