It often hurts being different…

On 2 Jan 20162 Jan 2016 By jovisgoesIn Poetry2 Comments

Even now so many years later
The rawness picked at the scars
Contempt was all they’d felt for him
They beat him with iron bars.

His faith was just the same as theirs
He worked as hard as they
But the night the hooded men came
Not a single word did they say.

For just that single one moment
He wished he looked their way
But he’d been born albino pale
Not pink or black as they.

His skin always burnt in Summer
He could barely cope with the sun
The butt of harsh jokes for all his short life
He blew out his brains with a gun.

There was no one to mourn his passing
His death never raised an eyebrow
He was simply a lonely sad suicide
Who just couldn’t fit in somehow.

©Joe Wilson – It often hurts being different…2016

Farmers, milk quotas, TB & suicide…

On 13 Sep 2015 By jovisgoesIn PoetryLeave a comment

It had been such a long stormy summer
There’d been floods all over his land
The crop yield gave another poor harvest
He was defeated, he couldn’t make a stand.

Whenever the tanker called on him
It cost him more than he made
For every litre of milk that he sold
Had cost more to produce than they paid.

He’d lost sheep to the ovine foot rot
And cattle, he’d lost to TB
The bank manager had rung him that morning
Said foreclosure was a near certainty.

When they found him he was hanging in the cowshed
He was dead, and had been for days
There was no one on the farm there to miss him
He’d had to let them go with half-pay.

©Joe Wilson – Farmers, milk quotas, TB & suicide…2015

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.