I remember how you gave your heart
Wrapped up in a kiss and a sigh
You loved me with your passion
Did I really, really try!
I think I did, I think I did.
And yet your love, amazing love
It never ever waned
You always gave me all your heart
And I never saw your pain.
I was always looking the other way.
I could never bear my company
But I find myself alone
With guilt that I cannot forgive
For sins I can’t atone.
I will go unredeemed unto death.
©JRW2014
He was sent to Aldershot for training
He would learn how to kill or be killed
The training was all done with broomsticks
When he thought back it made his blood chill.
His unit was sent down to Portsmouth
To board a ship and go over there
It was packed to the gunwales with weapons
And the rations left no room to spare.
He practiced with his rifle on the journey
Like others who’d not held one before
He’d no sense of the horror he’d be facing
Nor the violence he’d always abhorred.
It was such a small piece of shrapnel
Caught both eyes as a shell case shattered
He never saw his two boys as they grew into men
Missing out on so much that had mattered.
His wife who he loved always helped him
And a life with new interests grew
He learnt how to read the braille papers
It pleased him he’d still know the news.
But the trauma from the experience scarred him
And ire with politics grew by the day
So he took to his new odd braille keyboard
And wrote articles and letters to complain.
He could sense the new way that the wind blew
In the corridors of power in the House
There was money to be made in new weapons
And politicians ignore those who grouse.
Then again two decades later it started
Another war that would mean more dead men
The obscenity rose like a bile in his throat
So once again he took to his ‘pen’.
©JRW2014
One in a group of poems recognising the centenary of WWI
It was years ago he saw her
He loved her from the start
But she was not to be for him
Though she had stolen his heart.
As years went by and friendships grew
His love not once did wane
Though they both found and loved others
It barely masked his pain.
There had been times of quenched desire
Those times so very brief
The love was heightened so much so
As he slipped away like a thief.
And here he finds himself today
His love survived intact
In circumstances difficult
He loves her still in fact.
©JRW2014
They marched off with no idea of those forthcoming horrors
For many, many thousands there would never be tomorrows
They were summoned, without a choice, off they had to go
They were simply fodder to the big field guns that bellow.
Men who only yesterday were working on the farm
Sent out to shoot down other men who’d never done them harm
Young men who’d risen to answer the nation’s clarion call
Went to The Somme and Ypres to simply die and fall.
The nightmare that were trenches, the cries into the night
The black lines through the letters home to cover-up the plight
The new men just conscripted who died on that same day
Who fell from a hail of bullets before their very first pay.
The young soldier who was killed at the point of a vicious knife
The sad telegram the captain sent to his new and pregnant wife
The horror there was for one man as he had to kill another
Standing next to a stranger now, a man he calls a brother.
The smell of the smouldering cordite that lingers everywhere
Accompanies the terrible stench in this deathly sad nightmare
The brutal noise that deafens, that damages your ears
Fearing cowardice charges most young men hide their fears.
Men started this obscenity in quiet, comfortable rooms
They never do the dying nor end up in white war tombs
But they will take all the glory that any victory can afford
That surely is for those beneath that lonely foreign sward.
©JRW2014
One in a group of poems recognising the centenary of WWI
Molly wanted for absolutely nothing,
And that was definitely my fault
She’d not accept the worth of the less wealthy
And when she saw them she was difficult.
I never told how I’d started with nothing
Not wanting her derision I guess
I’d thought that by not telling her that stuff
She’d not decide to think me any less.
It was a foolish error on my part
For she rode roughshod over the poor
Till I found I could tolerate it no longer
Removed her allowance and the key to her door.
I said you’ll have to fend for yourself now
If you do it you’ll be better by far
Oh, and take all those things out of your pocket
That’s your phone, and you’ll not have a car.
Downcast she set off on her own way
Cast a look at me, I nearly cried
I’d keep an eye out of course and protect her
But she needed to have worked and have tried.
Two years passed and she found her rock-bottom
But she started to work and she grew
I said to her would you like to come home now
She said she’d stay where she was…thank you.
Fact is, Molly’s lost now forever
She’d survived and she picked herself up
But if I’d raised her right in the first place
She have known about sharing the cup.
So in the end I stand with my great wealth
But with no one to share it with now
If you want to know how not to raise children
Come to me and I’ll show you how.
©JRW2014
Fortunately, for my part, this is a work of complete fiction.
Sorrow poured out of his very soul
It seeped into all his many things
All he touched reminded him of his foolishness
It was the howling anguish of the loss he now felt
But his distrusting nature, unfounded, had cast her guilty
He had crossed the line and told her he no longer trusted her.
She felt so betrayed by his lack of trust
The pain so raw she could hardly breathe
It hadn’t occurred to her that he would misunderstand
They’d loved each other almost all their lives, how could he?
His distrust was so unfounded, she felt so hurt
Where could they ever go from here?
The question hangs in the air, neither willing to act
He unable to forgive himself for his distrust
She not able to forgive him for the same thing
Yet both loving the other to a similar distraction
Ardency makes men do foolish and disastrous things
And leaves women to pick up all the broken pieces.
©JRW2014
Jovis on a Journey... 