We gather our praises
From those who will read
We love the attention
For on it we feed.
And yet in all fairness
We try to write well
But a while in the spotlight
Is quite nice for a spell.
Then it’s back to the pen
Our thinking-frowns on
As we all live in fear
Of when the skill’s gone.
Till then we all write
We write and we write
Our pens poised forever
As we wait for insight.
©Joe Wilson – On writing…2016
Each morning at six
Each morning, promptly at six, he went to his desk.
Every evening at eight
Every evening, precisely at eight, he stood, stretched and left for home.
Each day he spent fourteen hours hunched over his desk come what may
Each week he laboured obsessively on what had become his glorious tome
Each month his family had drifted further and further away
And every year he now spent less and less time at home.
Finally, with a great fanfare of publicity, his mighty tome was complete
So good, its sales soon rocketed to the highest mark
But of life and any kind of normality
There was now not the faintest spark.
So how does he gauge his success my friend?
Where do all his new found riches really go
Well his wife took his children to the other side of the world
He spends it on air fares as he now travels to and fro.
Time will tell if the tome is indeed to be a classic
Or if it is to be a seven week wonder.
But in that he lost his family to success
Well that my friend was his mighty blunder.
©Joe Wilson – A lesson in obsessiveness…2016
I was a shy and rather awkward boy when my father died
Insular, feeling alone, for a while I gave up and no longer tried.
As I journeyed on through my strange teenage years
I got into many fights, I was fighting my fears.
I grew big and tough and never was downed
But my heart was near breaking and I very near drowned.
In time I found love which is surely so good
We’ve loved ever since as hard as we could.
But a gift you say, a gift real and true
‘Twas the books of Charles Dickens, Mr Dickens, ‘twas you.
Many was the time I’d immerse in your fables
Hoping as always for the weak to turn tables
And often they did, but oft times at great cost
In tales based on those who you helped, who were lost.
Thus a hundred years after the year that you died
I decided to write, and with a conscience I’ve tried.
I read and I read and I stretched out my mind
Hoping my soul would behave in like kind.
Then I took to my pen scribbling that which I knew
In red , green and black ink, and often just blue.
And writing is plentiful, though not always good
But I try and improve as always one should
Thus inspired me you did, in your books as I grew
So the gift that is so true, Mr Dickens, is you.
©Joe Wilson – Mr Dickens and my newly opened eyes…2015
Let me not for a second minimise the wonderful gift my wife has been to me, I’ve written about her frequently, indeed I couldn’t resist slipping in the two lines about her here. But I met Mr Dickens first and he too has always accompanied me in my Night Walks through The Battle of Life.
In pen I plough my lonesome furrow
Synapses alive and the brain set alight
Willing an audience to interpret correctly
‘The meaning’, tis always The Poet’s hard plight.
Often the words that are written on paper
Take on a new life with the nuance of speech
If only the reader could hear it as I do
But then there’d be little left for me to teach.
Oh for a lovely warm Spring morning I say
What is invoked in the spirit that’s you
I hear the converse of snowdrop and crocus
And try then to pass on the messages too.
Some are times when the words just won’t form
I can’t find the flow to fit with my thoughts
Still though the writing finds ways to the paper
Landing as ink in shapes of all sorts.
Thus I continue to put my pen to paper
Scribbling new odes for the reader to see
And all the words that I lay there before you
Are just a reflection of all that is me.
©Joe Wilson – All that is me…2015
So take me up my quill of finest swan
To write what matters yet not much less
For thus my thoughts are now shrivelled and gone
Thus left empty-headed I must now confess.
Wouldst that I could perhaps tarry a thought
As headlong it rushes before mine eyes
A serious, nay, even a gentle sort
To halt such a one that my mind defies.
Thence would I rush to parchment brand new
And write with such haste my thought down in inks
Afore it was lost to the sky so blue
Stealing the words of devotion methinks.
For if my quill wouldst move swiftly as thought
Twould tell of the love from thee that is sought.
