Sunday, July 6th, 2008
From a distance the colours of my
face merge to one.
The imperfections of a
self-consciously imperfect whole
fade to grey.
Ironic? I want everyone to
see me from a distance,
In my hope that I might
find someone to hold me
up close.
Sunday, July 6th, 2008
The clinical sense of despair.
That look - the silent, reserved pity.
Nurses smiling -
Why?
Feeling guilty just for being OK
When he’s there, in that bed. Dead.
Except his chest still moves up and down
If you’d notice that.
Cause he’s jerking and he’s
fighting to get back on his feet.
And his eyes are opening and
shutting as he’s trying to see
the light.
But he’s in some bed
in some strange place
With no one at his side.
And he can’t understand why.
He can’t understand why.
And we’re here
Next to that same bed.
And deep down everyone knows the bed
is empty.
Just no one can understand why.
No one can understand why.
There’s been this song in my
head now for weeks.
And I don’t know what it is
but it’s beautiful for sure.
And it’ll mean more to me than
anything I’ll ever hear.
And it was real.
But is it still? Did it ever
really happen?
My head is filled with
this music.
Every time I close my eyes
my ears are opened.
Maybe it’s him writing one
last song.
I don’t know.
I’m just scared I’m already starting
to forget
how that song went.
And it was real.
But is it still? Did it ever
really happen?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
The following is my Advanced Higher English dissertation. For anyone who is interested it is 4,499 words in length. The maximum limit being 4,500 
In the books Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, how effectively do the writers present convincing dystopias, extrapolating our current behaviour in order to warn of how this behaviour could lead to an inauspicious future?
These novels are two of the most famous examples of literary dystopias, each providing their own varying, yet equally undesirable predictions of the future. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, published in 1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War, looks to the then future 1984, and predicts a society of complete government control in the absence of any personal liberty – a society where everyone is under constant surveillance and scrutiny, not just of their actions but crucially also of their thoughts. The world he presents, though extreme for having predicted it in such a relatively close future, is realistically terrifying and warns more vividly than perhaps any other book: change, or else this is how the world may end up.
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