Anxiety is a **** curse.
You are sabotaged by your own body and mind.
It twists your reality like it's in your DNA.
Makes you believe you are not worthy or friendships,
love or even your own reflection.
Choices come in small, extra small or sleep until it's over.
Doubting the safety of the ride to work
or if staying in bed will **** you first.
Is it better to be sick or cry.
To shake apart or hold it together.
Intrusive thoughts are a plague
but maybe you'll die from that too.
Your heart reminds you it can stop at any moment
and to prove the point it then beats so loud
even the dog can hear it.
You don't know why it happens
because your brain is on lock down
and there's nothing you can do about it.
Your very bones betray you
shaking like they have nothing better to do..
like hold you up.
Anxiety takes you hostage
and the ransom you pay
is the freedom of feeling normal.

As so often
I find myself telling the same story
Of a reckless young man
Who skated on thin ice
With every move and decision
A gamble
A spin of the wheel
Risking sanity, soul and life
Spin and spin again
Add passion to the grinding day
Add colour to the morbid grey
Oh, foolish young man
Now that he's old and damaged
Boredom raises it's dull-eyed head
As he practises being dead
Spin and spin again

                                  By Phil Roberts

Life-
the common river
but each sails alone
with none other

Life-
so many regard as the sorrowful river
it flows to the endless sea
to its past it returns never

Life-
isn't it an unknown river?
every life is ****** upon it
'why'?  one does wonder.

Life--
blessed if you find it a river
of splendour---harness then all your resources-
thus self-assured---you would never fall over.

we are
the
burning candles
that hang
from the
night sky
upside down
that move
this heaven
that move
this earth
around
all the stars
that we see
with our eyes
at night

Have you put on weight?
(I'm fat!)
Your eyebrows aint straight
(Oh drat!)
What are you wearing?
(I'm a mess)
Your hair is wavy!
(Birds nest)
Your teeth are crooked
(Can't smile)
Your nose is hooked
(Sh*te!!!)
Your nails are cracked
(Please stop)
Your face looks smacked
(I can't cope)
Your ears are too big
(I wanna cry)
I'm only kidding hahaha
(I wanna die)

All sailing boats
will at the end arrive at shore
patience and endurance
is the guiding wind--the storms will buffet no more.

Many a sea I have sailed
and shed every lonely tear
but I am a man larger than the sea
in my aloneness I conquered every single fear.

If you're ever on the riverside
where the sun beats your head
you would see the old man
selling hats of palm leaf
but you care not to notice him
having already smelled the sea
and too keen to cross the river
travel southward on the island
till the saline wind scalds your eyes
your skins itch to jump into the waves
yet the man with the palm leaf hats
would not cease to tell you
how burning would be the sun on the sands
and so badly you need to protect the head
by parting bucks that mean nothing to you
but a world to the mouths he feeds
and before you stamp on him a final no
she has one atop her hair
beneath which her eyes flutter like butterflies
her sun rouged cheeks untimely blush
and two born anew lovers
merrily head for the sea
having bought romance
for forty bucks.