Category: Personal

Growing in Love

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Love, Personal, Poetry, Village LifeLeave a comment

As a boy he’d not really imagined
What his life would be like as a man
He’d had lots of dreams like all boys did
But he’d hoped he could be Superman.

But of course life doesn’t turn out quite like that
And he’d moved through his youth at a pace
As a man he’d set forth and in a grown way
Got a job and joined the rat race.

On the way he met a woman and she loved him
A woman who still has such grace
They bought a small house in a village
And lived life at a much slower pace .

The rat race proved too much for his taste
He got out and then slowed down his life
He wrote down his thoughts each and every day
And he spent more precious time with his wife.

Many years have passed by in the village
The shop’s gone, and the Post Office too
And some of their old friends aren’t alive any more
And they think of them fondly, they do.

They’re getting on now as age takes the years
They still love each other more every day
And they’re happy they chose to live this life
For them it was always the way.

©Joe Wilson – Growing in love…2014

 

My Family

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Friendship, Love, Personal, Poetry2 Comments

I do not know as fine a girl
Except of course her mother
Nor yet know I a finer man
Than he who is her brother.

Their mother gave her love to me
I keep it in my heart
It warms me up on lonely nights
If ever we’re apart.

Our girl and boy moved far away
But love binds us so tight
And when we meet and chat and things
Our eyes light up so bright.

Nothing stands between us
Our bond will always be
We are the very essence
Of a loving family.

©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

1914 – A Huge Fraction

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Personal, Poetry, Point of View2 Comments

He still felt deafened by the terrible sound
From the huge field guns that both sides had
Been firing hour after hour for four days. You
Could be scared to death just from the noise.

An eighth didn’t seem like much
Two sixteenths
Four thirty-seconds
Eight sixty-fourths
Sixteen one hundred and twenty-eighths.

Following his recent promotion to Colonel
He was sitting in his new office at his new desk
Hesitating to put his pen to paper
Resisting the inevitable sorrow to come.

He was writing down the numbers – thinking
Thirty two two hundred and fifty-sixths
Sixty four five hundred and twelfths.
Now the numbers looked much bigger.
When he reached
Five hundred and twelve as a
fraction of four thousand and ninety-six
He stopped.

The number now seemed insurmountable
Yet it was still that small fraction.
But he now had to write to that number
Of wives, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters
And tell them that their boy would
Never again walk through their front door.

An eighth is so much more than just a fraction.

©Joe Wilson – 1914 A huge fraction…2014

One of a group of poems recognising the centenary of WW1

He Remembers

On By jovisgoesIn Personal, Poetry1 Comment

He remembers
back to a time
when the black dog
hung around his neck
like a heavy yoke, he
could never be rid of
the terror that the pain
would not someday return
to seek him out and strike
him down again, and the knowing
how close he had come to succumbing
to the excruciating pain of the blood
pouring out of his brain and down his
spine only to lodge in his vertebrae.

He remembers edging closer to the crowded
platform’s edge too filled with fear to realise
the probable selfishness of what he was about to
do, only vaguely aware of where he actually was but
just able to register that touch on his right arm
and the voice that quietly whispered to him “I don’t
really think you want to do that.” He remembers turning
round to see who had said it and seeing that there was just
a crowd of commuters all going about their business, of the
owner of the voice there was no sign, but it had been enough, it
had been enough to make him realise where he was for the moment
passed and he made his way back, back to the arms of the woman who
had always loved him, and who had carefully, lovingly nursed him back to
health over such a long time, and he wept, he put his head on her gentle
shoulder and he wept as he had never wept before, he wept for all pain
he still felt and he wept for all the selfish pain he would have caused this
woman had he let himself fall, for that surely had been his intention.

©Joe Wilson – He remembers…2014

The Nuclear Department

On By jovisgoesIn Personal, PoetryLeave a comment

Lonely is the waiting room at the hospital Nuclear department
Everyone there is lost in their own private thoughts
We’ve all come to this place, and we’re looking for answers
To the pain and the questions these answers are sought.

The doctor comes, the tests begin, the isotope injected in
And then the scan, the gamma rays, but answers come there none.
I’ll be back again in three weeks time to do it all again
To see if anything is leaking or clogged, or actually just – gone.

©JRW2014

Subarachnoidism

On By jovisgoesIn Personal, Poetry1 Comment

Pain in the head, again feeling gripped
Fears of another burst coming one day
Returning memories of leaks being clipped
Paralyses my mind in a terrifying way.

Shouldn’t have happened, why the hell was it me?
But then, why not? Could be anyone see!
And I recovered fully anyway
To live to fight another day.

©JRW2014

The Table, and my Friend

On By jovisgoesIn Friendship, Personal, PoetryLeave a comment

I made a friend in May, it was  a long long time ago
In nineteen ninety four, that’s twenty years or so
By the door to a hospital we chatted and generally chewed the fat
Him there after a heart attack, me a by-pass, and that was that.

A table is what we spoke of and the fact that I needed one
He said, ” I’ll make one for you, but a condition, there’s just one
I’ll make you your new table and you must help me where you can.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d walked into, but I agreed to my new friend’s plan.

So together we laboured at it, him working at his trade
Before long we’d made a table, even rails with carvings made
I’m not much of a carpenter, to think I am is daft
But it was a genuine pleasure, seeing my friend alive at his craft.

Time has passed on so very much, a long time since that May
My wife and I sit by that table every single day
It’s withstood things you’d not believe and yet it is still game
And the friendship that was born that day, well that has done the same.

©JRW2014

Death by Violence

On By jovisgoesIn Personal, Poetry, Point of ViewLeave a comment

Some people just don’t bloody care
They see injustice with ghoulish stare
But being beaten about the head
Lying bloodied and left for dead
Can leave you a cynic of humankind
Of passers-by whose gaze is blind.

Am I not human like you lot
As I lie here midst blood and snot
Do you not care a damn for me
This isn’t how it used to be.

But no help comes, I’m left instead
I’ve drawn last breath – and now I’m dead.

©Joe Wilson – Death by Violence…2014