Silent waters
But crashing waves
Trying to be stronger
For I have too much to save

Treading the water
Lightly
I'm going under
I can't breathe

Don't know how to live
Too much to take
Too much to give
I'm just afraid

I'm falling down
I can't hold on any longer
Watch me drown
In the silent waters

My skin remembers your fingers.
My calm remembers your care.
I loved once and was loved.
Read this to me when I'm not there.

I have little thought for these days
As the future evaporates
And the past grows fat and vivid
I amuse myself with games of flashback
Faces and places flickering
Across an empty mind
Dragging their stories behind them
Dead memories metamorphosing
Into living visceral dreams
Where the flowers of love and loss
Are intertwined so closely
That with the passing of time
They each rob the other
Of some pain and glory
As reality gives way
To a realisation of truth

                                      By Phil Roberts

“Forgetting is the purest form of clarity.”
--Someone

And so ended the unquiet dreams
awkward reunions with the dead
wandering the halls of sleep,
the bodies of others’ loss.
Ghosts gone from the gazebo.
No laments in the lowering sun.

She woke. Blue sky blinked into her eyes.  
The room’s climate began to clear.
The familiar path from bed to door
curled into a stone staircase.
When did that get there?  
There was writing on the wall
near a waterfall.

She climbed. She soared.  
She leant a myth to god.
She stood in a garden with five black stones.
She foretold an eclipse,
Burned the witch of winter,
Stepped in the same river twice.

The moon shrank into the alarm clock’s face.
Her breath brewed clouds above her forehead.
She sat aloof in the empty air,
Alone in the immense morning,
At rest in clear, cold perfection.

There's a place I can go, to escape all the fear,
Where I'm free to be me, and can cry floods of tears,
It's a place in my mind that's a beautiful room,
It defends me in times of the terrible gloom..

I just stumbled across it one terrible day,
When I needed to end it all,and drift away,
I was making a plan, which would end everything,
When this voice, out of nowhere, made my ears ring..

And a film roll of pictures and sounds it would give,
Some of young, some of old, they inspired me to live,
So i listened and cried a lot, feeling it so,
And decided to store it all, wanting to know..

So I nurtured and kept it all deep in my head,
And I labelled that room of glee "For times of Dread",
So of course when the gloom takes hold, I knock three times,
And I'm welcomed with love, so inside I climb..

And a shower of images, sounds and such love,
Keeps me safe and alive, and it fits like a glove,
Scenes of happiness, wonder and sweet sanctuary,
Are all tucked up inside, for when I lose......the real me.....

She invited me into her palace of art,
Where everything signified something else.
She wore a silvery gown,
Covered with a million miniature mirrors.
I was badly dressed.

“Beautiful lady, be my love
and heal my soul.
My life is fragments.
Make me whole.”

“I made this place to stand apart,
A window to a world purer, deeply felt.
Everything here is for you but my heart.
Don’t get the idea that it’s going to melt

Later on.”  Music played.
Nirvana. Or maybe it was “Deacon Blues.”
Twisted letters carved
On doorknobs offered clues
To someone else’s mystery.

“Then be my muse,
Teach me the language of clouds
The coded words on the ceiling’s vault.”

A digital river flowed beneath
A winding stair down to an analog sea.
I asked “Are these ‘caverns measureless to man’?”
“Yes,” she said, “But not to woman.”

I wandered through room after room,
One printed, one painted, one sculpted, one
Paneled with friezes like the blazing tomb
Of an epic queen deified by the sun.

I saw a near-empty room with a single chair.
The light defined its form,
its form escaping into light.
“Is this real or a photo?”
“Yes,” she serenely replied.

I came to two doors.  One said Discipline,
One Desire. “How can I possibly choose?”
“They lead to the same place,” she said.

What was real and what wasn’t flowed together
“You’re starting to figure it out.”

The innocence of a woman’s arched back,
And the wisdom of children.  
The solitude of a lonely pier.

I knelt and I thanked her “Was all this for me?”
“I made this to give away. Not just for you.
What have you learned?  Let’s review.

“Art is a shield
Against falling glass. Art healed
My divided mind, which used to devour
Itself, giving away its power.

Art is hunger, a piercing lack.
Art is a ride on a gull’s back.

Art is a dodge, the as of the mirror.
Art destroys, callous clearer
Of old order.  Art is a dance,
a surrender to chance.

Art is not all seduction and fire
Or tethered to your desire
(Except when it is).  
Beyond the dazzle of you and me,
Art is a failing light for learning how to see.”

I said “Now I understand less than before.”
“Then you’re ready.  
Imagine starry ways beyond these walls.
Use an innocent eye.  
Confusion calls.”

I never saw her again.
But it was enough
to start small.  

She tempted me like an empty page.
From this immense vacuum, I write.

She wakes me up deep in the night.

I understand you, she smiles
snuggling into me, her nose,
pressed cotton soft on my cheek

I have no strength, I cry
not one, for you

I love your weakness
love you for your weakness
her breath wafts into mine

and the boy stuck in his age
floats in the web
of the girl forever
forgiving.

You see the slump in my shoulders
the way I carry myself
the burdens of boulders
that threaten my health.

When you ask what's wrong
I pull up my guard
don't want your pity or sad song
won't tell you why life's hard.

So if you want to know
I'll bottle it inside
wrap up all remains in a black bow
and tell you I'm fine.