I am not sure which is true
But your voice and your eye
I am sure one must lie

There are no Apaches
With flaming arrows and piebald ponies
There are no writhing jungles round here
There are no lost temples
Hiding untold treasures
There are no damsels to be rescued
By a knight on a white charger
There are no pirates on the high seas
No skull and crossbones flying
Above a deck bristling and glistening
With cutlasses and flintlocks ready
And hook hands and black eye-patches
In the sunlight of the Spanish Maine
There are no interplanetary wars
With hand-held laser guns
And weird creatures from strange worlds
They just do not exist
I learned this when
I was very very young
And I really wanted to be a pirate

                                    By Phil Roberts

when the words in my head made no sense
and every axiom turned on it's head

I was crying

when the ears you listened with were tender
and  when at last spoke your wisdom

my tears had ebbed

but we made a plan and we went to the party
and when we came back we worked liked clockwork

and we were on fire

simple things together to straighten our world
like pitch and stack and recycle

we were on fire

we did what we had to do because we knew
that we could get through it together

then we laughed

I can't make brushes
dance all flamenco—
red, blue, purples
on a peacock's feathery
canvas

Nor can I raise
unborn symphonies
from a string's womb

Instead, I piece
words caught
like fireflies
in the air
stir their light
through and through
in cosmic metaphors
in sea allegories
in flights of soliloquies
in lovelorn colloquies

Really,
I can't dazzle eyes
nor fuddle ears
but I behold
the days to come
with tongues from
yesteryears

You were the sun, I was a flower
I looked up to you to learn, you set me free to bud
You kept me warm through windy spring nights
You taught me to grow through golden leaves falling
After storms, you crept from behind the clouds to help me dry
When snow fell, I was buried beneath the ice and you brought me back again
But once the summer came, you blazed so bright I couldn’t see

The sweltering sun, my sweet sun
I took your light, your love, and I blossomed
Then I grew, only to realize you would always be far up there
I took too much and waited, wilted and grey in the end.