Month: Jan 2016

Paradise reframed…

On By jovisgoesIn PoetryLeave a comment

Down long dark paths e’er wanders he in search of peace from woe. He travels on with troubled brow, his features etched with worry so. Solutions none can this man find, to ease his troubled soul, yet stills strides he down darkened paths, his searching now beyond control. And now within his mind he’s lost, he knows not where to turn. Those darkened paths are in his head, his mind’s in Hell, he’s sure he’ll burn.

But peace when finally it came, was not from thoughts inside, but when he faced the truth in death, his God was by his side. With surety he never felt, in life he’d been uncertain, beyond the worrying of man, was glory past that curtain.

©Joe Wilson – Paradise reframed…2016
(with apologies to John Milton 1608 – 1674)

It can be mended…

On By jovisgoesIn Poetry, romance1 Comment

Would that I could lift a heart
That’s fallen to the floor
That I could love and cherish it
For now and evermore.

Would that I could do that small thing
Before my frail heart breaks
Please let me do that caring thing
In love for both our sakes.

No words you need to utter here
Yet silent you’re torn apart
So I will bend and pick it up
And mend your broken heart.

©Joe Wilson – It can be mended…2016

An empty wardrobe…

On By jovisgoesIn PoetryLeave a comment

And so once more he looked at her, as he had so often before. He looked at her with love in his eyes as she walked right out of the door. She always said that she wouldn’t stay, but they met so long ago, that he never even thought of it. He just didn’t think she’d go.

And now he sits alone at night at a table set for one, her perfume lingers in the air but all her things are gone. The wardrobe now is not crammed full, her shoes no longer there. The mirrors and her hairbrush, nor even a single hair.

They’d argued many times before, such little tiny things. This time it couldn’t be resolved, the pain of it still stings. Neither one would yield at all, it then got out of hand. And bitter words then followed which neither could understand.

So thus it seemed that all this time their life had not been real, the things she thought she had once felt, she didn’t really feel. All the things she had at first, all the sense of thrill. She had to go she told him although she loved him still.

And so he waits for her return, in patient solitude. He said he’d always wait for her, whatever she pursued. But knocks on the door are infrequent and keys in the latch are none. He sadly, looks in the wardrobe and knows she will always be gone.

©Joe Wilson – An empty wardrobe…2016

A light to guide us…

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walking in moonlight

Shine bright moon
And light my way
I’ve travelled far
Since yesterday.

Through war-filled places
Where men do fight
Where children die
Such frightful sight.

I’ve crossed the seas
Where creatures swim
Whose only enemy
Is sadly him.

Him, the human
Killing machine
Who takes so much
It feels obscene.

And over lands
Where people starve
If we took less
Their pain might halve.

And into homes
Where children hurt
Where parents treat them
Just like dirt.

Dark street corners
Where women sell
As weep they try
To escape their Hell.

So shine bright moon
And light my way
Iniquities
Leave much to say.

And should I fail
Along the strive
Please light a path
For others to drive.

But there are those
Whose gentle soul
Has lit a beacon
As was their role.

For history’s filled
With souls like theirs
Whose aim in life
Was equal shares.

Yet sadly life
Treats them so ill
Their guiding path
Silent, still.

But guide the mean
Where e’er we find
To better ways
That are more kind.

Perhaps then we
Would feel so skilled
As lives as ours
Would be fulfilled.

So yes! Shine moon
And light their way
As they strive to chase
Such pain away…

©Joe Wilson – A light to guide us…2016

A young boy…

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And even now I feel her loving kiss
From times of childhood filled with this.
Yet days as those are so long gone
As now in aging I think the best
Of days of fun and play-filled zest
Such love felt by a mother’s son.
When Mother came and bid goodnight
And blessed us with a tender hug
That never was cast with a shrug
As final switch turned out the light.

©Joe Wilson – A young boy…2016
(Inspired by ‘Childhood by Washington Allston 1799-1843)

Growing up…

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Slowly she took a bite out of the peach she was holding
A small trickle of juice glistened on her little chin
She didn’t care, nor stopped to wipe it away
She just looked about her taking everything in.
And in that innocence I think I felt
All the years of joy that we had had
When watching our own two children grow
And the simple pleasure of just being dad.

Slowly they grow and make their own way
Out into the world of unknowing
To hopefully be happy and find that in life
Contentment comes from kindness you’re sowing.
And later perhaps they will understand
That money and wealth aren’t the thing
It’s simply observing your children
That will make a loving heart sing.

©Joe Wilson – Growing up…2016

Major Tom has gone Home…

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the thin white duke

 

 

…and over many, many years
He would magically entertain
From Ziggy to The Thin White Duke
To the fragile Aladdin Sane.
…and we have all been so enriched
In him was so much worth
To us he was just Bowie
Or The Man Who Fell To Earth…

©Joe Wilson – Major Tom has gone Home…2016

A whimsical journey through the night…

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How long the journey
Twixt night and day
How hard the nightmares
How tough the affray
Only exhaustion
Follows such nights
That are filled with such horrors
And such frightening sights.

Feeble the body
To sleep again fall
None of the previous
Horrors recall
Deep now the sleep
Peaceful the night
Resting this time
No frightful sights.

©Joe Wilson – A whimsical journey through the night…2016

of which there have been 24,312 others.

I remember Miss Havisham…

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In dust motes, her should-have-been trousseau now sat
She’d no heart to throw it away
It sat all forlorn by his unworn top hat
They held bitter memories of that awful day.

For five years they’d lived as husband and wife
In the end they decided to wed
They wanted to commit for the whole of their life
But to sorrow they committed instead.

The sun had been high on that beautiful day
And the sky was so bright and so blue
All had been perfect in that special way
But misfortune attended and away his life flew.

So lovely she’d looked as she stood outside church
He was so often late, no surprise
Then news made its way and she gave a slight lurch
She just crumbled before everyone’s eyes.

He’d been running to church, he was five minutes late
Dismissing the great surge in his chest
He fell to the ground in a terrible state
He’d be late now forever, his last breath expressed.

She has memories to keep to remember him by
And the daughter that they had both had
But the saddest of things, that will oft make her cry
Is her daughter’s soft spoken, ‘I so miss my Dad’.

©Joe Wilson – I remember Miss Havisham…2016

In the wilderness…

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His eyes stared into the darkness, searching
Loneliness was now complete and unforgiving
There was no one there – nor ever would be again

This choice he had taken for his sanity
He knew he was a man of two characters
One of them was a vicious and hard man.

In his saner moments he realised he was losing
But then, all brutal men are lost in a way.

He had been lost for such a long, long time.

Things, anything, just seemed to spark him off
He’d feel himself losing an inner battle
And then he was off again, ranting madly.
The red mist was before him before he knew it
Then he was out of control and so wild
And after — he was always so ashamed.

Thus he lived here in this cabin in the woods
In the wilds, alone, but with many friends
For the wild beasts never questioned his ways.
The wild ones kept him company during the day
And at night he would write or play his harp
Finally he believed he had found peace.
Here among the trees there was no one to provoke
Just a world of creatures going about doing what it took
What it took to stay alive and survive in the harshness.
When an animal got sick or broke a leg
Where they would let him he helped as he could
and the animals gradually got more friendly as time moved on.
He knew he had found his rightful place.
Losing his temper became a thing of a distant past
Visits to the wider world became fewer and fewer
He tended a little patch of crops and lived in peace.
He had found his Utopia and was at last truly satisfied.

©Joe Wilson – In the wilderness…2016