Fears of life
Fears of death
Fears of future
Last drawn breath.
©Joe Wilson – Fears 2014
Vulnerable Paranoia
I lie naked and exposed my pride revealed
My vulnerable spirit is in view
The warrior stands before me now
His lance is set to pierce me through.
I do have one trick up my sleeve
As he readies himself for attack
He moves in to kill and his gizzards are mine
And I drive in the dagger hidden at my back.
Why do I have these violent dreams…
As if I am part of a past so bad
Waking each night with my silent screams
The realness of it driving me mad.
It’s possible that this is all part of the dream
And that what I have written is not real
And when the warrior comes for me again this night
I’ll forget to defend against the cold of his steel.
©Joe Wilson – Vulnerable Paranoia 2014
A Weighty Problem
Writhing against the binding
From weights on my feet I sink
The pain in my chest is blinding
As I struggle for air and to think.
I could have been a much better person
But I wasn’t and I find myself here
I’ll be sitting by Davy Jones locker
Drowned, it’s been one of my fears.
I’m almost at bottom of the ocean
In front of my name they’ll write ‘late’
And because I was always a ‘bad ‘un’
With Old Nick I now have a d…
©Joe Wilson – A Weighty Problem 2014
The image appeared in Punch 10 December 1892
The Juggernaut
The Juggernaut that is life marches on
Never stopping for the stragglers on the way
Those less able to cope with the speed of it all
Get further disheartened every day.
But we set up a system to help them
It’s the bureaucracy that now runs our lives
And you get yourself sucked right inside it
Trying to wrestle with the rules it contrives.
But the vulnerable still struggle daily
With the system’s strange hoops we jump through
It’s as if it’s made complex on purpose
And it feels like your feet are in glue.
I’ve a neighbour who can never get out much
And she’s old and not too well off
So she has to decide if to eat or stay warm
And no heating is bad for her cough.
In the end what you find is the Juggernaut
Is the system itself and its weight
With its efforts to grind down the people
And an appetite we just can’t sate.
©Joe Wilson – The Juggernaut 2014
The Old Manor
The old house had finally decided to die
It has threatened to fall down for years
It had seen men arguing in the Civil War
Who’d not returned to the house any more
Who’d left wives and a vale of tears.
It’s being picked at by experts who are looking
For evidence of hideaways in the attic
A Cavalier scallywag had once hidden in the roof
When questioned by Roundheads the owners were aloof
They were then lectured by Puritans didactic.
For many years the farmland round its boundary
Had fed cattle of all sorts and colour
There’d been Jerseys and Guernseys for decades
The last century even saw milkmaids
Now it’s Gloucesters ’cause there bodies are fuller.
But it’s coming down now and it won’t be the same
The park all around here has changed
Huge estates of new houses of characterless hue
So many now needed for me and for you
But designed by a mind that’s deranged.
©Joe Wilson – The Old Manor 2014
Terror
Dead of night
Face so white
Looking through the curtain.
Scared to death
Short of breath
I cannot be certain.
Disappears
Not the fears
Outside lights should show.
Turn them on
It has gone
Footprints in the snow!!
©Joe Wilson – Terror 2014
That Nagging Fear
When I was a boy I really feared nothing
As a teenager I couldn’t have feared less
But as a man when I became a loving father
My life took on all kinds of fearful stress.
You think but worry where your little kids are
You know that they’re at school, at least they were
The horrid thoughts that things might happen to them
Causes panic of the sort we all incur.
But they grow up and they manage to stay in one piece
Then they move away and make lives of their own
Then you get a call to say that one is injured
To the other side of the world you then have flown.
Later still you find your other child is ailing
And you do your best to stay so very calm
While your heart is breaking as you reassure them
This brave person that you once held in your palm.
So yes I fear so many things I never used to
Plus concerns about my body as it grows old
And of course they say we might now live to eighty
But I never did believe all I was told.
But these fears are just the things that keep us careful
It wouldn’t do to let them get to rule our lives
For it’s fear of fear that takes you to the limit
It’s the very thing on which the panic thrives.
©Joe Wilson – That Nagging Fear 2014
A Village
The Victoria plum-tree that we planted this year
Is now full of blossom that looks lovely from here
The creamy white flowers and the brightest green leaves
Makes beautiful colour as Springtime relieves.
The garden of Winter, this year so wet
Does blossom herald a ‘best Summer yet.’
It’s quite true of course that village life so snug
Can have a tendency to make one feel smug
But for years our’s has struggled, it now has no shops
And a pub that’s near closure though it still sells the ‘hops.’
We don’t take it lightly the community here
For we know we could lose it which would cost us all dear.
It’s not really the money though the costs would be great
But there’d be no Village Hall and no Summer Fete
No chats with our friends over stiles by the field
Nor any more eggs from the local chicks yield.
We don’t take it lightly the community here
And we will fight to keep it which will cost us all dear.
©Joe Wilson – A Village 2014
Economic Nonsense
Gordon did rather badly
Georgie does much worse
Both of them arm wrestling
With the British Nation’s purse!
Playing around with the figures
Fiddling, not half, with the pounds
They tell you they’re easing the country’s woes
But they’re just making hollow sounds.
It doesn’t ever get any better
It often gets very much worse
That is the absolute shocking truth
Of the Downing Street C of E curse.
C of E also means Chancellor of the Exchequer
Chancellor of the Exchequer’s always mean.
©Joe Wilson – Economic Nonsense 2014
Soul Searching
Again last night the shadow men called
As I finally dropped into the softness of sleep
Bringing with them the memories of tortured souls
Of those not quite dead who can only weep.
Those who went suddenly and left those who cried
Who then later joined them when they too had died.
I felt like I was falling for a thousand miles
Into a great hole so flooded with their tears
The palpable sorrow that penetrated my soul
That seemed to wash over me for so many years.
I was lost, I am lost, I know not what to do
Amongst all these souls I am searching for you.
Why do these cruel images keep entering my sleep
They go as I wake, but they ever come back
The souls seer their faces right into my heart
And their sorrow brings to me the dog that is black.
I search every time for your beautiful soul
Nothing left now, it’s my life’s only goal.
©Joe Wilson – Soul Searching 2014
Jovis on a Journey... 