Today the snow falls softly
Like the feathers
in what was our duvet.
Now it is only mine.

A morning sky grey
as grey as
your new headstone.
The house has found
a louder silence
One that is deafening.

I know you are at peace
Away from awful pain.
But you promised me
a thousand forevers.
a million eternities.

Now in the misty snowfall
of a sad grey winter.
I know your chair
will sit empty.
Your books unread
Your music unplayed
And my heart unfixable

From youth, not unlike the love
I received from my family, I surmised,
that extended love might be everywhere.
With artless, open arms and heart,
I embraced this simple notion.
In time, sadly this childish wish
was honed to a hard truth by maturation.

Friends and loves come
and go, fleeting in heart,
and committed soul.
Unreliably, flowing in and ebbing out,
like deep undulations of an ocean,
all too often with sneaker waves
that pull us under. Breakers pushing
our ship onto the rocks, in a sea
of shallow unfulfilled expectations.
Encounters becoming disappointment,
with too many frogs kissed.

My educated suspicion is,
beyond our family of blood kin,
Faithful canine love is the only
other "truly committed devotion"
we are likely to get.

In the end, that may well be enough.
Perspective wisdom can be a bitter lesson.

The blue sails of my bedroom
Offer me the solid protection
From the crazy winds that blow
Through my open wide searing
Eyes showing me the intolerable
Future that seems to be my fate

The yellow canary sits so quietly
Watching with a furrowed brow
While panic hovers red rainbows
With an ease that sound terrifies
Heartbeats thumping way too fast
And purple clouds plume skyward

The black dog beckons his spiteful
Realm into the darkening evil night
Again alive to speak dangerous words
To a frightened troubled forlorn soul
And under the blue I try to set my sail
Through stinking sludge sticking glue

A speck of paradise
A miracle abandoned
Only waiting for the clouds to change to gray
Hanging in those dark untitled spaces
Her petals are a useless perfection
Her poetry a moonlit someday

A messy galaxy
A teardrop infinity
Grace doesn't paint amorous feelings
On headaches in the space under the bed
Her flower blooms a bruise
Her worlds are dying words

I thought you were beautiful

Not shallow beauty,
Skin deep
The kind of beautiful like the sun
Shining on a tree leaf
Showing its veins

Beautiful like,
The sound of a creek
After a good storm

Like the feel of a summer breeze
On the back of my neck

I held you in awe

You were the mist,
Rising off the lake on a cool morning
The view from the top of my mountain,
In the fall when the leaves are colored

You were the violin music
Playing softly while I danced
The colors oil makes on the street
Just after it rains and the light hits it

I was nothing
A ghost,
In the darkest corridors of your haunted house
The typo on an old type writer,
Needing white out

I thought you were beautiful

She was told from
an age so young
that she indeed possessed all
the magic she needed
within herself
to set
the world
to right.

She placed daisies in
her long black hair
and skipped to the beat of
the songs her mother
had sung to her
before she left
escaping
her father.

She was often alone
rarely with friends as
she found comfort in the faeries
she spoke and sang to while
the wind
gently blew
hair in
her face.

She giggled when with
her only little sister
the best part of her world
to whom she adored more than
the breaths
she took
each and
every day.


She stood firm at home
never allowing
her father’s drunken words
to penetrate her self made wall
of anger and despair
because inside
her mind
there
were angels.

She closed her eyes at night
wishing the demons
to disperse into the heavy winds
that howled through the rafters
reminding her
she was
in fact
alive.

© Sia Jane

You've seen her a hundred times
With a hundred faces
But she's always the same
Always at the bar
She's there when you arrive
And she'll be there when you you leave
There beside the fullest ash-tray
Lighting another cigarette
With fluttery fidgety fingers

Her lipstick is far too red
And not quite straight
Too much make up to hide the lines
Which show all the more
As she cracks the mask to smile
Her hair is too yellow
And her eyes are long lost grey
The arc which her glass follows to her mouth
Is restless and constant

As the evening wears on
She will talk too loudly
She may even sing out of tune
She will laugh too shrilly
When nothing is funny
But sometimes
When it's late
She sheds silent messy tears
As she rocks on her bar stool
Because there's a reason
This woman at the bar
Has a story as real as any other
And it matters just as much

                                    By Phil Roberts

i know you're searching
for a savior
but you're just another
ship captain and i'm
just another lighthouse
flashing you towards
the rocks
attention only makes
me more distant
at night i suffocate dreams
of you with a pillow
until i lie beside the
cadaver of our love
wrap it's cold,
dead hands
around my neck
like a scarf in
this winter hell
last i checked the
weather report
promised no sun
a god told me  
i'll sleep like the dead
when i live
like them too.