my thoughts, so potent just before--
like fresh-pressed olive drops
that lingered, lipping from the fragrant spout--
now pass, diffuse atop an ocean vast.

i imagine willing it to be a pond,
not for its lesser size alone
but mostly for its calm,
reflective height; yet
these waves are
distort ruthlessness
of liquid dust
by slapping, tower-high
the central ocean rip-whirl tide:
and gone--
as Homer's heroes screaming as they drown,
deaf as oars but for their final gasps
of yearned-for clarity:
of nameless pride's Ithacan king
abrading lustful wrists
restrained to blind a god's son's single eye
by tentacles of twisting, tactful fate.

by threaded loom rethreaded
soon i see my salty self in suit
of sameness, tricking time
by indolence or theft--
from truth, from others' hearths--
the difference winks in bubbles on the cosmic shore...
foam so clean i grin to call it spume,
grin to brace the seabed to my algaed chest
in salinating crush of sand, of blood-sharp shell and rock,
in sungreen warmth of blue and life
in crashing sinus wince
i grit aegean nereids in my sneeze,
splay their formless sexing into pelvic scrapes
of quickened starbursts anciently reborn,
squeezed in pleasure tears and laughing drops--
as all pelagic ***** must
within the pressure of a world,
its breathing darkness spotted with transmuted sun,
expel itself in sensate gusts--
as octopodal spurting flings
in liquid ****** of purpose forth,
(or backwards, sideways, in and out)--
so too i think
and thinking, drown my ink
instead of drowning thinking in my ink














.

All of the shining mad ones
With their heresies of reality
And other visions and other voices
Are not diminished
By the multitude of choices
That is their truth
Upon each waking day

They are woken by the howl
From beyond the first ear
And into the deeper mind
Where there is other language
And blinding colours of emotion
For madness has the purity of pain
That martyrs can only long for

                                           By Phil Roberts