Saint = Stain
Scared = Sacred
Dear = Dare = Read
Life = File
War = Raw
Hate = Heat
Hatred = Red Hat = Thread
Leap = Plea
Last = Salt
Evil = Levi = Live = Vile = Veil
Ear = Are = Era
Lust = ****
Eat = Tea = Ate
Earth = Heart = Retha
Door = Odor
Dog = God
Sword = Words
Arts = Star = Rats
Art = Rat = Tar
Snake = Sneak
Arm = Ram
Neo = One
Low = Owl
Psalm = palms
Slow = owls = lows
Robe = Orbe = Bore
Baby = Abby
On = No
Written by Keith Edward Baucum

Time ruins our eyes
for each other,
while the moon burns
down the nights around us,
as if attracted to our madness
and spellbound by the dark
- ness that surrounds us,
yet here we remain, apart
and together, alone in a home
for the stone-cold heartless.

When powers she wields
river she breaks homes
floods paddy fields

Swords of rains
swells her hurt pride
boils her veins

Vengeful she brims
breaks the lock gate
cultivator's dreams

Gone is sweet flow
in the moonlight
soft silver glow

Simmers her soul
raging red hot
she burns like coal

With inflamed tides
she devours the crop
growing on her sides

River now a curse
she wouldn't recede
without leaving scars

She can't be blamed at all
men have only ravaged her
taken her all.

Only four of us today
We can have some tea and don't have to pay

Poems are ready to display
Who will start to read today

Poems on love, poems on war
Poems on strangers at the door

Minds are working oh so fast
From the first poem to the last

We put them up on a screen
Where all our poems can be seen

It is odd for one to wish
to have skin made of crystals in order to captivate your interest,
an aroma that fills the air and lingers, so that an opened door tilts the head back,
a hazy effect on the mind and thought processes that leaves the thinker in awe of his own self,
to know one's worth, how much per gram of soul
and to appreciate their craving and need for you to be in the palm of their hand, or rolled up and inhaled euphorically.
It is odd for a flower to wish she were a ****, however, some gardens aren't meant to be watered, rather, they are destined to become forest fires.

As so often
I find myself telling the same story
Of a reckless young man
Who skated on thin ice
With every move and decision
A gamble
A spin of the wheel
Risking sanity, soul and life
Spin and spin again
Add passion to the grinding day
Add colour to the morbid grey
Oh, foolish young man
Now that he's old and damaged
Boredom raises it's dull-eyed head
As he practises being dead
Spin and spin again

                                  By Phil Roberts

My words and my poems
Are no more than explanations
And embellishments
My means of expression
For my life is my "art"
It's what I am and what I write
It's why I need to write
To make sense of the things
I've seen and done
And there are times when
I think I've done far too much
Then, in deep contemplation
I realise I could have done more
And that kind of inner debate
And discussion with myself
Are a large part of my life
Which becomes my version
Of something like "art"

                                         By Phil Roberts

Over the years I stop at that point
only to board a vessel
to the other side of the river
for further journey to the sea
but for the brief period of waiting
I keep pondering about the name of the place

Harwood Point.

Who was this Harwood?
what was he doing here?
what good deed made him deserving
to name the place after him?

I am still baffled
after a quarter of a century.

Googling throws up many Harwoods
dead and distinguished
but there's no clue to connect any of them with
Harwood Point.

I imagine he was one of the administrators
who left the shore of England
to be stationed at this place a century or two ago
then a tract of almost inaccessible jungle
for surveying the prospects of trade
for the East India Company
but that leads me to further questions.

Was he a noble soul that loved the place
and came to like the people there
so much so that the natives after his departure
made his name permanently etched there?

Or was he among those typical British Officers
who vented their wrath for having been interned
to a god forsaken mangrove wilderness
treated the natives with extreme disdain
proving himself worthy of his position
and duly rewarded by his masters
by making him a part of history
ironically undefined and unrecorded.

I love to think though
on a night when the moon
made the tide rebellious
he walked into the river
and was lost for good
and to this day none knows for sure
what happened to Mr. Harwood.