Inward apathy is not
to be confused with
sociopathic credence.
It's a blade held to the throat
of the man that wields it.
Never would the cold steel touch
the person who thinks of suicide
as cowardice, but believes bravery
to be disillusionment in the form
of medication, or speaking up and out
offering solutions to problems
that they do not know the variables
that come along with it.

How many teeth make up a smile?
How many lines form a frown?
If lines are infinite,
what does that tell you about
an expression that is countered by
obligatory inquisitive ambivalence.

Shoulders are for tears.
Spines are for intrepidness.
Skin is layered; tough and thick
no matter benevolent or malevolent,
a person's love is misconstrued
as skin deep, albeit it is formed
between synapses.

It's a spark, a fire, the intuition
to never say goodbye
and ignore accountability.

False flags and panic. Fear the other. Hate.
Be a Patriot. Act. As you are told.
When the people are frightened, they obey.
These are the times that few men try. At all.
No one can own you unless you want them to.
Gun in hand worth ten senators. Boom.
Gay Straight Male Female Black White Muslim Jew.
Exactly the opposite of E Puribus Unum.
Stir and stir, yet the *** does not melt.
Too many soups only antagonize the cook.
The fires of discord sizzle and fry.
Dare not to think, just buy and buy.

I regret to inform you, my friends,
that I may be offline for an extended period of time.
Due to intense visual migraines.
I will Greatly miss you all and your wonderful poetry.
I plan to return when my health improves so I need to
temporarily bid you  adieu.

I still have your single black sock-
It is a reminder that I am not the only one who
lost something
when you left:
misfit parts of you are still sprinkled across my bedroom
(it is a lesson for the both of us)
what else am I to do?

I cut you out.
Dad. Mom. Children.
Pretty house, big kitchen and lovely bedroom suites.
I used to cut out the
things I wished we could have
and then I would tear you up and hate you because I couldn't have you or be you- so go to Hell, Sears catalogue.
Go to Hell and die like I died a little every day when I realized that my little paper dolls were the best that I could ever have.

How dark and long the night
Growing up in the care
Of you, my mother
Unstable and violent
With fists as fast as your hair-trigger temper
I was very young when I learned to take a punch
And fly across a room with the best of them

But you taught me to read before I started school
And you read Dickens to me for hours
Igniting my love of words and stories
But even then
The storm could crash at any time
"What a quiet, well-behaved little boy.
Isn't he shy?"

But the worst thing you ever did to me
You told a lie as big as the moon
You said that my real father, the gypsy
Was dead
When I met him, in my teens
The world lurched slightly
And never went back to normal
And the worst thing is
I was still too scared to call you a liar

                                              By Phil Roberts

some claimed the paddies smelled like
fetid fishes, *****; some said like the dung of oxen, peasants
or other beasts who squatted there  

others whispered the fields reeked of death  
while I found no odor to be grander evidence
of life’s languorous longing for itself  

we marched those mired moors, as hunters
of invisible prey--ourselves too being stalked, or worse,
mocked by other hairless apes,  

who like we, sought light, but
could divine darkness far better, for we
knew little of night, its sacred riddles  

some said those places reeked  
of rotted flesh, the festering relics of our deeds
I inhaled deeply, slowly  

only rich, fecund stories
were revealed to me, ones I fear yet
this silent night