Tag: tears

The 11:42 to lonely…

On By jovisgoesIn Friendship, Life, Loss, Love, Poetry3 Comments

 

march railway station

Carrying with it my dreams and you
The train pulled out – 11:42
I couldn’t but think I now was lost
I’d made a choice, too high the cost.

I think back now and pains return
Wiping eyes of tears that burn
And thinking brings you to my mind
The beauteous soul of one so kind.

Regrets I feel for that poor choice
I miss so much your tender voice
If such decisions I made anew
I’d never stay, I’d go with you.

So sorely how I wish that train
Would bring you to my arms again
Where we could grow our love once more
As lonely fills my empty core.

So much regret this foolish joe
I chose career and watched love go
And should I gain great opulence
I’d sit alone, there’d be no sense.

©Joe Wilson – The 11:42 to lonely… 2014

Crisis point…

On By jovisgoesIn Anger, Armageddon, Betrayal, Corruption, Deprivation, Life, Poetry, Point of View, political, Poverty, The WorldLeave a comment

Bruised by life one picks up one’s battered self
prepares to carry on into the next belligerence
and stoically turns to face the world
with all its beauty, yet too, horror and indifference.

We are but a small black, pink, brown baby upon arrival
luckier ones will be cared for and loved so well
yet still there are those whose lives will be filled with pain
from that very first beautiful breath yet fearful chest swell.

And as we grow to take on life’s burden of knowledge
some will fall along the way into deprivation
accepting life sustaining scraps as they are given
It shouldn’t happen in a so-called modern civilisation.

It falls to the fortunate to work to end the crisis
but money talks so well, and oft creates corruption
those with nothing have found their voice, their fight
if answers aren’t found quickly I fear inevitable eruption.

©Joe Wilson – Crisis point… 2014

The little red bike…

On By jovisgoesIn Bicycles, Children's, Family, Father, heroes, Life, Personal, Poetry, Time1 Comment
Just a little bit too big to be mine, but similar (1956)
Just a little bit too big to be mine, but similar (1956)

 

With legs pumping like mad, eager to keep up
While his pedals went around very slow
He ambled along giving me exercise
“Would you like me to slow down a bit Joe?”

But I pedalled along with all of my might
And I was keeping up, at least I thought
But an L-driver outside the driving school
Opened his door and brought me up short.

Into the road I flew off my little red bike
But a hand grabbed me and halted my fall
I think it was the L-driver who caught me
He had a handlebar moustache I recall.

Well they all made a fuss about something
And to the hospital I was told I must go
But the thing was I’d lost sight of my father
They watched amazed as I shot off shouting “No!”

In a time like forever I found my father
He was sitting, looking back, one foot down
As I raced up and sat still behind him
His faced changed from smiling to a frown.

It seems that my face was all covered in blood
I was desperate to catch up I didn’t realise
As he leapt off his bike and wrapped his arms round me
I said “Dad! Why are there tears in your eyes?”

The driver’s door had caught me just under the eye
I’d a gash of some length underneath
Being just seven years old I didn’t know why
Dad’s tears were his show of relief.

 

©Joe Wilson – The little red bike… 2014

When I wrote this I was thinking about my Dad. He never cycled with me too much. He became ill soon after I was born and died when I was just twelve.
I loved him so very much.

 

On reflection…

On By jovisgoesIn Anger, Fate, Fear, guilt, Life, Poetry, political, Poverty, Regret, The World, Time, War, Women's RightsLeave a comment

I rise from my nice warm bed
and having made a morning drink
for my beloved wife, and one for me,
I run a bath.
As I luxuriate
in that warm bubbled water
I reflect on how lucky I am.

Later, washed and dressed for the day
I sit at the table and enjoy
a fine meal from God’s harvest
and again I reflect, and I feel…
guilt!

Guilt for the small children
who have no homes in which to feel safe
guilt that so many of them
will not eat again today.

I feel guilt
for all of the poor women around the globe
who will this very day give birth
to babies who they will surely love
but in whose having they had no choice…
no one ever hears their terrified voice.
Poor women beaten by poverty
who still struggle to feed those children
and yet too those who violate them so.

I feel guilt for all the men who cannot be made
to realise that the world is not theirs to design,
and at the way that some men feel
their own importance trumps all other considerations,
and guilt at all of the war ravaged lands.

And when I look down at the bounteous fare before me
I feel only one thing – shame.

 

©Joe Wilson – On reflection… 2014

A new start…

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Life, Loss, Love, Poetry1 Comment

He walked down the length of that long lonely street
His footsteps tapping a short rhythmic beat
He encountered no one at that time of day
There was no one to stop him and have their say.

It was a dark three o’clock in the morning
As he wandered aimlessly along the road
But it wasn’t as if he had any place to go
He was only but another poor homeless Joe.

He was on the search for some food or scrap
New enough still to hate this poverty trap
Recently separated, he lost his job and his home
He now find’s himself on the road, where he roams.

He’s tried very hard to keep his dignity too
Not mixing much with the others who do
And he now walks about with an air of fake calm
Thinking that might protect him from coming to harm.

It had never occurred to him that he was always at work
His wife needed more, he understood that too late
Over years it had taken a hard marital toll
So she’d stepped away from him and he’d lost his role.

