Category: Illness

Not Gone

On By jovisgoesIn Illness, Loss, Love, PoetryLeave a comment

grief

A whisper of your perfume fills my senses
And once again I’m dropped to my knees
The thought runs right through me like a shiver
And I stop as I feel my heart freeze.

I can’t go on like this much longer
You’ve gone and I’m now on my own
My heart’s full of pain I can barely endure
The loss of you aches through my bones.

I find myself in all of our old haunts
Thinking of you and your loving smile
Imagining that you’re here by my side once again
Gives me strength, but just for a short while.

I’m now standing here in front of this dark stone
With your name engraved on it in gold
With our sad little boy who now holds onto my hand
And I’m forced to remain so controlled.

His poor little face looks so sad and so pale
Such tears that have burnt onto his face
His pain from the knowing that you’ll never return
That you’ve gone to a far different place.

Your presence though is yet still within me
I can sense that you’re all around now
To me you’re not here beneath this cold dark stone
You will never be here in the ground.

 

©Joe Wilson – Not Gone 2014

‘Walter’

On By jovisgoesIn Illness, PoetryLeave a comment
Albert Fish, born 1870, the Brooklyn Vampire
Albert Fish, born 1870, the Brooklyn Vampire, an example of a ‘Walter’.

Walter never understood what he had done wrong
In his head he heard only a sad haunting song
He sat in the courtroom as he had been bidden
All sense of the seriousness from him was hidden.

His mother had left him when he was but a child
His father he’d not known, they said he was wild
And to the children’s home where he had been placed
He was often returned after some strange disgrace.

To him it was natural, he liked to trap rats
And later dissect them, and the dogs, and some cats
But the thrill of small creatures was beginning to bore
So he turned then to people, once one, then lots more.

They followed him willingly when he offered the treat
Of a room in his house as opposed to the street
Then he drugged them and tied them as they lay asleep
And cut them to pieces just like he did sheep.

His total was forty as far as they could tell
They had come to his house because of the smell
He’d eaten some of them and the taste was so good
And Walter was especially fond of the blood.

Now here he sat quietly for the jury to see
This ‘disgusting murderer’ who ate people for tea
And he hummed the strange song that he heard in his head
Wondering who he could eat before going to bed.

Each day when they finished he was taken away
And locked in a small room so he couldn’t stray
And it never occurred to him that he had done wrong
As he sat and he rocked and he hummed his sad song.

 

©Joe Wilson – ‘Walter’ 2014
Like most people I’ve had the good fortune never to encounter a ‘Walter’, but I have had an interest in criminology for many years. I do hope the subject matter and poem doesn’t upset or offend anybody. ©Joe Wilson – ‘Walter’ 2014

An Inadequate System

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Illness, Loss, Love, Poetry, Point of View, politicalLeave a comment

can-stock-photo_csp16531921

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

1914 – We call It Wipers

On By jovisgoesIn heroes, Illness, Poetry, political, War, WildlifeLeave a comment

ypres field guns 1914

Mud goes so stiff as it dries on the clothes
And it gets in the rifles and ammo
And men live in the mud for day after day
And they die there as the death tolls just grow.

The lads call it Wipers, but we know it’s called Ypres
And we don’t know the language but know mud
And the massive field guns that are firing this way
Causing lots of men to stay here for good.

In two months I’ve not heard the sound of a bird
With the fighting and dying you don’t listen
But I saw a dead blackbird lying out in the mud
And memories of home made my eyes glisten.

I’d rather be back at my home on the farm
Tending cattle and working the land
But I’m lying here shooting at men I don’t know
In a hard bloody war that I don’t understand.

We’ll soon be coming to the end of this year
We were told that it wouldn’t last too long
I don’t know how much longer the men can last out
The spirits willing but their bodies aren’t strong.

We’ve been pounded for hours, we’ve been pounded for days
It seems like so long and it’s so cold
There are men who’ve got frostbite and gangrene and sores
But it’s the dysentery that makes some men fold.

When will it end and who will make peace
They’re decisions that aren’t made at the front
But by men back at home who think they know best
Not by poor dying men bearing the brunt.

