Lost…

On 2 Sep 20142 Sep 2014 By jovisgoesIn Illness, Loss, old age, PoetryLeave a comment

He sits very still in concentration
In his search for the memory within
And he lets his mind go wandering free
As he looks for the answer to what will be
And then he spots it and grasps the thought
The only solution, his last resort
So finally he looks out of his eyes
To see the problem that his brain denies
He can now remember how to climb the stairs
But chooses instead to sit in one of the chairs
The answer has all but flown away
The stairs will wait for another day
And later with the thought completely gone
He no longer remembers there ever was one.

©Joe Wilson – Lost… 2014

Tick tock…

On 13 Aug 2014 By jovisgoesIn Family, Illness, Loss, Love, Personal, Poetry, Terror2 Comments

Tick tock tick tock

Moments passed
Nothing.

Tick tock tick tock

No single thought could fill his mind other than the fact
that he was in his house alone, that and the fact
that he was having a heart attack and there was no phone.

Tick tock tick tock

The pain was unbearable but nothing like as bad
as the thought that filled his head at that moment
the thought of never seeing his beloved wife or children again.
The thought of never sharing a private moment before sleeping
and always seeming to be holding hands as they wake.

Tick tock tick tock

Please! Somebody please!!

I don’t believe in you, but please help me
I don’t believe in you, but please help me

If you are there please help me. Please!

Tick tick tick tock tick tick tick tock
Tick tick tick tock tick tick tick tock
Tick tick tick tock tick tick tick tock

Tick tick tick t

©Joe Wilson – Tick tock 2014

This is a familiar but fortunately infrequent feeling,
but with luck and good management I always have a phone with me.

Angela called – again…

On 11 Aug 201425 Aug 2014 By jovisgoesIn Illness, old age, Personal, Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Angela called again today
this time she was borne in the wind
she tore away at my heart again
she certainly is no friend.

the pain travelled right up through my neck
then made its way down my arm
there is nothing at all about Angela
that I could call an endearing charm.

So then I got the big guns out
my nitro-lingual spray
I sprayed the devil right under my tongue
till slowly Angela flew away.

I’ve had the attack, the by-pass too
a long time ago plus a day
and I guess that the odd call from Angela
Is really such a small price to pay.

©Joe Wilson – Angela called – again 2014

My Children

On 10 Aug 201410 Aug 2014 By jovisgoesIn Family, Illness, Life, Love, Personal, Poetry, Time2 Comments

Daphne & I, and our children. Our son was on holiday from New Zealand and our daughter was up from London.

The dark night now surrounds me
I am all alone in my world
There is no one here distracting
I am thinking now of my girl.

I was always such a lucky man
I have children, one and two
Last year I almost lost my son
This year my daughter too.

My son had a head-on collision
Almost twelve thousand miles away
But now almost eighteen months later
He is now fully back into play.

But my daughter, my beautiful daughter
Chemo treatment made her go bald
But she’s back on the upside now smiling
I weep when her bravery’s recalled.

Of course she will still need some treatment
But she’s better, and we’re now almost cool
And I know by the end of her kid’s holidays
She’ll not need a headscarf for school.

I think of my son, I think of my girl
I’m grateful my luck has been fine
For if I was to lose either one of them
I just couldn’t finish this last line……….

©Joe Wilson – My Children 2014

I’ve written this because it is bursting out of my chest.

Difficult conversations

On 6 Jul 2014 By jovisgoesIn Family, Illness, Loss, Love, old age, PoetryLeave a comment

One in three people over 65 will develop dementia and there is currently no cure. GETTY IMAGES — One in three people over 65 will develop dementia and there is currently no cure.
GETTY IMAGES

Wizened by the hardships of his life
he moved his tired old body to the edge,
it took him longer to get out of his bed
these days, but get up he would
for if there was one thing he had learnt
it was that time spent in bed was time
lost in the fields and the crops didn’t pick
themselves, of that he thought he was sure,
though he couldn’t quite remember why.

