Once when I was young,* I was told you could swing so high you'd be able to just *fly away.  

   I learned early on
               That not everything we're told is true
               The fantastical can sometimes amount to a pile of plastic bags scattered in the wind
                    The end isn't always happy and there's not always closure
      Punctuations are more often question marks than definitive periods
                And looking for a definite explanation took prevalence over allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
         Play time was replaced with study time,
             And before we knew it, it was time for work
                      We strayed from the playgrounds of our youth,
      Never returning to the top of the slide, we'd hit the ground a bit too hard to keep the enchantment of seemingly endless possibilities going
                                              Carriages became pumpkins long before midnight,
              And the school bell rang before we could finish our fun
                       But to tell the truth, sometimes,
     When everyone else has gone inside, back to the real world, full of logic and banalities,
         I sit on the old swingset kicking my feet
    Hoping it will let me *soar

Need a coat it’s raining
White grains from the cloud
To my past
There you are
Like a flowers’ peak bloom
Smiling
An angelical voice
Singing
The shiniest star
So captivating

Then,
When we’re young
I’m just a fool
So unwise
And so blind
Haven’t seen you
As you are
The shiniest light of your star
The lovely scent of your flower
The saintly voice when you sing
Now,
Was just a dream
Was just a dream

6-08-2016

With your heart buttoned up tight
And your soul scrubbed to transluscence
You tip-toed around mountains
And visited the sand and sea
Contained in your selfness
And at ease in your skin
You glided without leaving footsteps
With the grace of angels
Perhaps a church ***** and choir
Vibrated in the air
But the world moved on
At a less sedate rate of orbit
And sadly
It would not
And could not
Wait

                                 By Phil Roberts

Walking in the cold rain
Alone and
Going nowhere
Just hiding tears in raindrops

Always dreaming of being lost
Lost and then
The endless fall
Then the gasping awakening

But always the rain will end
And sunrise
Put an end
To the cruelty of night

And life will begin in warmth
And hope
Blossoms
Into the sweetest softest petals

                                           By Phil Roberts

The bird was happy when she was your pet.
But u couldn't keep it happy for long
So she fled.
She found people to laugh with
but not by being herself.

Everyday she felt more empty
Couldn't find what was missing now.

One day she realized what she missed the most,
She left all behind and fled back to you
But may be it was too late .

Now she is your pet again
And you only feed her grains
without a smile on your face

Cities aren't cities,
The people are the cities,
she'd say, and I didn't understand
what she meant until I realised

That Hauz Khas was our first stroll ever,
Khan Market- our best cup of coffee,
Humayun Tomb- our first stolen kiss,
Dilli Haat- our first quarrel,
The Lodhi Gardens- our biggest quarrel!
The Jama Masjid was where we'd always make up.

Now I know which market sells her favourite
bags, which gully keeps the anklets
she loves most, which discrete stall in the
by-lanes of Old Delhi is her best chaat-wallah ever,
Every nook, I know by the fragrance of her memory,
I try forget, I try erase,
But oh, I remember,
For she is my Delhi

Delhi is her, only her,
The city of first love, first dreams,
a million rights, a devastating wrong,
The city that now stings with the thorns
That make my feet bleed when I try to enter,
Even with my back turned,
The city hurls
Stones at my fragile heart and screams at me
to never return.
*I'll never return.

He tells me to paint him a picture,
paint it with strokes bold
I nod and cover the canvas in gold.
I throw some red in there to show my beating heart.
He knows nothing, not even our start.
Our love's purple, a war between red and blue.
When we dance, we're red
like the devil's tune.
We're splattered colours and broken palettes.
We sit at beaches waiting for our fates.
He could choke on his own cigarettes
but I won't leave him
till he tells me to paint another picture
with strokes bold
till the air in our rooms is no longer cold
till the fire has destroyed our pretty pictures
and his ashes cover my bones.