©joe Wilson – So take me up my quill…2015
Thinking back now, knowing it wasn’t then the same
Sex lives free and easy and the rest just a game
But recalling the names of my friends from back then
I find they’re so few now and I miss those young men
And I bless that I knew them as I take up my pen.
It was a time they called ‘swinging’ in the press of the day
But those of us there at the time just made hay
As we carelessly staggered through our wild teenage years
Racing round in cars with bad brakes and crunched gears
Till we arrived at adulthood and took on new fears.
Some of us got married and our lives felt complete
A few drowned in alcohol and lived on the street
While others tripped out just that one time too many
On the drugs that were freely available to so many
You literally could get them at ten for a penny.
But most of us moved on and we raised families
With mortgages or rent life was no social whizz
And our children carried hopes for things we’d failed to do
Such an ordinary tale that reflects me or you
But it all helps to bind us together like glue.
Now we find ourselves older and wiser perhaps
Managing to sidestep some of lifetime’s worst traps
And we pause for a moment and think of those days
Many of them spent in a drug-induced haze
And we’d not change a thing, we just shifted our gaze.
©Joe Wilson – Moving on…2015
Opinions lurk at the back of our mind
at the front there are yet many others
in recording in voice or writing in odes
we convey them to our sisters and brothers.
The onus is on us to take care what we pen
for our opinions can vary so much
but never hold back even under attack
your thoughts and opinions they can’t touch.
But there are some quite sane rules to stick to
for instance we shouldn’t purposely offend
and when you’re writing a factual poem
be confident it’s what you can defend.
Punctuation and spelling are important of course
as they help the reader follow your flow
you choose the genre and you choose the words
learn your craft and let your minds go!
There were thousands of great poets before us
many thousands will follow us too
but we are the ones with the pens in our hands
and history might reflect what we do.
©Joe Wilson – Pen in hand…2015
Were I a man less fortunate
If I could not my words express
Would I not humbly shun the light
And all my boundless thoughts compress.
My heart is full and begs release
Outpourings flow from deep within
And words flood out and take their form
Of love and pain, and life and sin.
To sit and wait these countless times
Considering this or that to say
Thoughts writ in beguiling form
Thus written they then speed on their way.
Characters flit betwixt mine eyes
So fast sometimes I cannot catch
Letters caught in mêlée furious
I place them here or there to match.
When all these letters are thus laid down
In words to make some form or sense
Then read by one’s discerning eye
With open mind and no pretence.
Who reads these words I cannot know
But surely if when read they think
That thoughts they have become theirs now
Thus quill or pen make seamless link.
©Joe Wilson – to express oneself…2014
Weaving our way out of obscurity
side-stepping the positively bland
we seek to bypass mediocrity
and strive for supreme quality
in the hope of making our stand.
Sitting, quills, pens, or fingers poised
we wait, we wait, as thoughts emerge
then off we gallop, focussed, keen
often lost within our thoughts
patiently creative, the ideas converge.
Looking perhaps to distant past
chance could we upon a worded track
down which the writers have all moved forth
noting down with deft learnt skills
they raise their voice and don’t look back.
That we can match such contribution
the aim of all who follow along
the thoughts that all need writing down
ere minds play tricks and they get forgotten
Transcribed then and to us they belong.
©Joe Wilson – The strive 2014
In my little house I live my good life
With my written down words and my beautiful wife.
As the years trundle by and we fight off the ills
I write it all down and keep taking the pills.
I divide my day neatly into eight-hour thirds
Eight of them sleeping, eight on my words.
The remainder I spend entirely with my wife
For without her great love there would be no good life.
Sometimes a thought comes that just makes me cry
I can’t write it down, even hard as I try.
I write all the words that come out of my fingers
And do it real quick while the memory lingers.
Perhaps if someone reads this long after I’m dead
They won’t delve too deeply inside of my head.
But see that with words, my house and my wife
I was really contented with my little life.
©JRW2014
Jovis on a Journey... 