Keep your stamps and letters
Don't invite me to a meeting
If you keep them coming
I'll treat you to a beating

Groups all seem to want me
But the feeling's not the same
Go and find your mailing list
And please remove my name

oh....
I won't join any club that would have me as a member
I've a memory like an elephant
so, don't send me application forms
Because you know I will remember

Oh, It must be freezing down  in hell
In fact it must be snowing
I came today, just to say
Hello, I must be going

Don't ask me to sign up again
Please don't be deluded
Check your list and you'll find me
In the column marked excluded

Oh
I won't join any club that would have me as a member
I've a memory like an elephant
so, don't send me application forms
Because you know I will remember

Oh, It must be freezing down in hell
In fact it must be snowing
I came today, just to say
Hello, I must be going

Save your money, save your stamps
You know just what to do
Stop calling, stop the letters
Please, I'm asking you

The only group with membership
Costs me more, due to my brothers
Is family, and even then
I think we had different mothers

oh,I won't join any club that would have me as a member
I've a memory like an elephant
so, don't send me application forms
Because you know I will remember

Oh, It must be freezing down in hell
In fact it must be snowing
I came today, just to say
Hello, I must be going

I will not join any club that would have me as a member
I'll tell you now, and then again, I'll tell you in September
The world is a much better place, if on your list my name's not showing
So here I am, with you to say...Hello, I must be going

Like a meteor at night,
The stages of life,
Come from darkness
No one could know.
There's the flash,
          (and a fire)
The Oohs and desires,
Then
Pooof,
There goes the show.

everyday I pass the graveyard that will house my remains
and everyday I die a little more to coming close to being a resident

sharp knives
of alien family systems
cut my emotions
to pieces
and hang them
on hooks inside of me
to rot.

Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

When I was a younger man
Time moved so much quicker
There was always something happening
Always something changing
Somewhere to go
Something to catch up with
Or even to escape from
People came and went
Then came and went again
"Where's he living these days?"
"Who knows what's happening?"

Now things are quieter and calmer
In this age of ghosts
In the land of the lost and lonely
Where once there was speed
There's nowhere to go
And nothing much changes
Even my dreams remain the same
As, with an unaccustomed patience
I write poems
And wait

                              By Phil Roberts

There's stuff parents will never know,
The kicks and blows we all endure
To mind, body, spirit and soul.
The run-ins with society,
With the good and the Just for me.
Children should never ever know
Half the stuff they should never know.
The other half I won't tell,
Like the half my kids won't share as well.

Who else knows the stuff I've done,
Alone or with the chosen ones,
Who shared memories with me.
One has died,
One has forgot,
One was always on the spot,
But now stolen from memory's vault:
My recall is true and false,
But the memory now is real,
None here to make appeals.

He knew all of my youth and teens,
Knew my life and all my moves,
My families, old and new;
But his memory is fading too.
It's not forgotten,
It can't be retrieved;
It's lost and can't be found.
These memories now are treasures,
Forever buried underground.