He sometimes wished that he had not been
so adamant about farming in the old way
– a bit of that confounded modern machinery
would sure help sometimes as digging potatoes
across all those acres was hard work and he’d
been doing it for so long he was beginning to
hate the blasted things – he certainly
never ate them, preferring instead to eat all
his food from cans as a way of getting his
own back on some other poor so and so
who probably hadn’t broken his back
at harvest time for sixty years.

Dad – Dad – it’s Tom , Dad, your son, never mind
Dad, perhaps you’ll remember me later. It’s alright.
What potatoes? – It’s alright Dad, let’s sit here
and you can tell me – no please – please Dad,
don’t cry – please don’t cry. I know Dad
I miss Mum too. I wish I could explain Dad
I really do.

Why does this horrible man always keep me from my work,
I’ve got tomatoes – – potatoes to pick, tomatoes, potatoes,
well I’ve got to pick them anyway. Why should I sit down?
Tell you about what? I’m not going to tell a stranger
where my potatoes are, or is it tomatoes? I’m not sure now.
I must sleep – I’ve got lots to do, I must be fresh when I start.

Dad – Dad – you sleep now then. I’ll just be in the next room. Perhaps
– perhaps we’ll talk a bit later. I miss you Dad………….

©Joe Wilson – Difficult conversations 2014

My life less ordinary

On 4 Jul 2014 By jovisgoesIn Family, Friendship, Fun, Illness, Love, Personal, Poetry, Point of ViewLeave a comment

As the years go flying past
you realise just how much
your perspective changes and
when I now look back at how
things were I realise that far
from having had an uneventful life
mine has been one so full and rich
with love and laughter that I wonder
that there was time for it all to fit.

How we laughed as we left the wedding reception
and all those ‘old fogeys’ and drove away
to enjoy our honeymoon together – alone!
and how we loved each other finding fun in
all that we did together, sometimes
just looking at each other – and how
highly amused we were by the ‘jobs-worth’
car-park attendant by our hotel who stuck his hand out
the moment we crossed his threshold and said
“ten pee please”, he did it every time we went
there, often just to hear him say it again, and
how beautiful you looked in that dress that was
covered in the lovely cherry design. I think
everybody else loved you too.

How wonderful the mead tasted as we sat by the
pub fire in a place we’d never before heard of
never letting go of each others hands for a minute
and how the regulars who treated us so nicely
must have thought we were a bit bonkers.

The joys in raising our beloved children and
the intertwining pain of watching them sometimes
get a little hurt along the way, but our always
being there to help them find their own right solutions
has helped weave a rich tapestry through our lives.
The times when you want to take their pain and
make it your own – but can’t, the smile on their faces
and their laughter as they play with friends and
of course the grumpy expressions as they rail against
doing homework and tidying things like bedrooms. But
what pride we felt at their achievements along the way.

And now they too are married, one on a beach
under a lovely blue sky on the other side
of the world, and one in a most beautiful
church in our capital city. We spend such a
lot of time laughing with our grandchildren,
they are so very clever, and so funny – and
they just make us feel so young again.

Illness – illness!! Now there’s an unfortunate
word, one that has been used in our lives rather
more often than we would like. My wife has been ill,
survived and can still love and laugh. I have too,
but I can still love and laugh. Our children are not
unscathed either from this darker part of growing older,
and yet they too still happily love and laugh very much
and with all their hearts. Illness really is just
a small percentage of our time here.

So now when I reflect on my life I realise that
far from being ordinary I have been very lucky
indeed to have taken part in a life that has overflowed
with love and fun and laughter and only the occasional
sadness and it’s then that we help each other through
to the other side of it. It turns out the fact is
there has been nothing ordinary about my life at all.

And I’ll not be bowing out yet – not yet

©Joe Wilson – My life less ordinary 2014

He became hungry

On 26 Jun 2014 By jovisgoesIn Illness, PoetryLeave a comment

poor-people — I wonder what he was before he became poor and hungry!

