We were
once upon a time--remember?
but no more
now is our time--forever

all because
tears we shed together
broken hearts once healed
re-love with the most resplendent grandeur.

When we began to love each other, in my mind, I saw a room. The bedroom of an old farm house; windows open, and soft, pale, green curtains moved lazily about the sills. Light of late afternoon slipped in, whilst a faint, blue summer sky waited outside. The door to the hallway is open; the rest of the house - still. A bed is the only piece furniture in a room with wood floors and white walls. There are only sheets on the bed, old cotton sheets, heavy, limp, and cool. This room was our togetherness. Since he died, I am not in the room, and light in it is cooler. It is evening and no one is home.

I am waiting at the door of the story with peaches in my hands. The door is shut, and the peaches are unripe. None of their warmth and sweetness can be smelled, their fuzz clings to them like tight new skin. When we wait patiently for things to open, we stay with them and be, and they ripen, and the door opens. I wait for the peaches and the door as they wait for me. A story through that door will show me and harm me, it is with peaches I may come through.

I was a small child when my mother told me a story of peaches. When I remember it, I remember the peach tree across from our old house. Short and squat, with shining, skinny leaves; the tree crouched in the rose garden. My mother told me about the peace and bliss of heaven, and that when we went there we became angels. She told me that angels longed for the earth sometimes, and have bodies, because angels cannot taste peaches.

When I taste and smell peaches now, I try to give myself over to them, to live and feel the taste of them, to not take them lightly, to not keep them foreign. The day that he died, I found a nectarine in the kitchen, and carried it with me, praying to it to keep me in the world of life, to remind me that moments of peaches are worth the pain of aliveness.

Every story starts with the breaking off an indefinite number of things that have come before. To try and tell the story of Lucien from the beginning, means I will omit the stories of before, the peripheral stories which came before and bled into his, like color on wet paper.

I suppose there are so many ways of telling a story. Not one will be perfect, but each is a prayer. Can you feel this? Can I make something? Are our lives commensurable? Do my words mean what your words mean? We shall see.

This story, too, is a prayer.

A prayer for a new house, a new tree, and a new beginning.

You've seen her a hundred times
With a hundred faces
But she's always the same
Always at the bar
She's there when you arrive
And she'll be there when you you leave
There beside the fullest ash-tray
Lighting another cigarette
With fluttery fidgety fingers

Her lipstick is far too red
And not quite straight
Too much make up to hide the lines
Which show all the more
As she cracks the mask to smile
Her hair is too yellow
And her eyes are long lost grey
The arc which her glass follows to her mouth
Is restless and constant

As the evening wears on
She will talk too loudly
She may even sing out of tune
She will laugh too shrilly
When nothing is funny
But sometimes
When it's late
She sheds silent messy tears
As she rocks on her bar stool
Because there's a reason
This woman at the bar
Has a story as real as any other
And it matters just as much

                                    By Phil Roberts

The moon carves her claw into the night,
Nothing is alive except
The fathomless infinity of darkness
Sulking in a white solitude.
      The lavished night
      Lays her hair upon
      A lonely pulsar,
      The body of silences
      Which bring ideas to life....
There is only the word
In the deep abyss of thoughts
And death is but a Nightstalker,
The sad desires envelope the lone mind
And trembles the broken heart.

The tremors of light cut away
To an absurd blackness,
The night is alive and distant,
The moon submerges
Into sapphire waters
Running in silence toward
An empty sky black.

Trump..  what can you say,
he thinks he's a shark and he preys upon all he can.
        

His calculated bid,  always on the attack,
his war cry, don't give any sucker a decent break.

He chooses walls over bridges
in dealing with the rest of the world.

He has more than enough money,
enough to 'get the job done', and say 'you're fired'.

He's dangerous and the whole world is watching.
Another North Korea, with a sense of a false bravado.

This man doesn't care how he'll go down in History,
he could care less of any man women or child.

It just goes to show you, he's crafty, the son-of-*****.
A man-child in depends... let's make him wallpaper.

Let's show them that they have awakened the peoples
and that we are not going to cave in to the bully on the school yard.

The whole world is watching and we won't  go away.
We have the energy to become a force of truth and justice.

The Universe is watching and no stone will be unturned.
No deed will not be illuminated and courage will stand up to fear.

Too fast a ride life is, to capture those stray tender notes,
that fall on your ears, eyes, nose or tongue, at times
the madness of sensory road rage, hits you and run
yet, you stop on your track, unawares,  shed a tear.
While passing through a curved bridge you look down
at the flow that just usual, to naked eyes, who knows?
the current may hide secrets that won't meet the eyes
but float ,  when it reaches further down at the sea.

As I walk along this street, at mornings and evenings,
at times when my eyes fall on her familiar face
I see grief swarming like a colony of bees around
a queen , on her face, when I smile,  she shows
no emotions, as if asking "Why should you be kind?"

Then one day, I see her, parking her car and line up
to get a bottle of whisky, as if it's urgent than ever
seeing me pass, she comes face to face .swarming
bees of grief for a while fly up, I see her ghostly grumpy face
and she pours  her grief out as if the world knows it,
"I can't sit holed up day and night,memories are a cloud
but too heavy to carry around,I fight with them day and night"
She held my hands and the street vanished we were in a dark room
enveloped by a smoke of grief that chokes, whoever comes in,
"I found an escape route, at last,look at the balloons!"
She ran to untie a bunch of huge helium balloons,
and through a dark window she soared up and vanished.

I still see her car parked in utter squalor, at the square,
near the martyr's column, a metaphor of grief for the world to see
while passing, eyes go up to see a bunch of helium balloons descend,
with the skeleton of  grief, of a woman lost  in  whisky haze.

Most bi*  r  ds call me ugly but
   I'm be  a  utiful & intelligent
     than  v  ultures and most of
  all oth  e  r birds gracing
   the ve  n  *etian skies