life. love. other.

Ben Wilson's third book, and first poetry collection, features 33 evocative portraits on all aspects of the human form. Life and death. Love won and love lost. Mental health highs and lows. Summer days reclining by the coast, and winter nights pining for the past. Beginnings and ends. Alongside more curious topics: football stickers, fading posters, menacing dreams, the plight of the toothbrush... and farting in bed. Three extracts from the book are included here: Coast
Soft morning ocean breeze sighs
Another summer's day,
Watching strepitous seagulls
Bicker across the bay.
The reggae soldier's boombox
Plays one more sunshine song,
Simple plans for this evening:
Alcoholic and long. How I wish you were here too
Stroking my sunburnt skin,
Sharing lingering kisses
As nightfall shimmers in.
I love the twilight coastline
But that's the conch I crave:
Your sweet smile pressed unto mine
In rhythm with the waves.
Time
Threadbare evenings passing
In Sussex sunset,
Devon beaches whispering Days away - unprinted obituaries
Never to be reread,
Just blank colourless pages Like the rest of the past:
Nothing in the end.
Only sleep, and a headstone, And a small patch of grass. Keep Going It's over now. You can not breathe.
Salty tears moisten your sleeve.
The inner burning makes you heave.
Keep going, keep going, keep going. Suffocated by hurt and heat.
Oceans of sweat, war gun heartbeat.
Limp shoulders pinned against the sheets.
Keep going, keep going, keep going. Lungs constricted by the dawn crush.
Mind of jelly, limbs turned to mush.
Brain detonating in the hush.
Keep going, keep going, keep going. It was not you. It is not you.
Stop turning red flags into blue.
Hijack the lies, embrace the true.
Keep going, keep going, keep going. And take my word, this is no end.
Please call your family. Text a friend.
I swear, I swear that you will mend.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.