VVe vvrite words
to fill in the emptiness
as if they vvere concrete patches
for neglected sidevvalks
that nobody vvalks on
Carry on
D A R K  poets
Toss that alphabet
tovvards my shovel
let me bury it
forever

Dragon
Swallows
Tail

Left arm
High

My boy Jack
Caramel and honeyed

Union of
Opposites:

Twenty-five
Years
Beyond odysseus

Wandered from you.

Your mother,
No penelope

My picture
Disfigured

Darted
Wounded

Cursed I roam
Wine-dark aegean.

Suitors succeed
And you are
Lost to me.

Goodbye telemachus

River boat gambler

Pencil moustache
Shoestring tie

How I picture you

Jack of hearts

How the ladies
Swoon

some churches have bones,
and a graveyard for all the prayers
god didn't answer

The lost congregate
a lodestone of despair
draws them together
all that could be said
to make things better
sleek shallow lies
dry crumbling mortar
howling chaos beckons
beyond walls of order
at the unhinged door
a legion of wolves
refusing to be tamed
snarling and ripping
at what little remains

When I was a younger man
Time moved so much quicker
There was always something happening
Always something changing
Somewhere to go
Something to catch up with
Or even to escape from
People came and went
Then came and went again
"Where's he living these days?"
"Who knows what's happening?"

Now things are quieter and calmer
In this age of ghosts
In the land of the lost and lonely
Where once there was speed
There's nowhere to go
And nothing much changes
Even my dreams remain the same
As, with an unaccustomed patience
I write poems
And wait

                              By Phil Roberts

Scream, then silence.
Move, then stop.
Think, then get lost;
Cut your soul in half.

Drowning in my own sorrow,
I find myself breathing;
Nonparallel to what I thought; *
Parallel to what I'm thinking.*

See not the light of the world;
For only then you will see how darkened it really is;
It's better to see in the darkness;
At least it's the reality that you'll witness.

Love subdues, time subsides
Every lover knows the
Nights alone they cried
Hearts beat, love is the melody of song;
People everywhere doing others wrong.
A mans fist, A woman's courage, a babies cry
We live this life until we die.
Loves subdues, time subsides
Every person knows the
Truth to their lies
Hearts beat, love is the melody of song;
People everywhere trying to live right
Suffering together this human plight.



ELEETE J MUIR

This morning I was born, pink as a sunrise waiting patiently to melt into infinity.
I turned five in the afternoon, small hands tracing entire universes in the frost of a school bus window, wide eyes peeking out into a frigid February dream I have long since forgotten.
As dusk began to stretch its fragile skeleton along the walls, I was suddenly thirteen and searching for any trace of a ghost screaming relentlessly inside skin I could not recognize. Broken mirrors and madness tasted all too familiar as the sky began to blacken like something rotten kept secret for a little too long. Patience, young one. Minute hands will soon teach you how to taste sweetness all over again.
Faint stars collected far above my head, and all of a sudden I was one week away from seventeen. I knew that if I slept, she would greet me, after a day of sixteen beautiful stories waiting to be told.
A swaddled baby. A toddler scribbling backwards letters on blank pages buzzing in anticipation. An imperfect perfectionist, a paradox in process. A wanderer searching for fragments of salvation on an earth too broken for redemption. A rescued victim of her own absent self. A soul that has stretched its edges to form the revival of a buried smile. A renaissance blooming with every fleeting moment.

I have been all of these things. The thump in my chest understands this. Time paints with a hand that never tires of healing, never grows old, never loses hope.
In the morning I will rise, pink as a sunrise with blazing eyes that can already see the dance of infinity.

Love,  be gentle and kind,
take that rusty gun from under
my pillow and shoot me twice
in the heart so I can feel the hurt
from the first time and the pain
from the second again;
but don't bury me in the dirt
beneath your bare feet,
just burn me like the memory
of your brown soles I saw
running away, oh, so long
a time ago, I can't even remember.