putting faith in another human being
creates in me a fear so vast and enduring
it's hard to fit it in one imperfect lifetime
trust distorted by the history of things
done to and by us in the name of love
creates a doubting monologue in my head
that manifests in unattractive neediness
a seemingly bottomless hunger
for the reassurance of your touch
I fervently covet
your singular devotion
show me you'll do anything
to silence this non-believer
with love so constant
and unreserved
I feel it
from the outside
in

Not like the stories, is it?
Or the movies, or the expectations
we get from all that.

It's about people who travel with baggage
they carry when
they move into your life.  

It's heavy sometimes, and ugly and you have
to help them carry it, which isn't much fun.
Not like what it was supposed to be;
nothing you want to do;
not fair at all…

So what it is, love that is, takes all the stuff
from the stories and expectations
and adds understanding, acceptance, accommodation
because that's what it takes to help you
carry someone's baggage…

and what it takes to help them carry yours.

When you were a phosphorus angel
     There was almost light,
And your glow became like the Fallen.
        
When you were holding my hand
       Your prints took over
Mine, like a stolen identity...
Willingly.

       And I was,
Because you were my existence
    In the abyss,
And your luminous spirit a breath
      Underwater.

And you were the storm
     That I left the shelter for,
A little grey can go a long way
      In a rain of sorrowing embers.

I was the reconstruction
     Of your project,
Rebuilding is never easy
But you stayed til I was me again.

       Life is big,
But so little in time,
     I am because you were,
I was because you're gone.

4/12/2016
"Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux?"

"My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path, a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed?"
Charles Baudelaire

I sat on the mossy footstool
that lied by the brook-
I had to really open my ears
to hear the soft regurgitation
coming from the clear muddy water, gliding over the slate,
piled up
the road, the one I drove on that one day we snuck out,
was placed gently beside it,
uptop a little cliff,
I felt this a beatific metaphor.

The air felt amorphous,
held a quality I couldn't quite
put my finger on.
and then I saw a tree,

a crooked one
who had seemed to grow
on the bank of the creek
because life, it seems, imitates art.

Its trunk dipped
until it ever so slightly grazed the water
its elm fingers
almost

almost.
I smiled when I saw this,
for it gave me hope.
I likened myself to the horseflies and new
tadpoles that flittered,

seraphic in quality,
borne with the quality of new life- the innocent quality
the one that just made me feel tainted, the more I surrounded myself with it.

The Friday afternoons on the avenue, with its port wine air
and this bubbling black slate brook

are the only places
that innocence lives-
if I had realized how quiet
the soft gargling of the cherub water was

I'd have stopped the car
and baptized ourselves
In it.

youre filling my mind full of filling you full of me
i still cant decide if this is the buy of a lifetime
or a fools economy
im kicking the tyres looking for signs of a tired ride
selling itself as luxury
you could be mine for the one time price of just one good time
and the rest of my life with my ***** itchy

He is
walking the white line
his arm a repetitious arc
sounding a single tone
timed to the pace
of hiking-boot feet
treading the pavement.

Saffron robes have grayed
over long meditative miles
witnessed by curious commuters
riding the pendulum away
from his purposeful daily counterpoint
the freedom held
in rhythmic ritual

how the mind stills and gathers
in the swinging blur of hand and stick.

I roll the window down
seeking precious solace
as I hurtle past
knowing
he walks for me too
I want to stop the car
fall in behind

feel the timeless drum
the stillness of salvation.

smudges on the glass  
were wiped away each night
by a mute custodian

who found a biography
in each set of prints he made disappear
with clean cloth and vinegar

he could tell which ones
were made by children, dragged there
with promise of ice cream, later

oh, the young lovers' prints  
were unmistakable--eager tracks being led to more
and more promising carats

and the thin marks left by the frail
made him wonder, if this would be their last
precious purchase: a reckoning; a remorse

the cases held diamonds, rubies,
by the score, but the silent sentinel  
saw only the surface

that was his world,
one of transparency, and fickle
reflections

he reluctantly erased these fingered tales
the marks life left anon and anon, for he knew
it was his duty to wipe the slate clean

to allow resurrection,
renewed vision of a bejeweled
world, just below his sight

Death patiently files his nails
And smokes a casual cigarette
Grinning and eyeless
He says so calmly
"Catch you later
Brave little dreamer"

Despite such brittle certainty
Men and women build
Despite such small mortality
Every space is filled
In the midst of death's destruction
Men and women build again

Fear, like a cringing bowel
Exudes an acrid stench
And whimpers and whines
Simpers and cries
"Don't you dare
Don't you ever dare"

Despite this clinging dread
Some will need to dare
Despite the bursting head
Dreams insist on birth
In the midst of our stupidities
Something wondrous strives

                                    By Phil Roberts