It was the being hungry that drove him as he carefully sorted through
the broken and rotting detritus that was left by me and you
he rarely found a full bag, nor ever an item that was clean
for people dispose of rubbish in disgusting ways that he used to find obscene.

He’d walked with his head held high once
– another time in the past
But a fear of the crowded, noisy hospital wards
– had shown itself at last.

He found that he couldn’t cope with the pain in the now far distant eyes
of the people who recently lost loved ones and their pleas and desperate cries.

He took off his white jacket and walked out of the ward one day
and try as he did he was never able to go back there again.

He still read books as he wanted to seem to himself at least to be trying
but it was all so many years ago and these days the hunger pain stung
and though he’d only had his street skills he had somehow survived
despite the cancer inside him that was even now eating away at his lung.

When he had enough bits that he could once again call a meal
he slipped away from the others in the street to find a quiet spot
for the one thing that he had learned almost straight away
is that anyone – anyone – will steal what little bit you’ve got.

He was used now to seeing dead bodies – as other street people died
from hunger and disease and other times – just from being alone
some of the older ones always seemed weak and so fragile
and in winter they’d often end up frozen – frozen to the bone.

The days were getting shorter now and he often felt very insecure
he knew that his lungs were getting much worse and cold would weaken them badly
the winter would bring his last days this time as he struggled so hard to cope
he’d never expected to die on the street but he’d do it now quite gladly.

Some Choose Suicide

On 11 Jun 20144 Jul 2016 By jovisgoesIn Illness, Loss, Poetry, Point of View, Regret5 Comments

Vincent Van Gogh Old Man in Sorrow (May 1890) — Vincent Van Gogh
Old Man in Sorrow
(May 1890)

Cast down beneath a waterfall of sorrow
Begging to know if there will be a tomorrow
While sinking into a morass of self-doubt
Unable to see if there’s a possible way out.

The voices one hears have so many sharp edges
Some driven right down to jump of high ledges
While ghouls stand around to share an excitement
Victims themselves, their lack of enlightenment.

The last-minute thoughts of where life was breached
A finality of purpose is sadly now reached
One step and it ends and the pain goes away
There’ll be no more living and no more next day.

What causes some people to end things this way
That last final action that takes all away
Perhaps it’s our failure, we’re not watching out
We get wrapped up in our life and don’t hear their shout.

There isn’t a person whose life ends this way
Who’s not shown the signs of unhappiness’ sway
But we’re blind to their problems, we don’t want to know
As blithely we miss all the pain that they show.

It’s only much later when it’s far far too late
When notices come with a church service date
That we express surprise and say ‘course we will come’
But the signs were all there, we were just far too dumb.

Locked-in here

On 30 May 201430 May 2014 By jovisgoesIn Illness, PoetryLeave a comment

he could see the nurses moving round
as they fussed about his bed
he could hear each word they spoke of him
as if he was already dead
and yet they knew he was alive
or why would he still be there
he’d already be burnt to ash and dust
and been stuck on a mantle somewhere.

it was odd the way that it started
he was walking home from work one day
his legs just started to feel very strange
then he collapsed as they both fell away.

he was rushed to the emergency hospital
where his condition had got better each day
but suddenly he went into a spasm
that ended with him lying here today.

locked-in syndrome he heard one doctor
say to a colleague talking over his bed
and while they were wondering about him
he silently screamed in his head.

all the things they were saying were scaring
and he couldn’t tell them what he knew
he felt lost and alone and so frightened
but about it there was nothing he could do.

he’s been lying like that for six months now
they’ve assisted his breathing as well
but they don’t chat as if he’s not there though
and to him that now feels worse than hell.

he stopped breathing

CRASH

they started his breathing this morning
but they’re worried that he’s getting frail
and inside his head he’s still screaming
and weeping though no-one can tell.