Happiness Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do
(from This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin)

Oh why couldn’t I
have had a difficult childhood?
A mother who drank. A father
who locked himself away
in his study all day.

I could have spent my life
trying to impress them. Hoping
they’d notice me. It would, I’m sure,
have made me try harder
than I’ve ever had to.

I would have been a better writer, too,
and there would be
a woe-is-me theme running through
my poetry which I’d be both
praised and criticised for.

When I wasn’t shut away in my study
with a bottle of booze and a laptop
I could be a solitary figure
stepping out from the shadows
to shout at the sea.

Oh Mum and Dad, why
were you always so good to me?


Sea Here