A Garden of Monsters Vol. II (Reflections Emotions Observations)

By Andrew Wilson

“So today class, we’re going to study poetry.”
Like many other school kids, I remember the day my English teacher said those fateful words. I was the one who groaned the most and drew the teacher’s attention. “I’m sure you’ll grow to love it, Andrew!” She said with aspersion. Little did I realise that day how much poetry would change my life. When I did write my first poem I realised I had found a way to finally say all the things I could never say. Poetry became not only my release but also a way for me to deal with my pent up and unaddressed issues. This book, like its predecessor, is a safari through those issues, some serious, some not, and some downright ridiculous.
Stand back, lift your head and take time to consider
Stop to smell the flowers before we die and they wither. - Andy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jasami Publishing Ltd.
• Release date: Jun 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913798079

Andrew Wilson

Andrew Wilson is an award-winning journalist and author. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Sunday Times, and the Smithsonian Magazine. He is the author of four acclaimed biographies, a book about the survivors of the Titanic, and the novels The Lying Tongue, A Talent for Murder, A Different Kind of Evil, and Death in a Desert Land.

Book preview

50/50

I’m in a weird place right now.

I rubbed a bottle, the genie appeared.

Unsure of what to wish for.

Leaning 50/50 towards the grave,

The other half wants more of this life I got.

For every rose I see growing,

The path is littered with dead leaves.

Every sunrise eventually gives way

To the unpreventable sunset.

I have some hope for tomorrow, not much.

I can see inclinations of joy, yet to come

Yet it's course interrupted by promises of pain.

Each time I smile, and look with hopeful eyes

Behind me my demons conspire, and sharpen knives.

I try to look ahead, but lack the courage to ignore what’s behind

As winter fades to memory, and gives birth to spring,

Within, the darkness again begins to rot from the core.

I have risen from that which I was a year ago, to this. Now.

Yet still I haunt my thoughts with each unfulfilled promise.

This new path I see before me suffers the same cracks as the old.

Today I sampled pleasures I thought would bring a smile.

A fine wine, a good cigar, imported rum served with cool ice.

But as each cigar burns out and the bottle reaches the end,

I am already scanning my kingdom looking for something else.

My life has become a fight to top the highs I get from my Highs.

Chances of tomorrow bringing me a smile remain 50/50.

Chances of me blowing it, and falling to frown? 100%

Why do I do this? Is it a chemical imbalance? Or simply me?

I fight myself each day, trying my best for those who love me.

Come evening I am exhausted and prepare for mornings war!

Andy 20.02.06

A Look At Life

It's not enough, this life you gave

To see me through to an infinite grave.

But what can I do, except see it through,

With a smile on my lips pretending to be brave.

Life is short, and there’s so much to do

All too soon though, the timer is through

Little time for me, even less time to see

Little comfort then, that it's the same for you

We're born with the clock chiming its gong

Always there to remind us that we don’t have long

Through the next door, onwards ever more

Without ever wondering, is what we do wrong?

When I rattle my death cry, what will I say?

That I worked too long, with little time for play?

Or will I accept that I'm done and the reaper has won,

Just give in and accept that every dog has his day?

When I'm long gone, not here anymore,

And all that I was has passed into lore.

Will I be remembered as good, the way I feel I should

Or will talking of me, be considered a chore?

What's the point of living our very short lives?

Gathering moments, families, friends and wives.

In the end it's the same, it's the end of the game,

When the hangman is ready, and poised with his knives.

Into the ground we go, no complaints, not a word,

With friends singing metaphors about being free as a bird

The race has been ran, and we're back where we began,

Is it me, or is this life really and honestly absurd?

Andy 09.11.06

Dedicated to the memory of Joseph Jordan, who passed away on this very day.

Uncle Joe, you were like a second father to me through my childhood years and I only hope that when my time comes I can face that end with the same courage and dignity as you have shown.

You will forever be missed.

A Major Rant

Time to rant! Time to shout! Time to rail against the use others would make of my life and wonder speculatively at the reasons.

Anger and rage as the split pieces are fragmented further to satiate formic hungers from a throwaway society which buckles under the realisation of nihilistic pressures and corrupt sacrosanct authorities who neither understand nor care about the mortal blows they rain down on the oppressed.

Time to fight! Time to change! Time to overthrow the monolithic, misanthropic Green King who devours souls for breakfast, only to demand seconds while preparing for its next meal! Into the sausage factory we go! Out we come in neat, meat packages ready-made to serve directly to The Man. Desires and dreams discarded as offal, no use to the obese Overlord who ousted deity based religion in a surreptitiously silent coup d’état while we scratched our heads, wondering exactly when it all took place. Force-fed sedatives through our neon television screens and sleep walked through current crises and misconstrued constructs!

Revolution is calling! Lift your head from the pervasive sweetener-filled and ultimately oppressive media to see what’s really going on! Friends, Romans, Countrymen... as history repeats! Tyrants come and go yet the Omni-threat remains! Empty our pockets and fill our minds while all along offering reasons, and hiding behind fear! Breast fed terror at every opportunity while they plant the subcutaneous belief that everything’s ok while we’re protecting you!

Parade suit-dressed puppets before the masses, teach us subversion from the age of five and make us think there is no other way while oil barons and esoteric people barons divide and conquer from behind velvet drapes and white washed walls. Roll out a drama once and a while to stir the stagnation and reaffirm the oppressed! Show us your carefully worded rhetorical world without you in it! Oh how we fear that! Of course we do, we’re bred thus! Cattle for the masses and look how we bellow as we eat your trademarked grass! Shitting out dogma along with hope, (don’t worry; we have a cure for that!) Keep the populace in semi-coma and drip drain our blood to fill your bellies.

I can’t take it anymore! I cannot handle the penurious approach to the Good Things in life or the masochistic manner in which our days are assigned by invisible administrators. We are sped along on unseen tracks for the good of Capitalism, devoid of substance, of sanity, of purpose and of individualism. I am tired. I am weak. I am almost out of faith. Time... Time appears to be all I have. Years left of fighting the hollow substance that is humanity in the 21st Century. My summer of discontent rages on amid turbulent weather and delayed evensong. Values and honours continue to corrode, rusted from within. Rot at the core spreads outwards... and upwards it seems! The corruptible seek power, drawn like a moth to a nefarious light. Tighten the tax bracket and sweeten it all from within carefully worded linguistic legerdemain. They won’t notice, you