Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”

We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t
Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we’ve listened to the great criers—Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now
We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

When I was still young and fresh
A million years ago
I walked on edges
Always on the edge of something
Something wild

Bright lights and long nights
Lots of laughter and music
Always music
Singing with the band
Dodging the flying glass
When fights broke out
Howling to the moon
Oh, wild indeed were we

All shadows now, alas
Visions from an addled brain
Pubs, clubs and smoky dumps
Leave no turn unstoned was the cry
More fun than fundamental
And fundamentally flawed, it was
A couple of hours sleep 'fore the day job
With eye-lids stuck together
And walking into walls
But still I wouldn't have swapped it
For all the strait laced straight faced
Wealth in the world

                                 By Phil Roberts

I was once able to improvise love
No I..I..Is
No Uh or Ums
Just I love you....
I didn’t realize that I never meant it

Then, one day, she arrived
The only available words were....Hi
Cheeks
Cheeks Cheeks Cheeks
I wanted to kiss her cheeks like it was the first time eating an apple
I wanted to kiss her cheeks like it was a chocolate cake and I was five
I wanted to kiss her cheeks like yesterday was the day i was given the gift of lips
I...I...I..wanted to kiss her cheeks like..Um..Uh

I was Once Able to Improvise Love

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and ****** and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.