I have everything and yet nothing, nothing at all
I lie sometimes thinking and it’s you I recall
A smile here, a touch there, a moment for us
But perhaps not enough to even discuss
But though they’ve been few and a long time apart
They’ve imprinted you firmly into my heart.
©Joe Wilson – Everything and Yet Nothing 2014
He sat there, always looking out of a small round window
That could easily be a reflection of his tragic mind
Since the day he knew he’d been left on his own
It seemed like there was nothing in there left to find.
Every day from half-past eight and all day till five-past five
He sat immobile staring out, a sad look on his face
He’d never notice anyone, nor speak a single word
He’d sit there never stirring from his lonely lonely place.
He may have wondered where they’d gone, for they looked after him
But his parents, both of them now dead, had done their very best
Now here he was at fifty-three, an only child yet still
Just left to stare through windows, in old pyjama bottoms and vest.
He’ll be swallowed up by the system, and churned back out to the street
He’ll wander about in his own little world, and we won’t understand
He’ll be doing his best with what he knows and what he tries to follow
But our complex welfare system just won’t deal with his demands.
©Joe Wilson – An Inadequate System 2014
Coffee has now all gone
Beans will thus need grinding
Dryness present in my mouth
More than adequate reminding.
©Joe Wilson – An Essential for a Happy Life 2014
To toast the official opening
Of our village Millennium Green
Twelve of us went on a journey
To see sights we’d never seen.
With a degree of apprehension
We were all of one accord
With an enormous basket that was attached
To a hot-air balloon we all got on board.
Whooshhh was the noise from the burner
As the pilot lifted up off the ground
But then as we rose up much higher
It was done with nary a sound.
Slowly we drifted Westwards
Then moving slightly to the South
A dozen brave souls in a basket
Gazed at landscapes with open mouth.
Stafford Castle was way down below us
Then the motorway passed by under too
We soon headed away then from Stafford
And quickly Cannock Chase came into view.
We spotted some fallow deer grazing
Some of them sitting as to retire
Then the pilot again fired the burner
And lifted the basket up much higher.
Finally we reached the maximum height
That we were allowed to reach
Four thousand four hundred and eighty feet
A specific height that our balloon couldn’t breech.
It was then that I saw with amazement
While the evening sun shone at our side
A passenger liner flew up through the clouds
It was a beautiful sight which no-one denied.
And did I get such a fabulous picture
Well of course not, I was too much in awe
By the time I had swung round my camera
A tailplane and the sight was no more.
We were coming to the end of our journey
I thought seeing the plane was the peak
But then we saw Lichfield Cathedral
With its three spires that make it unique.
The experience will always stay with me
Of an evening with a view from above
As we floated about in the heavens
Over countryside in the county I love.
©Joe Wilson – A View from Above 2014
‘August 2000 on a Friday evening in glorious sunshine, the balloon
lying in a heap on Derrington Millennium Green in Staffordshire, UK,
gradually began to fill with air as the pilot and his assistant slowly
pulled at it to allow air into all the creases. Suddenly it stood up
and drifted up into the air, though it was still tethered in four places
to the ground. I had no idea they were so big or so tall.’ ©Joe Wilson2014
Fears of life
Fears of death
Fears of future
Last drawn breath.
©Joe Wilson – Fears 2014
I lie naked and exposed my pride revealed
My vulnerable spirit is in view
The warrior stands before me now
His lance is set to pierce me through.
I do have one trick up my sleeve
As he readies himself for attack
He moves in to kill and his gizzards are mine
And I drive in the dagger hidden at my back.
Why do I have these violent dreams…
As if I am part of a past so bad
Waking each night with my silent screams
The realness of it driving me mad.
It’s possible that this is all part of the dream
And that what I have written is not real
And when the warrior comes for me again this night
I’ll forget to defend against the cold of his steel.
©Joe Wilson – Vulnerable Paranoia 2014
Writhing against the binding
From weights on my feet I sink
The pain in my chest is blinding
As I struggle for air and to think.
I could have been a much better person
But I wasn’t and I find myself here
I’ll be sitting by Davy Jones locker
Drowned, it’s been one of my fears.
I’m almost at bottom of the ocean
In front of my name they’ll write ‘late’
And because I was always a ‘bad ‘un’
With Old Nick I now have a d…
©Joe Wilson – A Weighty Problem 2014
The image appeared in Punch 10 December 1892
The Juggernaut that is life marches on
Never stopping for the stragglers on the way
Those less able to cope with the speed of it all
Get further disheartened every day.
But we set up a system to help them
It’s the bureaucracy that now runs our lives
And you get yourself sucked right inside it
Trying to wrestle with the rules it contrives.
But the vulnerable still struggle daily
With the system’s strange hoops we jump through
It’s as if it’s made complex on purpose
And it feels like your feet are in glue.
I’ve a neighbour who can never get out much
And she’s old and not too well off
So she has to decide if to eat or stay warm
And no heating is bad for her cough.
In the end what you find is the Juggernaut
Is the system itself and its weight
With its efforts to grind down the people
And an appetite we just can’t sate.
©Joe Wilson – The Juggernaut 2014
The old house had finally decided to die
It has threatened to fall down for years
It had seen men arguing in the Civil War
Who’d not returned to the house any more
Who’d left wives and a vale of tears.
It’s being picked at by experts who are looking
For evidence of hideaways in the attic
A Cavalier scallywag had once hidden in the roof
When questioned by Roundheads the owners were aloof
They were then lectured by Puritans didactic.
For many years the farmland round its boundary
Had fed cattle of all sorts and colour
There’d been Jerseys and Guernseys for decades
The last century even saw milkmaids
Now it’s Gloucesters ’cause there bodies are fuller.
But it’s coming down now and it won’t be the same
The park all around here has changed
Huge estates of new houses of characterless hue
So many now needed for me and for you
But designed by a mind that’s deranged.
©Joe Wilson – The Old Manor 2014
Dead of night
Face so white
Looking through the curtain.
Scared to death
Short of breath
I cannot be certain.
Disappears
Not the fears
Outside lights should show.
Turn them on
It has gone
Footprints in the snow!!
©Joe Wilson – Terror 2014
Jovis on a Journey... 