He scoops sands in baskets

then balancing neatly on the shoulder
carries to where needed
through bone breaking hours.

Upon his footprints is there a name
or a home
where he goes back for the night
lands featherlight kiss on a woman
awakes her sleepy bones with her hands
forgetting his days sinking in the sands.

He posits a question
I sit
I postulate
Morning suns are sparks on cinder
In my eyes
Evening suns are dying embers
In my eyes
The sun that lives over me
And the hidden face of the moon
That lives in me
And all manner of day and night
That becomes me
A living ghost
A dying host
A warrior
A coward
An old soul
A young man
He asks a simple question
But there is no simple answer

I could not be a stranger to you
Our story becoming lore, and dinosaurs
Our bones in the ground still telling stories
Still loving each other after all the skin is gone
You are my imagination as a child
The way the sun shines music on my skin
And all I hoped for in my darkest hours
Was the moment I met you
So hold my hand and make me see
Become the path I walk
My future and my history
My destination

A stranger life I never knew
A life I never knew you
We live a life

We couldn't  ever be strangers
Because with your fingers I touch
And with your skin I feel
And with your most beautiful eyes I see
The world as it should be
Where my arms will hold you
And my chest where you lay your head
You become my heartbeat
So hold my hand and don't let go
Hold my hand because its your own
And everything you've seen
Has always been a part of me

We could never be strangers
I loved you before I met you
I am you

I felt this primal urge
This trance-like instinct
To set things right
In case I have to leave
Move on, so to speak

So
I took my jaundiced eye
And rolled it from corner to corner
Of this, my situation
And I felt so very small and hard
Lost in largeness
For cynicism is a tight thing
Which allows little movement
A strange kind of chastity

And then, you see
Changes
Honesty demanded that I see more
Grow, so to speak

And oh, my poor sore eyes
See how the children starve
All over this bitter world
This bitter, sickened world
And cynicism did this
Through the slack hands of millions
Who still refuse to believe
That things can be changed

                                    By Phil Roberts