My heart aches, but not for you
For you nestle here beside me
Lying peacefully in my arms
Head resting on my chest
And I am in Heaven.
My heart aches, but at your presence
For I have never deserved you
I couldn’t have imagined
You could love me as you do
And yet you really do.
My heart aches, but for our parting
For I must go and yet may never
See your beloved face again
And my heart breaks in pieces
As now I leave this final time.
©Joe Wilson – My heart aches… 2014
I rise from my nice warm bed
and having made a morning drink
for my beloved wife, and one for me,
I run a bath.
As I luxuriate
in that warm bubbled water
I reflect on how lucky I am.
Later, washed and dressed for the day
I sit at the table and enjoy
a fine meal from God’s harvest
and again I reflect, and I feel…
guilt!
Guilt for the small children
who have no homes in which to feel safe
guilt that so many of them
will not eat again today.
I feel guilt
for all of the poor women around the globe
who will this very day give birth
to babies who they will surely love
but in whose having they had no choice…
no one ever hears their terrified voice.
Poor women beaten by poverty
who still struggle to feed those children
and yet too those who violate them so.
I feel guilt for all the men who cannot be made
to realise that the world is not theirs to design,
and at the way that some men feel
their own importance trumps all other considerations,
and guilt at all of the war ravaged lands.
And when I look down at the bounteous fare before me
I feel only one thing – shame.
©Joe Wilson – On reflection… 2014
This land has been robbed of all that it had
Nothing is left, even for the slick and the rich
Crumbling edifices to our capitalist greed
Our world no capacity now left for its need.
There were those amongst us who fought agin this
Imprisoned in jails within our own tortured selves
Not enough of us tried to stop the horrors we saw
Now nothing is left, our charade is no more.
Your fathers all fought in such bloody campaigns
There fathers too, and there fathers before
New weapons of destructive powers previously unheard
That slaughtered the innocent in ways cruelly absurd.
Buildings left standing with all inside dead
People didn’t matter, but the real estate did
And thus the corruption swept over the Earth
We were judged by our value but not by our worth.
It angers me now as I feel guilty shame
For I didn’t do enough and that makes me as them
And for you with the mess whatever is left
There’s a world that was rich and is now so bereft.
One thing is certain, save the wealth of the land
The one crucial thing that we never did foresee
Don’t go down the pathway of war-like inventions
Create things for peace and for better intentions.
Think in these ways and you may stand a chance
It’s a message I couldn’t ever iterate to much
War and corruption lie together in bed
Growing good crops gets communities fed.
©Joe Wilson – In mortal pain…2014
Things were very different in the Sixties
Everything was like new fresh breath
But this sad, true tale of my childhood
Is the tale of a friend’s early death.
Peter helped the Co-op grocers delivery-man
After he’d finished school for the day
He’d sit on an upturned milk crate
And they drove merrily along on their way.
He’d helped the man deliver for ages
It was what teenage boys would often do
But as the van took a corner in Rising Brook
Out to his sad fate Peter flew.
The van only had the single driver’s seat
No one else was supposed to be there
And the doors all slid back and stayed open
Safety wasn’t really thought about to be fair.
So out of the van my friend Peter flew
And fate treated him so very very cruel
He disappeared right under a passing bus
Right in front of the gates to his school.
My best friend was Harry, Peter’s brother
And for him everything changed on that day
I watched Harry wither before me
As his spirit of mischief flew away.
Just a few years later Harry drifted
I’ve not seen him from that day to now
But I hope he was able to find for himself
A way to survive the horror somehow.
I’ve not spoken of this since those dark days
and the flood of the memory is still raw
If only I could step back and warn him
My friend, please, please close the door.
By a sad twist of irony I lost my brother as well
He was struck down by the first ‘Asian Flu’
That memory hurts like a stab in the heart
I was twenty, he was just twenty-two.
©Joe Wilson – The cruel hand of fate…2014
Sadly, this is entirely true. Peter was killed falling under a bus in this manner and my brother was a recently married policeman who died of so-called ‘Asian Flu’ in 1970.
Jovis on a Journey... 