But he wouldn’t give in, he was determined about that
He desperately told himself every day
He couldn’t let himself live like this for long
He felt if he said so that he would remain strong.

His wife said she still loves him, despite that she left
He caused her such pain and he feels so bereft
But as long as she loves him it gives him some hope
He’ll fight his way back up this steep darkened slope.

He walked down the length of that long lonely street
You could hear a slight lightness to the short rhythmic beat
His eyes filled with tears as his wife filled his heart
Determined he walked on to make a new start.

 

©Joe Wilson – A new start…2014

A stolen heartbeat…

On By jovisgoesIn Belief, End of Days, Faith, Family, Loss, Poetry, Point of View, political, Regret, WarLeave a comment

KNIL-Artillery_page_lockingsystem

 

His death could oh so easily have been avoided
At eighteen he was far far too young to die
But the belief that lay within him was so powerful
Now his family have just the memories and they cry.

Men have always gone off fighting for their ideals
And their kinsfolk are the one’s put under strain
For the sickening news that often gets brought to them
Turns their once sun-happy days to ones of rain.

It doesn’t matter a single jot whose side they fight on
The resulting family heartache is still the same
There are those who would use these young men’s keenness
And exploit them in their own political game.

There’s a funeral now as another boy is laid down
And his family are beside themselves in grief
But governments have been this young man’s killer
Politicians stole his heartbeat like a thief.

 

©Joe Wilson – A stolen heartbeat…2014

The world cries out…

On By jovisgoesIn Poetry, Poverty, Terror, The World, War, wisdomLeave a comment

Our world cries out in sorrow again
People dying on lonely streets
And blood is shed and spirits crushed
It seems that history repeats.

Would that we could see the truth
Of all that’s good within our sight
That we would see our own great wealth
And help to ease another’s plight.

If we could see and do all that
And in ourselves we understood
Would we not find ourselves at peace
And know at least we’d done some good.

 

©Joe Wilson – The world cries…2014

The cruel hand of fate…

On By jovisgoesIn Family, Fate, Friendship, Illness, Life, Loss, Personal, Poetry, Regret2 Comments

Things were very different in the Sixties
Everything was like new fresh breath
But this sad, true tale of my childhood
Is the tale of a friend’s early death.

Peter helped the Co-op grocers delivery-man
After he’d finished school for the day
He’d sit on an upturned milk crate
And they drove merrily along on their way.

He’d helped the man deliver for ages
It was what teenage boys would often do
But as the van took a corner in Rising Brook
Out to his sad fate Peter flew.

The van only had the single driver’s seat
No one else was supposed to be there
And the doors all slid back and stayed open
Safety wasn’t really thought about to be fair.

So out of the van my friend Peter flew
And fate treated him so very very cruel
He disappeared right under a passing bus
Right in front of the gates to his school.

My best friend was Harry, Peter’s brother
And for him everything changed on that day
I watched Harry wither before me
As his spirit of mischief flew away.

Just a few years later Harry drifted
I’ve not seen him from that day to now
But I hope he was able to find for himself
A way to survive the horror somehow.

I’ve not spoken of this since those dark days
and the flood of the memory is still raw
If only I could step back and warn him
My friend, please, please close the door.

By a sad twist of irony I lost my brother as well
He was struck down by the first ‘Asian Flu’
That memory hurts like a stab in the heart
I was twenty, he was just twenty-two.

 

©Joe Wilson – The cruel hand of fate…2014

Sadly, this is entirely true. Peter was killed falling under a bus in this manner and my brother was a recently married policeman who died of so-called ‘Asian Flu’ in 1970.

Whisky and my pen…

On By jovisgoesIn Life, Loss, Love, Poetry, RegretLeave a comment
Faceted whisky glass
Faceted whisky glass

 

Wind blows its way right through my senses
All my thoughts have but slowly disappeared
One more large smoky glass of cheap whisky
One more sad lonely night that you’re not here.

Loneliness set in as the door quickly closed
Using the back door now and keeping that one shut
It will stay like that until ever you come back
But I’ve a notion now that it will stay put.

Old sore wounds that somehow resurfaced
Caused a bitter rift long forgotten to return
And the memories and the tears from the last time
Hit the heart, exploded and then burned.

So I sit trying to write and supping whisky
As I wait to hear your key in the front door
I hope with all my heart that you’ll forgive me
I can’t bear to be alone here any more.

The wind is getting stronger now and I thought I heard the latch
But it was just some fighting creatures out in the dark
So I’ll wait as I do each night with my whisky and my pen
Sitting here and waking up with the sound of the lark.

 

©Joe Wilson – Whisky and my pen 2014

The word is STOP…

On By jovisgoesIn Poetry, Point of View, War, wisdom5 Comments

I’ve never killed in my long life
neither enemy soldier, politician, nor wife
This feat that causes me no surprise
Is what we call living in its normal guise.

I would never be so naïve as to say
The pen is always the only way
But it seems to me that war only proved
Who will remain, and who is removed.

And all this killing that leaves nations bereft
With the vile bitter cordite smell that is left
Widows lose husbands, fathers lose sons
Babies are dying from the barrels of guns.

To save nations weapons of course must be used
But there are so many people who are being abused
And when one discusses what is now simply absurd
There is nothing that is mightier than the word.

©Joe Wilson – The word is STOP…2014

 

“War does not determine who is right – only who is left”.
Bertrand Russell