As I lie here
With eyes closed softly
I think deeply of you
And I inhale stars
The scent of twinkling light
So fresh and alive
Sparkling gentle inside me
And I want to write this feeling
So tentatively
As it must be
Like writing words on bubbles
Delicate and precious
Begging them not to disappear
Like dreams in the morning

                                        By Phil Roberts

Have you heard of Alice,
The girl in Wonderland?
I am sure you have.
The problem, you see
lies in the words you didn't read.
The part the writer did not need.
While Alice laid upon a bed,
Her mother watched and stroked her head.
The doctors said it was psychosis
And so they gave her higher doses.
She's over-stressed,
She is a mess,
But every day she takes her meds.
She can't find Wonderland again
And so she uses pad and pen
To write some poems, oh so sad
But they help others feel less bad
And that will help her feel less ******,
The closest thing she feels to happy.

Like seeing the ghosts of the people I loved
I scan through crowds and avoid their faces
Faces as magnets attract my eyes
My vision is blurry, it's time to go
I stumble through hallways
My head hangs low,
Avoiding those faces as magnets.

The girl with the piercings
The guy with tattoos
That person whose hair is a dark grayish blue

Those people have faces as magnets.

I met a lady in red with glasses on
She sits near the heavy stone
as i enter the room
she smiles and waved her hand

Even as dying, I have no time
For bitterness.

Life was too short,
Even before.

Each step holds gratitude for the sound
Of snow beneath it.

For
Now

I carry my passenger
Unburdened.

Say no to nothing. Not
Even the cancer.

Even tomorrow's mother's tears,
Father's clenched fists upon casket;

Flowers; loss. Inevitability.
Death grows inside me.

The opposite of a
Pregnancy.

I am living in a capsule
I am shielded from outside forces,
hurting
pain
and
sallow emotions

these are orange

I am shielded by this boundary
that my mind constructed
A prisoner to my own ways
forever defending me
from your
rude
and stabbing
jagged jars

and your

sharp
and jarring
warnings

these are red

it may sound nice
that I am immune

this is blue

But the privilege of the good emotions
all the
warm
and happy
delicious laughs

which are yellow

I no longer have

because I am a prisoner
of cause and effect-
you cause and I deflect

Now I am an outsider on the inside
forever watching all the colors
as they
bounce off my capsule wall.

A middle-aged couple
Stares out their front window
Happily watching the workers
Busy on their front lawn, digging a hole.

They had lived in this neighborhood
For three years
With their three precious daughters,
The family dog, and only two trees.

The mother would often complain
Because the houses looked bare
The father was sad,
Said the air was stale.

But they know well that each day that brings a trial
Brings a blessing, too.
Today, the dog is barking
And there's plenty of work to do.

Still, they smile.
Because today they get a brand new tree.