Up Here
By Jacob, Year 10
When I’m up here
On a stage up here
Front of the crowd. Community
Time to solo. Time to decorate
‘Today’ by the Smashing Pumpkins, kinda electric
My fingers scraping against the steel strings! Replacing my skin with new tissue
‘21st Century Schizoid Man’, the feeling of jazz racing through my veins. A sense of freedom
Performance has ended. The feeling of being a rock star still fresh in my mind
When it’s all said and done
When the dopamine is all gone
And my new established freedom is torn out of my soul
Anxiety sets in
For what I could have done better
For what I could have done different
The feeling of failure
No more stage
More more crowd
No more solos
No more decorating
No more scraping my fingers against the strings
No more sense of freedom
No more feeling like a rock star
No more dopamine
No more happiness
Uselessness…
This poem, Up Here, by Jacob is an excerpt from Postcode Stories 2747. Throughout 2024, Story Factory worked with the students at Cambridge Park High School to produce a collection of stories and poems about place and belonging. From fantasy prose to poetic memoir, the students’ musing and individual approaches to storytelling demonstrate their highly personal connections to place. Their words are proudly published in the final book, Postcode Stories.
Postcode Stories was supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
