When I go to sleep at night
I leave the TV set on
With electric shadows
Flickering around the walls
Not because I fear the dark
Which is a friend of mine
But because silence is a threat
To my drifting vulnerable mind
And the open wounds of old

Silence allows my ghosts
To invade my imminent dreams
Some screaming in rage
As others whimper for love
Creating vivid nightmares
And drenching my very essence
So, when I go to sleep at night
I leave the TV set on

                                By Phil Roberts

Things get broken
Hearts
Minds
It's no-one's fault
It never is
Not really
Butter fingers and distraction
Without malice or forethought
Things
Like hearts and minds
Slip
And shatter on hard contact with reality

                                                  By Phil Roberts

GIRLS LIKE ME
are made up of pieces,
shaky legs and furrowed
eyebrows constant questions and
cutting off sentences we are existing
in every direction we are never quite
exactly one thing we are
everything all at once and we buzz
like a hive of nervous tics and anxious stutters
this energy cannot be created or destroyed
it is transferred from soft songs
to reminding GIRLS LIKE ME that you still
love us when our mouths cannot form words when
we are not entirely existing in the same place as you when
we get scared and write poetry about how GIRLS LIKE ME
fall in love with boys like you and we never really
tell them we wrap our hands around our own throats we
were never taught to be cruel, we were never taught to
be kind we are exactly everything and always nothing and we
never know what to say so we fall in love with boys like you and
we wait and wait and wait and cannot be created or destroyed

There can't be sharks in chlorine water.
Dip toe just to be sure it's ok,
The temperature, anyway.
Always, always, picking at everything..
Just give in and swim.

The fear of sharks in poisonous water:
give all of your hopes away.
Soon is coming the day when
You'll dive right in to uncover
The true fiend lying in plain sight
Underwater..

Emptiness

Is it Love  
              
                   if
I Feel
like
I'm  
breaking

                   Apart?

"She had a mind
that he was not ready for
behind that pretty little face."

I still miss the way you looked at me
with that tantalized look in your eye.

I wish that I could have been your fairytale,
and you could have been mine.

I'm fighting for my mind,
I'm fighting to not break apart
and to not be blind.

You broke me most with the words you didn't say.