Before journaling was a therapeutic app and sad boys had podcasts, there were notebooks. Looseleaf. Frayed. Probably pilfered from the school supply shelf at Woolworths. You didn’t write in them to go viral. You wrote in them to survive.
This is another dispatch from the emotionally radioactive wasteland that was my late 1980s diary—where metaphors raged, hormones surged, and every girl I loved lived entirely in my imagination.
These are not vigilante verses. These are something different. Sadder. Softer. Sharper in places I didn’t expect.
The premise is simple; I post my old diary pages – like a jerk – we read them together. I, Anthony, will comment on my younger self’s life, Tony, cause (again) I am a jerk.
Page 1: “Loneliness Unending”
Black ink. Big feelings. No brakes.
Loneliness unending soon takes its toll
Amidst my frustration I give up my soul
Now here I lay, a tattered shell
A Hero forgotten, a mere story to tell.
Searching the World for some miracle Cure,
An Angel to love me, Unblemished and pure.
Wandering the streets, ashamed and alone
To waste countless hours awake by the phone.
Now my blindness is gone, I look at this World
Towards the thick of the night my emotions I hurl –
“Thus if a kiss on the lips from Reality be Taken
Would a Saint be a Sinner and a dreamer awaken…”
Anthony:
You ever write something so dramatic it makes you laugh… and then you realize, oh, wait—this was me trying to survive?
That’s this poem.
I wasn’t playing dress-up in tragedy. I was just sad. And alone. And convinced that if I said it fancy enough, maybe it wouldn’t feel so pathetic. “A tattered shell”? “A Hero forgotten”? I hadn’t done anything heroic. I just got stood up at the arcade and needed to pretend it meant something.
The line about the angel—that whole “Unblemished and pure” thing—I wish I could say I didn’t mean it. But I did. I thought love was salvation. That if someone saw me, really saw me, it would fix everything. That’s the kind of thinking that makes you a great poet… and a terrible boyfriend.
And the closer? “Would a Saint be a Sinner and a dreamer awaken…” It sounds deep, but honestly, I was just begging the world to give me a reason to get out of bed. And trying to make it rhyme.
Anthony (sidebar): This line—“Would a Saint be a Sinner and a dreamer awaken…”—is the earliest seed of the phrase “dreamer awakened.” Years later, it’d become the name I used online, in emails, screen names, journals. It started right here, in the margins of a notebook no one else was supposed to read. It became “dreamerawoken@gmail.com”, “dreamerawoken@hotmail.com”, “dreamerawoken@yahoo.com” ad-nauseum…
Page 2: “The Hands of Time”
AKA “Ode to Sleep, The Wrong Kind.”
The hands of time
Cold knives of despair,
Slashing the day, Cherishing the night.
I and loneliness, an infinite affair.
Wander the city, distressed and ashamed
The day goes by, shadows fall
Romance is made with a lover unnamed.
Two stand in the room
Embrace and kiss. Murmur solemn vows
The Pen and The Paper, lovers unmarred
Poems, no value. A Void my songs arouse.
I Fall…
Sleep. (The type not preferred…)
It’ll do, for now…
Anthony:
If this poem had a soundtrack, it’d be Disintegration by The Cure playing on cassette as you ride a city bus at 10pm, head against the window, raindrops tracking your face like emotional subtitles.
But let’s talk about that metaphor: the pen and paper as lovers. I wasn’t just expressing myself—I was basically slow dancing with a spiral notebook and calling it intimacy.
Still, the line “Poems, no value” hits hard. Even then, I knew none of this was saving me. But it was all I had. So I kept scribbling in the dark, hoping some part of it would matter to someone—even if that someone was just future me.
Page 3: “Hello Doctor”
Red ink. Half stand-up, half breakdown.
Hello Doctor.
I’d like your advice. (Of course for free.)
You see I’m a writer. At least I think…
All of life’s troubles embodied in me.
Finding happiness a Chinese meal
Loneliness a fruit unending –
Traveling lovers, Yet having none…
Losing touch in life, in a void I’m descending
A writer trapped within my truth
Scrolls of old paper store my stolen youth
To end this Urge
To join society, I’d gladly do.
But my only Key through the door is broken –
I’m not drinking as much as I should.
Anthony:
This one’s got jokes—until it doesn’t. It starts like a bit from a cynical stand-up routine and ends like a confession scrawled on a bathroom mirror.
“Finding happiness a Chinese meal” is such a weirdly Bronx metaphor. Quick, greasy, and supposedly filling—but give it an hour and you’re empty again. That’s what they used to say about MSG, right? That you’d be starving again before Jeopardy! ended. It fits. I was chasing joy that didn’t stick, meals that didn’t nourish, girls who didn’t know I existed.
And that last line? That’s not comedy. That’s pain dressed up in sarcasm.
Page 4: “Your Last Romantic”
Green ink. Hallmark card meets Tina Turner karaoke.
I write a poem every time I think of you…
Hope and pray that my loving words may let
some light shine through
And we all know that time has changed our ways
While others enjoy the pleasures of sin,
I can’t help but think of those glory days…
I’m your last Romantic
A lover of Love
And to have you I ask the Heavens above…
I’m your last Romantic,
A soul from the past
Through sweet and through sorrow
Our love shall last…
So although my poems may not seem like much –
Or before have you heard songs as such.
Anthony:
Good lord. This is what happens when you write a love poem to a girl who doesn’t know you exist… while humming “Private Dancer” like it’s your personal theme song.
And calling yourself “the last romantic”? That’s the literary equivalent of showing up to prom in a trench coat with a rose and no date. I wasn’t in love. I was auditioning for love. Like I thought being tragic and poetic was a personality. Like maybe someone would see me brooding near a window and think, “Wow, that boy probably owns candles.”
The truth is, I wrote this to the beat of a stripper anthem and didn’t even realize it. It’s less love poem, more emotional interpretive dance performed in fingerless gloves. I was just out here selling feelings like a sad little street busker with a rhyming dictionary.
And yet… I meant it. All of it. Every cringe line. Every overwritten metaphor. Because when you’re that age and that lonely, even bad poetry feels sacred. So yeah—mock it, roast it, put it on a T-shirt. But don’t pretend it didn’t come from somewhere real.
Thanks for making it this far.
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Genex Geek 
Sir, you have my deepest respect. The fact your 80s diaries made it to the 21st century is AMAZING and I wish I’d had the foresight to keep my own. Thanks for sharing these pages. Youth always enters the age of reason with an incredible lack of it, a strong emotional glaze that causes the drama dial to go well past eleven. Still. To be able to look back at what that was like through the pages of your diary is a gift. Thank you!
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Thank you. I was/am considering archiving them all here – but it may be just too cringe. I hadn’t looked at them in many years.
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