Shiny bricks and skeins of yellow grass
Barely perceptible colours
Hung with liquid haze
Dog **** and thunder
Heavy close and thick
Miasma
Clings to sweat
Running with drizzle
Clings to damp
Drowning the pores of the skin
Making collars clinging sticky
Rubbing and abrasive

In view of the towering flats
The greyly awaiting wait
Standing at the bus stop
Speaking quiet weather talk
In the distantly English way
So safely meaningless
This polite evasion
Ignores their damp dilemma
Soon, as they sit inside the bus
These bodies shall steam
Like cattle in a byre

Kids hang around the shops
Emptying and kicking cans
The younger ones
Run and shout manically
Their elders spit
And swear casually
All hoods and shadows
Asking adults to buy them lager
Because they can't get served at the "offie"
Rain changes nothing here

A bedroom guitar plays
Weakly electric
And the Turneresque sky
Swallows the sound whole and flat
Sophisticated trash
Crying into a cloudy breast
Shaded darkly round
Full and swollen
Grey and sodden
The distant rumbling
Tumbling closer to home

                                    By Phil Roberts

These cloudy days
When the air is cold and soft,
Like the memory of a kiss,
Of a lover lost to the world.

When the rain drizzles down
Fine and slow,
Caressing the skin,
Like a silk blanket
Made of air
And frost
And whispers.

These cloudy days,
When the grey of the sky
Seduces the sea into a darker danger
And I can hear my heart beating
To the rhythm of the wind carrying the rain.
It's theses days
That I love the most.

As I lay here tonight, all I really Want to do is hold you tight.
But God said that could not be because you are just to far from me.
I think of all we've been through, the laughs the hurts, the tears, we've cried , the crazy world I've seen you through but most of all me just wanting to shield you from this so called life.
You are apart of me, just like I am apart of you, and my love for you will only grow because you are my beautiful daughter I want you to know.
Time nor distance can ever change the love I feel for you in my heart today.
You are my daughter and will always be, for I once felt your heartbeat growing inside of me.

Who amongst us is not
Shaped by our past some way?
Much of it best forgot,
Mistakes made on the way.
Though it taught us a lot
It's important to say:
What we were matters not,
But what we are today.

My Lovely
I wrote your name
On an autumnal leaf
And let it blew away in the wind
Now you are forgotten
But only your name
I hear your whispering in my ears
On cold brisk days.

He’s a material man
On a material planet.
Gobbles up money like a gannet.

Seeking status and promotion,
Upwardly mobile is his motion.
At his side is Madonna’s Girl,
In for a diamond, in for a pearl.

This poor creature has no soul,
Making a fortune his only goal.
Grandeur or Greatness is his God,
For the beauty of Nature he don’t give a sod.

This man doesn’t know what he is missing,
Life’s simple pleasures and Love’s real kissing.

Who really needs all those houses and cars,
Or getting seen in swanky bars?
What’s so fine about a designer label?
We seem to have built our Tower of Babel.

This man will be deaf to these words of mine.
The only mine HE wants, is a glittering Gold Mine.
Humanity divided into Rich and Poor,
Anyone sensible knows the score.

Nations chasing seas of oil,
While back at home the slaves they toil.
Waging wars for piles of money,
Everyone knows it isn’t funny.

Any hope for Material Man?
Unless he changes, he’s down the pan.
Please sir will you open your eyes?
Only Love is loved by the wise.

Paul Butters

I know how you feel.
I know what you feel.

The front you put on is the biggest
Crime you could ever commit.

Your makeup, clothes, and hair
Hide your cracks.

Your laugh,
Your forever immaturity.

Your 'forever young
Wild and free.'

I see through it.
I see through every hook up
You have
A week long noncommittal
Relationship.
Every other week.
Every other ****.

You say "you know
I'm not usually like this"
You say "it's only a
One time thing"

But how many people
Can be a one time thing

Until it just piles up into a
Blur
Of one night stands?

Until people realize
You don't have a dad
-Not a real one.

Until they see what holds
You together is string
Tied to the boys you ****

Until they see the hole
You have that nothing can fill.

Nothing can fill it.
Not friendship.
Not love.

You, my dear, are lost.
And more alone than you've
Ever been.

And I will not let you
Swallow me up into the
Hole you have.

I will no longer try to
Save you.
Only you can save you.

And it hurts you to be good.
And it feels good to be bad.

I know you, girl.
I know you, woman.
I know you.
And I know
How you are.

Good luck.
And good bye.

Tracing the tattoos on your arm with the pupils of my eyes
Should I touch
The night is getting older
The mistakes I haven’t made yet are making me anxious
The conversation I’m hiding from you is beginning to make my lips turn blue
But you have become exceedingly good at turning them purple
Merging my misery with your happiness
Finding the average in a not-so-average pair
Remaining too close for comfort
While comfortably numb to both yesterday and tomorrow’s heart ache
I’m scared because you make me feel
You make me think
You make me someone other than the man I used to be
And I’m having trouble deciding if that’s a good or bad thing right now
The good news today is that I always see you in my dreams
The bad news tomorrow is that I may forever see you in my nightmares