Disco Dancing

Our throats burn with shots of neat, cheap vodka,

our mouths sticky with the tequila rose we use to chase it.

We are the generation drinking to forget.

Forget the people who hurt us, forget ourselves,

forget that our brains are trying to kill us,

forget the world is ending.

Forget our desires to be extraordinary and our heart-breaking mediocrity.

Forget we are scared of the dark, scared of men, scared of dying.

Drinks are split six ways as we dance the self-conscious two step,

Shouting lyrics at the sweaty ceilings when we can’t contain ourselves any longer.

Fluorescent Adolescence, the soundtrack to our lives,

Slags and fishnets and all our daft dreams drifting up to meet the LED skyline,

As our sense of self is replaced with neat spirits. 

Only now we are free.

Two steps replaced by the tossing of hair and slow rolls of the hips,

We hate ourselves for snogging but we hate ourselves for not.

We overshare because therapy is too expensive,

And pray they won’t remember in the morning.  

We hold hands, clasping one another in the tide, trying to hold our friends up out of the water.

When we smile, we mean it, but we are drowning none the less.

We are tired, but if we stop,

We have to go back to our lives,

Lives where the world is ending, and we are poor.

Lives where we are afraid.

So we keep dancing, holding our friends above water,

Knocking back shots and laughing for no particular reason.

• Ellis May