I can't find a metaphor
To illustrate the happenings -
The death that demolished my hope,
A tornado of things darkly in my mind.

All in a moment when CNN broadcast
The latest mass killings,
Inside my bones the weightless dust
Lifts off my body like ash.
I sit in a bar,
No I sit in a chair with these flaring
Interminable news,
I miss the silences,
A formidable peace followed
By a singular moment when I
Can enjoy myself against
The flaunting horrors of the world.

Is it designed this way?
Death with a volley of dark stories,
I want to stop fidgeting and ignore
The tears, the sadness,
Oh the maddening crowds!!

I drink to my disgust,
I drink a concoction of inner peace,
And I smile and ask myself,
Is there any joy in tragedy?

the pictures from the ISS
make it very clear
to everybody with a TV screen
    or a computer

our earth is a globe
    and blue
        and finite
            and in a delicate balance

determined by more factors than even
our most sophisticated computer simulations
can so far figure out

it makes you wonder
why
of all people
those who surely own more than one TV screen
    and a couple of notebooks & cetera
are the ones who deny
that they are
   destroying our rain forests
   polluting our rivers and seas
   poisoning our environment
   ruining our lives
   deadening our minds

maybe
    if they dare to set forth
    even a step or two
    from their isolated gated  habitats
    and walk in the real world
    they have created
they are able to begin
to understand

let me yoke to you.
twist mine into yours.
***** me in at the hips.
lift me into your if's
and have me, present.

our torquing bodies
charging each other,
holding back the

bloom of darkness.

yes, it is true:
we are
closest to the dark.

but we are also
sown to the broadest urge
that wrote us.

this ebb is lit with written poems,
receding into the lightness of dense being.

so,
jot me
into this

and i
will
exist in
your margins,

like nice little notes
that mean everything in the world.

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

We follow the bridleway that dissects the growing field of wheat, now dark green and vigorous after it's Spring dose of nitrogen. Pass the smouldering ruin of a bonfire which has been awaiting the torch for weeks. Charred black are two big sections of oak trunk which I considered purloining every time I passed, but decided they looked too heavy to move.

Reach the road, rein in the dog's lead, turn right. The thatch I renewed a few years back is definitely not looking new any more. Past the houses, past the one where the whistler lives. All the way across the wide East Anglian field I often hear him trilling, when we are both pottering in our gardens. He has a brick outhouse, probably a former loo or wash house. A thrush is sitting on top of the chimney and a blackbird on the weather vane, they look about four feet apart. I pick up a lager can, crush it and slip it in my back pocket. A pigeon climbs, claps its wings and glides back down. Jogger's footsteps catch up from behind. It's the chap who owns a Harley Davidson.

I turn back into our lane, a skylark is singing loud and clear above us to the left. A rabbit dashes across the lane a few yards ahead, disappears. The dog's ears go straight up and he eagerly sniffs its trail. Back home.