©JRW2014

One in a group of poems I wrote recognising the centenary of the outbreak of World War I

The Madness That Drives

On By jovisgoesIn Illness, Poetry, Story BookLeave a comment

Deluded by a strange life of fantasy
Fueled by his own macabre insanity
The vilest of beasts sets out once more
To create dead bodies and increase his score.

Nobody knows yet the who or the when
For the shadows are his closest friends
But when the month begins anew
There’s dead body one, and dead body two.

He seems to like to kill in twos
Psychiatrists scratch their heads confused
And witter on in gobbledygook tones
As yet more bodies turn up as bones.

It’s been a year so that’s twenty-four
He needs a holiday that’s for sure
But when on holiday he acts the same
For he loves to play his killing game.

By the sea, or near the shore
He still adds to his wicked store
Of trophies that he takes each time
When he commits these wicked crimes.

Will he be caught, he thinks not
Though there are times the trail is hot
But then he plays a clever trick
One that he thinks makes him slick.

One male one female normally
But when in trick mode, he kills three
And this he thinks throws of the scent
Of police detectives all hell-bent.

And these detectives can see no link
For our killer never stops to think
He picks them up at any place
Barely looking them in the face.

But slowly now as time goes on
His madness grows, all reason gone
This could be the end of him
It drives him closer to the rim.

Control is what he’s losing first
His plan for killing has just burst
If he goes out and kills again
He’ll make mistakes, they’ll catch him then.

And so the killings suddenly stop
Murder numbers see a drastic drop
Can they catch him, who knows how?
Will thirty dead see justice now?

©JRW2014

Headaches

On By jovisgoesIn Illness, Personal, PoetryLeave a comment

Slowly the battle starts to rage
The fight begins anew
The warring factors in my brain
That once were knocked askew.

It starts with just a low headache
That creeps up from the back
It reaches to my temples
And thus begins the attack.

‘Ere long it’s in full fury
The pressure starts to build
My head feels like it will explode
It seems with war completely filled.

Once more my hand reaches to the drawer
Seeking out the prescribed relief
Without the drugs the pain gets worse
Pain becomes a rationale thief.

Contorted now upon the floor
My pain-wracked body twisting hard
I can’t take more, I need the drugs
But against addiction I must guard.

My mind drifts off as drugs take hold
Again the pain is put away
From time to time it will come back
It’s just I’ll never know the day.

 

©JRW2014

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On By jovisgoesIn Family, Illness, Personal, Poetry, vitalLeave a comment

I wait for a piece of information
it is the answer to a question that
has unfortunately had to be asked
I don’t, yet must know the answer,
yet someone else, so dear to me and
so young needs the answer, dreads
the answer so much more. how can
life be so cruel? why after so many
millennia are we so fragile? a life
that is so well spent looking after
the interests and well-being of others
should not be so fragile, but is.

I learn the answer and it seems that
life indeed is that cruel after all.
we will all help. we will all fight.
we will win. nothing else is acceptable.

©JRW2014

Sixes and Sevens

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Illness, old age, Poetry, Point of ViewLeave a comment

He dribbles a little now, he knows, but neither can he help it
Since the stroke that little bit of control is no more
It is the source of so much embarrassment to him
That he has barely set foot outside his front door.

It can’t go on though, it’s come to a head now
His nephew’s getting married and he’s been invited
He doesn’t know what to do, he’s at sixes and sevens
He knows he has to be there, he should be delighted.

The therapist had told him to exercise, “it’ll help a lot”, she said
“Also, you should look in the mirror”, a thing he cannot do
He couldn’t feel half of his face, the stroke had left him that way
“The exercises are there to help, they’ll help to get you through.”

He’d been lucky he knew, he had got his voice back, even though
He now sounded so different, he hardly recognised himself when he spoke
And he also walked unevenly as the stroke affected his hips
So much so that he thought he probably looked like a joke.

But there was one thing that made him feel really better
Two years earlier he couldn’t have even stood
So dribble as he did, embarrassed as he got when he was out
He knew he was making progress and that was all to the good.

And then he felt selfish for feeling sorry for himself
His nephew would want happiness, he deserved it as well
So he’d put on his best smile, he’d do what he could
He’d hide all his fears and hope no one could tell.

©JRW2014