The priest puts his trust
In martyrs and miracles
Clutching his rosary and his celibacy
To his bursting breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

The ***** puts her trust
In bordellos and bodies
Clutching her money and her condoms
To her brassy breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

The lawyer puts his trust
In regulations and rules
Clutching his charters and his decrees
To his dusty breast
And humanity walks
Through a series of cages
Every day

We each put our trust
In roles and rituals
Clutching convention and convenience
To our timid *******
So humanity continues to walk
Through a series of self-made cages
Every day

                 By Phil Roberts

There's more to a woman than her body and curves.
At the core of her brain is a thunderstorm that rains down wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, flooding the soul of man with love in it's truest form.
There's more to a woman than her physical beauty.  She's a living, breathing, ocean with waves of compassion leaping up from the depths sweeping man up in her current allowing him to swim in her essences that is woman.

Written by Keith Edward Baucum

I’d love to find myself a suit,
drive 12 minutes and
sit on a barstool that won’t
stop screaming,
be able to smoke
inside again,
**** in *******
stained toilets,
push on locked
stalls and trip over
high heels that reach
out from under like
ashes ready to be flicked,
have makeshift conversations
with a 62 year old
old bartender who throws
an ashtray and a glass
of jack on the bar
at 9:12pm every day and
spurns at irregulars,
harlequin nods
at pseudos and
tire at denials,
pay a $13 cab-fare
and let him keep a 20
for listening to me *****
about how I should be able to
smoke inside the cab,
find myself questioning
every single piece I’ve ever
written while spinning
beneath my sheets,
wake to work
and work to 5,
I dont yearn for much
just a kiss for when
I leave and one when I come
home, if she's still up.

in blue depths beyond our sight
day or night, you flagellate flawlessly
as if you had not a care

dare I say you're fleeing
a predator we're not seeing?
or perhaps just at play

in a world Verne created,
a space ahead of its drudging time
perilous, yet sublime

loligo forbesii, I can only imagine
what watery waves you whipped before I had you,
deep fried calamari, on my plate

It’s hard, to express in words
Exactly what we’re feeling
That’s why God
Made poets, so appealing
WIZDUMBs BY JA 640

She said I was history.
Then she said she would give me one more chance.
Then she said I didn’t deserve a second chance.
Then just as I was about to speak.
She said, I mean, who the hell do you think you are.
I was just about to say.
She said, this is definitely your last warning.
I was silent for a few seconds.
Well what do you have to say for yourself.
This is a wrong number.
What.
You’re not speaking to the guy you’re dumping.
Well why the hell did you let me rabble on.
To be truthful, I sort of get dumped a lot by phone, I just didn’t recognise the number.
That’s because you’re all jerks.
Well why don’t I take you out tonight to get over the ****.
Get knotted, consider yourself and the **** dumped.
Got a feeling she’ll phone back later and apologize, and then take me up on my offer, and when she gets to know me better.
She’ll definitely dump me.

We cannot take
a good, hard look
at ourselves
without help;
our own perception
a fun-house mirror,
twisting our foibles
into grotesques.
We become too big,
thinking we loom large
in the lives of others
who could not care less,
or we shrink into nothing,
disappearing from those
who miss us dearly.
Judge, jury and executioner,
we condemn ourselves
as not worthy of the air we breathe.
We cannot take
a good, hard look
at ourselves.
The look is rarely good,
and often far,
far too hard.

Her feet rose and fell
between fields of paddy

the grass bowed
then looked up on her way.

If only she had wings
and the winds carried her to her sister
she could land right on the yard of her hut
and take her home by the return flight
but her mind soared no less
so before the sun favored the west
she was right by her
laughing and talking like the yore
with only a line of vermilion
that she felt had come between them.

Soon she looked around
and making sure no one was watching
brought out from her skirt a mango.

She gave it to her like
she was giving a piece of her heart
plump yellow green
with the most delicious nectar hidden within
and when she narrowed her lips
to drink from the gift
her tears poured like the summer rain
mingling with the cries of the parched earth.

The influx of emotions
        and their ebb
                      and flow
swirl like a cyclone within me
I stand upon the cliffs,
                      hair blowing
                                mind rolling
into nuances
and languages
existing beyond words
 as each feeling whirls
                         and melts
into the other
     until they rise like birds
Around me,                      
each one takes the stance
                     of a miniature kite
attached to my limbs
pulling me this way
                                 and that
Yes, I know that our emotions
 are as rivers,    
                        rushing through
our banks
           soaking the essence
                                of our beings
              with fresh coolness
and alternately,
where it meets sea,
brine in searing tears                  
I know the stillness of my
               own soul, placid as a
                             rock in a typoon    
     yet sometimes
          unable to shake off
the heaviness of algae
it can almost suffocate
and to get through its
            dank seaweed density
          I shall just envision lightness
in the aviary form
              of hummingbirds
or kingfishers…yes, even soaring eagles
tugging on my heartstrings
lifting me up and away
into the proverbial clouds
so I can just
                curl up
         into fetal position
and let myself be
                      gently rocked
                             until the storm
                       blows over

I told her marriage was an institution.
She went mental.
I consoled myself with shooting the tortoise.
It was for the best.
There was no way it would win the greyhound derby.
She was beyond reason.
I was bringing it out of its shell.
I sort of laughed uncontrollably.
She didn’t.
She actually was trying to bring it out of its shell.
I suggested mad passionate love.
She wanted chocolates.
How about a toffee crisp and a fumble.
How about you dropping dead.
Who would pick up your pills if I dropped dead.
I would pick up my own pills.
What, you don’t know what day of the week it was last Thursday.
I was in love last Thursday.
Not with me.
No, with the pet shop owner
You do know he’s married.
He was leaving her for me.
He’s married to a bloke.
They’re both leaving their wives for me.
Is this about the tortoise.
What tortoise.
Never mind, let's get married.
Just now.
Yes, we can get married in the chemist shop
Somehow that makes sense.
What about children.
You could get them at the supermarket.
Three for two.
They hide them behind the screens now.
Children.
No silly, the alcohol I think.
They don’t hide the chocolates.
Did you really shoot the tortoise.
Yes, but the bullet bounced off its shell.
That’s good.
Not really, the pet shop owner was holding it.

it is a longer way,

mostly up hill then,

down.



we go round one way

one day,

then another way,

another day,



avoiding people.



mainly, yet we

talk to the stone mason

who likes to avoid

people too.



once i came this way with you.



sbm.