On The Ways You Learn To Dance Poem by Paul Brookes

Setting out into the world we have pictures in our heads,
great loves and romances, the prince on the charger.

we look for love, sometimes, in fact most times, in the wrong places.
we follow as if a route set out by our parents,
for they are our pattern, our template.

we learn by rote the ways of the dance,
but what if the dance is wrong, the steps crooked,
do we search out the wrong ones, for that is what we have learned?
those that will hurt us, to follow the in our parents dance
of violence and blood, love and pain.
,
too late or soon enough we learn a lesson, both painful and hard
yet freeing, realising that we are not our mother or father
and to learn the steps to a new dance, breaking the cycle
only then can you become free and begin a dance of our own choosing.