The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that I fall in love daily
Held under so many captivating spells
moulded and crafted by all walks of life
I find myself longing for all of you
the broken, the fallen, the bruised
the saints, the sinners
the righteous, the dispossessed
the holy, the unholy
all meet here
to speak of life
as they feel it
as only we know it.
Onwards, upwards
Downward spirals
kindness, cruelty
crashing through boundaries
bounding across oceans
carried on wistful sighs and broken dreams
The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that it breaks my heart
Then brings me back to love again
All within an hour.

Heal thyself poet
let words be your salve
let loose your longing
set free your sadness

Let them run wildly
over salt-damp parchment
Let them wail at the moon
and weep silently in corners

Throw them to the wolves
that your pain may sustain them
For it has nourished you
long enough

Let it all go.
Let it wrench from your soul
with glorious abandon
Let it scream from your lungs
Let it bleed through your skin

It matters not that you are broken,
that your scattered pieces hold no form
Only that you are here.

So write, dear poet.
Heal thyself.

You could be so pretty
if
your hair was straight
or at least neat 
and not fire engine red

You could look so lovely
If 
you didn't insist on wearing
tatty jeans
Yellow Dr Marten boots
Dropkick Murphys tees
and you weren't covered in tattoos

You could have a better life
If
You hadn't married
that blue eyed
empty pocket
*** smoking
dreamer

You could have more time to clean
If 
you didn't waste it
writing pointless poems
with your head in the clouds
listening to that awful racket

You could be more ladylike
If 
you didn't attend protests
railing against politics
didn't smoke, drink,
swear like a sailor
and stayed away from mosh pits.

You could be better
If 
you were a lot more me
and a hell of a lot less you
After all I've done
You were not what I was expecting..

Well, it was good talking to you
I love you mum
I love you too..
Lets do this again soon!

You sit at your screen
fingertips flying in the face of decency
like a spigot attached to a vat of arsenic
dripping your poison, slowly, surely into the ears of the unthinking.

You justify the burnt skin, the orphans, the unending torture as deserved.

Deserved?

How can it be so?

Go tell the orphan, scarred and screaming that her fate was deserved.

Go stand beside mass graves and thumb your nose at the deserving corpses, stained by the blood of ages.

Where is your heart? 
does it choke and sputter,
buried beneath your all encompassing loathing?

You call me stupid, maybe so,
my views naive, my compassion wasted
yet my heart beats proudly, swells with love 
while my tired eyes drown at the unfolding horror.

War is not a spectator sport,
it is not justifiable, nor deserved.

Call me stupid if you will, ridiculous if you must
call me any number of names in your attack on my spirit
I will not care, I will not bend or bow.
Your hatred will be your undoing.
Not mine

They sat in blankets as they tried to keep warm
penniless with no heating and no coal to burn
while outside they heard the violent storm
the blizzard of snow and ice all churn.

Slowly they both began to freeze to death
there was no-one to help or ease their plight
they were just poor and lonely old sisters
who would probably die in the dark of this night.

They were just another statistic of winter
a cold one much worse than some others
they had eked out their money on eating
so they now huddled together like lovers.

There are so many who suffer in winter
and we really should spare them a thought
we should all keep an eye out for our neighbour
as help due to their pride is not sought.

It is dawn now and the sisters are frozen
one died and the other breathes slow
but there is no-one to even take notice
and in a short while like her sister she’ll go.

©Joe Wilson – huddled together like lovers…2014

From the back
of a quiet
bookshelf
inside a dusty
***
she heard
her husbands breathing
rattle and
stop,
she heard
the bedside sorrow
in a tender kiss
farewell
then stirred her ash
with menace
and welcomed him
to hell