I feel alone
but i'm not..
I hurt
but no one is hurting me..
I just don't feel right
I don't belong here
the lingering question, why..
Why do I feel this pain..
I want it to go away
Trying so hard, but it just comes back so much stronger
Pulling down
Knowing my weaknesses
I cry..
but no tears
Just left with broken pieces on the ground that I can't pick up..

"You should smile more!"
"Don't be sad, just be happy!"*
As if it's that easy,
To simply flip a switch,
And propel myself out of bed the next morning.
What they don't understand is,
To leave my bed is to leave my depression,
To break these chain-linked sheets.
But I find comfort in the discomfort,
Because at least I can say I felt something.

When she smiles, her heart is blooming
With love and pure ecstasy;
The crinkle of her eyes whispering
Memories of a blue sky childhood.
So tell me why, when I smile
Into this cracked mirror,
I picture myself with a dandelion tongue-
As if I could choke on the roots, instead of
The image of tha little girl
They said had potential .
As if I could pretend the seeds were clouds
In a make-believe childhood.

They say it's easier to pretend than it is to be,
But how am I supposed to plaster a smile
When the walls are falling all around me?
How can I look you in the eye,
And tell you I'm happy,
When I don't even know what happy is?

I sit in the silence of my room
And stare at the stucco walls,
From morning glare to the evening gloom
The coming despair appals,
For I know that it’s sneaking up on me
That memory of your face,
So cold and still in the evening chill
And pale, once you’d run your race.

You always gave me a joyful wave
And said you’d be there for me,
But what you gave from a shallow grave
Was only more misery.
You couldn’t reach out to hold my hand
As you did in the days before,
When once a kiss was the source of bliss
But of kissing, there was no more.

Your skin was an alabaster white
Once your blood had ceased to flow,
Where was the warmth when I held you tight
On those nights, so long ago?
And where the spark that shone at your eyes
From the recess of your soul?
It leaves the eyes when a lover dies
And the touch of the skin is cold.

But now you form on the stucco wall
And wave, like you waved to me,
Before you ran from the narrow hall
And out by the willow tree,
A car came leaping into the room
As it did, and it knocked you down,
It’s then I cradled you in my arms
Like a man who’s about to drown.

I see these visions, day after day
When I stare too long at the wall,
I cry and weep, and I get no sleep
When I dream of your funeral,
I reach right into the plaster where
I think I can touch your face,
But only can feel the stone cold wall
Of another time and place.

David Lewis Paget

Through a broken window
Covered with dirt and cobwebs
And from within an empty house
Crumbling and derelict
Even the bleakest landscape
Can look fine and good

When the water runs in
Through the sagging old roof
It makes the rain outside
Seem healthier and clean
So that drafts blowing through
Cracked and buckling walls
Make the harshest winds
Feel kind and warm

Because when the interior
Is so desolate and empty
It makes the worst of the world
Seem pretty much good enough
So why bother to change
Anything at all

                                               By Phil Roberts

I wish all my writing  depicted gaggles
wedging south over mossy lakes.

They more often wander to  legs,
tangerine tongues, the taste

of sweat and smell of cheap hairspray;  
for thoughts like these, I feel no
                                          shame.

I blow dust off the book long forgotten;
It sprinkles like the stuff of faeries,
Gold and glittered across a mid-day sun,
A fraction of which allowed,
Through the only portal to me,
My one and only window.

The stars could twinkle somewhere south,
But I ply parallel a pale blue sky,
The trees, the birds, the oak and feather,
Simplicities from which I draw my breath.

It’s when my right eye twitches,
Ever so slightly, that this moment becomes
Ruined, reality and further ruined
By the projection of dead cells and mucus,
My reaction to the mites and memories within.

Soon after, tears from my left eye soothe
Parchment when empty entries persist,
And not from the moment I’ve found,
But upon the book that I’ve unearthed,
A tether yielding the child, “unworthy,”
And a life best to the orphaned,
Mothered by only the winds.

Thus I become the seconds where
The dust has since disappeared,
Moons offer placated grins,
And the magic’s all but exposed too,
Much like the my earlier sunlight –

Jokes behind omnipresent clouds, and so,
I slap the hand that yielded this treasure
And toss the jewels to the wolves below.
Leaving time, and myself, once more and
In ritual, to be forgotten.